What I knew about Cyprus before a recent visit was I thought, quite a bit. An island in the Med where Greece had had problems with Turkey and you could do a day flight to Cairo and see a museum or two.
I knew nothing. I didn’t need my euro plug adaptors as everything runs off a UK 3 pin plug and road transport is all right hand drive and they drive on the same side of the road as we do here in the UK. On leaving Larnaca airport in a bus I had learned more about Cyprus than I had in all my years leading up to the flight from Gatwick.
I am almost ashamed to say that digging into the island’s past a bit on the first few days I found out that it is not a Greek colony with some brassed off Turks in the North.
It is an independent EU Country that is partly occupied (41%) by a nation that is desperate to be a part of that same EU. Complicated, yes, but there is so much more to the recent history of the island. As a 47 year old, in the back of my mind I can remember Cyprus being in the news when I was at school.
Here is what I now know about the island and some of the opinions I have about who is to blame for the current situation and how Europe, as a state, can work it all out.
The Green Line is a UN patrolled area splitting the independent island of Cyprus into two. In the North are the occupying Turkish forces which invaded in 1974 and created the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, a state recognised in the world only by Turkey. The Green Line is fascinating and was a place I had to see.
I was staying near to Famagusta which in the early 1970’s was the major tourist resort on the island and it is now in the Turkish controlled area north of the Green Line. The old tourist hotel complexes and beach area are a ghost town now but the main city itself is still in use by the invaders. In Cypriot, Famagusta is called Ammochostos and on the drive north from where I was staying, the road signs (strangely in km) say AMMOCHOSTOS 3km.
I turned right onto the Ammochostos road and no more than a kilometre down it were the barricades with barbed and razor wire. The no mans land called the Green line complete with UN buildings and cars which is about 100 yards across separated us from the military ‘East German’ style sentry boxes on stilts that straddle the 1970’s road on the Turkish side.
Goose pimples ran down my spine as I saw the very red ‘Ay Yildiz’, literally meaning Moon and Star, flag of the Turkish Republic.
My mobile phone made me jump as I took all this in with the customary text message, beep beeps. I checked out the text message and was even more chilled to find a message welcoming me to Turkey. I was roaming in Turkey on Cyprus. Very spooky.
I met a lady called Annita after following a sign that said Famagusta, The Ghost City View Point. Climbing the stairs of a private dwelling, I ended up on the roof in a sort of café, I paid my Euro and was handed a pair of binoculars by Annita. I was looking out across the fields that formed the remaining two kilometres to the old resort of Famagusta (Ammochostos) which just sat there, empty and eerie on the horizon.
There were abandoned lorries in the fields and it was evident that on the fateful day in 1974 people just ran away from the invading Turkish Army and since then not much has been touched. Amazing.
Annita Georgiou, Famagusta, July 2010
Annita Georgiou is a 43 year old Greek Cypriot lady with two children living right on the edge of the Green Line on the Cypriot side with a daily view of the city she lived in and fled from as a 7 year old girl back in 1974. She was vociferous in her view that “Famagusta was her City”, and that she had the deeds to her property over there and would get it back.
When asked if she was bitter about the situation she found herself in she stated, “Before the invasion all the Greek and Turkish Cypriots got on well and lived an integral life around each other”. She blames politicians on both sides for the chaos that ensued and that it is the same people that keep the island segregated to this day 36 years later.
Continuing my research and having come to the conclusion that Turkey were in the wrong and should not have invaded another independent nation. Here is where my opinions have been formed by my very rapid study of the history of the island. I thought it can never be as simple as Turkey just fancying a piece of Cyprus. After digging around for a while it appears that in 1974, the Cypriot Government itself left the door to Northern Cyprus wide open.
Until 1960, Cyprus was a British Colony, hence the three pin plugs and the driving on the left. Greek Cypriots wanted Cyprus to be part of Greece and not Britain. Britain refused to cede the Island to Greece but after negotiations and the signing of the Zurich Agreement and with the exception of two military base, Britain did agree to Cyprus’s independence and the formation of a Cypriot State.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, a military junta ruled Greece and with the encouragement of Henry Kissinger and the CIA the Greek State backed a military coup by Greek Cypriots to oust the legitimate Government of the day. This started with the eviction of all the Turkish Cypriot representation on that Government. Over the next few years the Turkish saw this as the opportunity to invade the predominant Turkish Cypriot Northern 41% of Cyprus to ‘protect’ the Turkish Cypriot population and on July 20th 1974, that is just what they did.
36 years later, the Turks are still there.
It is impossible for me to accurately sum up the recent history of this fragmented island without far more research and I don’t want to get involved in their struggle any more than I have by compiling this article. As a complete outsider to the situation, I do agree with Annita when she says that the troubles have all been politically motivated and seem to be the fault of other nations and their need to ‘own’ Cyprus.
Recent history has seen Cyprus join the EU in 2004 and adopt the Euro in 2008. EU status has been suspended from the Northern occupied part of the Island although the whole of the island is an EU nation.
The future – Turkey are desperate to become part of the EU. It is difficult to see them being admitted while they illegally occupy part of another European Union state. I would say that this just should not happen.Can the Northern and the Southern parts of the island gel back together? Yes, on my experience of the Greeks Cypriots including Annita that I met, I think so.
Germany managed to do it after a financial and cultural struggle and I think the Turk and Greek Cypriots can do the same as long as there is no interference from Greece and Turkey.
If and when Turkey join the EU there will be the whole of Europe there to Police the Cypriot matter With Turkey having left the island and Greece having economic problems of its own for many years to come it should give the Cypriots of both Greek and Turkish persuasion the chance to sort out their own destiny without ‘the big brothers’ intervening, uninvited again, on their behalf.
Paralimni, July 2010
Mike Swift is a professional photographer
more about him can be found here: www.360swift.com
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