The Cyprus conflict is a long-running conflict which has been underway on the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean since 1974. It is historically rooted in Greek and Turkish settlement on the island. For many centuries in ancient times Cyprus experienced Greek settlement and adopted Greek cultural traits. However, for three centuries between 1571 and 1878, the island was a part of the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. In 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus in response to a coup d’état which was probably designed to annex the island to Greece. This led to the island splitting into a Republic of Cyprus, which occupies the southern two-thirds of the island and identifies as culturally Greek, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on the northern third of the island, which is ethnically and culturally Turkish and looks to Istanbul for leadership. After the initial conflict, a United Nations-brokered agreement has led to a permanent division of the island. There were extensive population transfers and migration as a result and many people of Greek and Turkish heritage will be able to trace changes in their family history to the events of 1974.[1]
Cyprus conflict chronology of events
The island of Cyprus stands in the midst of the Eastern Mediterranean and the middle of the naval routes between a large number of states that have existed here since ancient times. Consequently, it has often become a point of conflict between different powers here. In the Hellenistic era of Greek history (323 BCE – 30 BCE) the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt quarrelled over control of the island, which was a rich source of copper.[2] In the twelfth century CE the Christian crusaders in the Holy Land seized control of the island from the Greek Byzantines that had controlled it for centuries and used it as a supply base and staging post for their activities in the Levant. Finally, in the early modern era the island became a source of contention between the Republic of Venice, which had huge mercantile and colonial interests in the Eastern Mediterranean., and the Ottoman Empire of the Turks. Eventually the Turks claimed control of the island in 1571 and would hold it for the next three centuries before a British protectorate was established in 1878.[3]
All of this left a mixed cultural and ethnic legacy on the island of Cyprus, with some of the population viewing themselves as culturally Greek and Christian and some as ethnic Turks and Muslims. Following the granting of independence to the island by the British in 1960 disputes began to rise between ethnic Greeks and Turks. There were longstanding tensions between the Greek and Turks more broadly in the Eastern Mediterranean over Turkish rule in the Balkans, possession of the islands of the Aegean Sea and the Greek minority in western Turkey, divisions which had found expression in the bitter Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922. These boiled over on Cyprus in the summer of 1974 when the Cypriot National Guard initiated a coup d’état with the aid of the military junta that controlled Greece itself at that time. Fearing that this was simply a precursor to a full Greek annexation of Cyprus, the Turkish government initiated an invasion of Cyprus on the 20th of July just five days after the coup.[4]
The Cyprus conflict developed as a result of these events in July 1974. The Turks initially captured a beachhead on the north of the island and then expanded further southwards until they had control of just over one-third of the island. A ceasefire was agreed on the 18th of August 1974, four weeks after the initial invasion. A United Nations-administered buffer zone was introduced to enforce this and the island has remained divided ever since between the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the north (formally created in 1983 after nine years of Turkish occupation) and the Greek-backed Republic of Cyprus in the south. Despite the fact that the events of 1974 were triggered by a Greek coup, the international community has always supported the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey is the only country that recognizes the legitimacy of Northern Cyprus, as it is colloquially known.[5]
Despite efforts in the intervening half a century to resolve the Cyprus conflict, the island remains divided politically and physically, with a UN-managed ‘Green Line’ acting as a buffer between the two countries, most notably in the city of Nicosia, the capital of both Cyprus and Northern Cyprus and a city which is divided between a Turkish north and a Greek south. The political divided has not translated into major military violence since and there have been renewed efforts in recent times to reach a political resolution to the Cyprus conflict, most notably the Crans-Montana negotiations between 2015 and 2017.[6]
Extent of migration caused by the Cyprus conflict
Ethnic tensions in the 1960s and early 1970s following the British grant of independence to Cyprus in 1960 had already seen Greeks and Turks in Cyprus migrating around the island and within cities like Nicosia along ethnic lines. For instance, the north of Nicosia had become an ethnically Turkish enclave long before the invasion of 1974. This tendency was exacerbated following the Turkish invasion in 1974, with the two sides engaging in population transfers, something which there was a long history of between Greece and Turkey, millions of people having moved between the two states at the end of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922 under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.[7]
Estimates of the migration and population transfers which occurred in 1974 and the years that followed vary, but it is believed that upwards of 200,000 Greek Cypriots left the north either for the south of the island or for Greece itself. Over 50,000 Turkish Cypriots in the south of the island relocated to the Turkish-controlled north under a UN-brokered deal. As such, many people in Cyprus today will be able to trace changes in their family history and where they live on the island to the invasion of 1974 and the fallout from it.[8]
Demographic impact of the Cyprus conflict
The demographic impact of the Cyprus conflict has been greatest in the north. Greek Cypriots constituted an estimated 80% of the population here prior to the summer of 1974 and their flight from the north of the island drastically lowered the population, a development which was only partially corrected by the subsequent transfer of Turkish Cypriots from the south to the north. Over the decades the population of the north has recovered as settlers from mainland Turkey have made the island their home. More broadly, the Cyprus conflict has led to Cyprus becoming a more ethnically and religiously stratified society, with the northern third dominated by ethnic Turks, who are mostly Muslims, and the central and southern regions almost entirely inhabited by people of Greek ethnicity and culture who adhere to Orthodox Christianity.[9]
Explore more about the Cyprus conflict
- An Island Divided: Next Steps for Troubled Cyprus at International Crisis Group
- An Introduction to Tracing Your Greek Ancestry at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Common Challenges in Greek Genealogy Research at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/western-europemediterranean/cyprus/268-island-divided-next-steps-troubled-cyprus
- ↑ https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cyco/hd_cyco.htm
- ↑ Ronald C. Jennings, Christians and Muslims in Ottoman Cyprus and the Mediterranean World, 1571–1640 (New York, 1993).
- ↑ https://unficyp.unmissions.org/events-summer-1974
- ↑ https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/western-europemediterranean/cyprus/268-island-divided-next-steps-troubled-cyprus
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/cyprus-reunification-talks-collapse-un-chief-very-sorry-idUSKBN19S02S/
- ↑ https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-greece-population-exchange-painful-yearning-lost-past
- ↑ https://countrystudies.us/cyprus/32.htm
- ↑ https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/X2H-Xref-ViewHTML.asp?FileID=10153&lang=EN