In depth interviews: Personal experiences and methods

During the in-depth interviews, I tried to follow the order of the questions in the question list. However, I sometimes asked additional questions that were not on the list of the in-depth interviews. This occurred depending on the course of the interview; the content of the answers of the interviewees was the main reason for further questions. Thus, I sometimes asked additional questions to clarify a subject, probe more and tease out information that was not provided by the respondents; a feeling that there was something more behind the given answers made me ask another question in order to learn more deeply about the related subject. Occasionally some questions were missed if the interviewee had given his or her answers in response to any former question; hence, I used the question list of the in-depth interviews in a flexible way.

Through the interviews, the respondents sometimes talked about unnecessary subjects that were not related to the nature of the research, such as one respondent’s detailed explanation of his educational background which was given while he was talking about the role of history teachers in providing information about the Cyprus Problem. In those instances, I preferred to let my respondents talk and finish their conversation in order to make them feel free and relaxed enough to express themselves; free expression constituted the essential part of this research as it is substantial in the narration of memories. It is sometimes difficult for people to talk about their past experiences, sorrows, worries, fears or happiness; and occasionally, it is not easy to remember immediately an event or a period of time like childhood. In such cases, a long conversation might help them remember. However, sometimes long conversations about unnecessary subjects caused digression from the main issue, and this created problems as the respondents lost their attention and interest in it. In these instances, it was difficult for me to take their attention back to the main issue again. I therefore generally asked the main question for the second time at the end of their explanation in order to get the answer to my question.

The conduct of the interviews presented a few practical problems and I tried to solve them without losing patience. One of these was caused by the audio recording device that I used to record the voices of my respondents. Some of the interviewees started to talk very abruptly and in political terms after I had started to record their voice.

For example, Salime, a 68-year-old female retired teacher, answered many questions about ‘political ideas relating to the Cyprus problem’ in the second part of the question

list of the in-depth interviews as follows: “political leaders know what’s best about everything. I haven’t got any idea”. She also didn’t want to talk about her memories of living with Greek Cypriots, and gave very short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to my questions about ‘memories in relation to national identity’. However, after I had stopped recording her voice, she started to talk about some unpleasant memories of Greek Cypriots that represented her fears and worries about them. In these instances, I listened to my respondents very carefully and took notes immediately after the interview in order to preserve the information.

Moreover, I faced problems with some of my respondents who focused more on my questions instead of their answers. For example, when I asked the question ‘do you think the island should remain divided or unified?’ Ahmet, a 60-year-old male barber, told me that this question was biased and continued: “Turkish Cypriots do not live in a divided country. Their country is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and they live in peace in their country with the support of their motherland Turkey”. Then he tried to learn about my own political ideas by asking questions and to convince me that his ideas reflected truths. In these instances, I tried to explain that what was important for me was to learn their opinions and my aim was not to support any ideas but to represent my respondents’ answers equally in my research.

Some of my respondents got bored and became angry when I tried to go into their deeper feelings and learn more. In particular, the ones who had ‘martyrs’ in their families were very angry and aggressive while they were talking about their family member’s death in the Cyprus war. Some of the respondents were also very aggressive while they were narrating their memories with Greek Cypriots. In these instances, I tried to calm them down by explaining that I didn’t want to make them feel sad by reminding them of their painful memories, and that I shared their pains and sorrows.

During my research, I adopted some specific ethical principles such as value awareness (Grinnell and Unrau 2008:451), informed consent and protection of confidentiality (Grinnell and Unrau 2008:451, Cievrzo and Keitel 1998:67, Brown 2003:46-53). According to Grinnell and Unrau (2008), ‘due to the subjective nature of qualitative research, it is essential that researchers demonstrate some value awareness and thus they should report any potential biases and how they may have affected the study’. In considering the ethical issue of value awareness, I should therefore make it clear that as a Turkish Cypriot researcher, I am embedded in the historical, political and cultural

contexts which are peculiar to Northern Cyprus and that these circumstances might indirectly influence my conceptions and interpretations regarding the Cyprus issue.

At the beginning of each in-depth interview, I gave my respondents brief information about the content of my PhD thesis and I obtained their informed consent. As Cievrzo and Keitel suggest (1998:67), ‘the principle of informed consent is that the researcher provides participants with sufficient information about the research so that they can make informed decisions regarding participation’. I therefore explained to my respondents the purpose of my research, my intention in doing interviews, what would be asked in the interview and why I wanted to record their voices. Cievrzo and Keitel (ibid) note that ‘informed consent indicates that participation is knowledgeable and voluntary and that participant can withdraw from the research at anytime’. Accordingly, at the beginning of the in-depth interviews, I explained to my respondents that I needed to record their voices as I would not be able to take notes of all they said, since generally in-depth interviews take approximately more than an hour; and I obtained permission from each of interviewee to record their voice with a tape recording device. I also told them that they could withdraw from the interview at any time they wished.

Before starting the in-depth interviews, I encouraged my respondents to ask questions if there was anything that they were wondering or if they had any worries about the interview. They generally asked if I would use their surnames in my research and if I would use the information and/or their recorded voice for other purposes. I explained that I would use any kind of information solely for my research; my intention was not to use the data for any media institution or for any other purposes. According to Becker and Boore (2008:130), ‘when reporting the case study, real names and personal identifiers that are enough to identify a person should not be used unless the individual has given explicit (written) permission to be identified’. In order to protect the confidentiality of my respondents, I removed my respondents’ names and surnames from the interview booklet after assuring myself that I did not need to re-contact them for any further information. I also replaced the real names of my respondents with nicknames after I had finished the draft chapters that were based on the interview data.

CHAPTER 4: ‘CYPRUS HISTORY’ AND THE MECHANISMS OF