Background
Mete Hatay is Senior Research Consultant at the PRIO Cyprus Centre. Hatay has been a political analyst and freelance writer since 1985, primarily researching and writing on the Cyprus conflict, Cypriot cultural history, immigration, Islam, and ethnic and religious minorities in Cyprus. Before joining the PRIO Cyprus Centre, he worked as co-director of a consultancy firm that provided media monitoring, social and commercial research, and public relations and communication strategy services for international organisations, including the EC Representation in Cyprus. He has taught at Near East University and Cyprus International University and served as a board member of the Turkish Cypriot Education Foundation. He is currently serving as a board member of the Turkish Cypriot Human Rights Foundation and a member of the editorial board of The Cyprus Review.
Between the years of 2003-2004, he worked as a project development officer at the PRIO Cyprus Office as part of the ‘Public Information Project’ on the Annan Plan, the last United Nations proposal to reunify the island. As part of this work, he was involved in the preparation and distribution of booklets that explained the plan to a general audience. He also aided in the construction of a website, held public seminars, facilitated discussions, and made presentations on local and international TV and radio stations.
From 2003 to 2005, he was also part of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation’s Cyprus monitoring team, which was responsible for informing the Turkish public about developments in the Cyprus conflict and their effect on Turkey’s European Union accession negotiations. In addition, he presented the results of the team’s research in policy fora in Europe and the U.S.
Since January 2005, he has led PRIO-Cyprus Centre’s project on demography in Cyprus. Much of his work has concentrated on immigrants and settlers in the north of the island. His monographs Beyond Numbers and Is the Turkish Cypriot Population Shrinking? were published as PRIO reports. He has also been engaged in a large-scale EU 7th framework project on conflict and cultural heritage, as well as in another EU-funded program on internal displacement in the island. He works on Sufi Islam in Cyprus and is the regular reporter on Islam in Cyprus for the Muslims in Europe Yearbook. He is currently working with co-author Rebecca Bryant on a book manuscript about the period of Turkish Cypriot enclavement between 1963-74 and the later transformation of enclaves into an unrecognized state. Besides his regular appearances and commentaries in local media sources, Hatay has also published academic articles in venues such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, American Ethnologist, Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and Cyprus Review.
Apart from popular and academic writing, Hatay is also a composer who has produced two albums, as well as music for numerous documentary films.