What happens when self-determination aspirations remain unfulfilled and complicated due to ethnic violence and territorial division? How far can idiomatic forms of self-determination arise in spaces of protracted conflict and contested sovereignty? This keynote address reflects on these questions by focusing on the divided island of Cyprus, looking at cases in and around the UN Buffer Zone and the British Sovereign Bases. Following on from debates that have reconceptualized self-determination as relational exercise and worldmaking, it examines vernacular practices of self-determination that emerge at the interstices of sovereignty through everyday negotiation and adaptation.