“Legalizing Oneself”: Citizenship, Waiting, and Fake Fakeness in Northern Cyprus

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the anthropological scholarship on citizenship and unrecognized states by analyzing how people grapple with the convoluted legal landscape of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). I present four life histories to describe the diverse citizenship constellations among the TRNC's (de facto) citizens and its (de facto) migrants and refugees—and the shades in between. The article integrates and develops three conceptual strands: (a) the idea of “citizenship as claim” and the assertion of a legal standing, (b) reflections on the subjectivity of waiting, and (c) the notion of a “state in drag” and the inversion of fakeness and realness. I make a twofold argument. First, the peculiar constellation of a de facto state affords unusual possibilities for—even necessitates—enactments of citizenship beyond the strictures of law, which then challenge notions of real and fake states. Second, contingent enactments of citizenship comprise an inherent precarity; they instill an enduring sense of abeyance. Depending on one's citizenship constellation, this may vary from a yearning for formal recognition to a life with major constraints on welfare and mobility.