Cyprus

• 1. Introduction

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  In March 2008, a wall that had cut across Ledra Street in the heart of Nicosia was demolished. The wall had stood for decades, and it had come to symbolise a division of the island that lasted 32 years. On the 3rd of April 2008, Ledra Street reopened with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot officials looking on. The street belongs to Cyprus, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of the Levant. Cyprus is the third largest and third most populous island in that sea. So why did a wall ever need to run through the capital of a country this small? The answer starts with a metal, runs through a long line of rulers who each wanted the island, and ends with two communities whose hopes for its future pointed in opposite directions.

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• 2. Copper and Early Settlers

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  Aetokremnos, on the south coast, is one of the sites that show when hunter-gatherers first reached Cyprus, around 13,000 years ago. Their arrival coincides with the extinction of the island's only large native mammals. One was a pygmy hippopotamus that stood 75 centimetres high. The other was a dwarf elephant, just one metre tall.

  By around 8500 BC, farming communities had emerged. At a separate Neolithic site, archaeologists found the remains of an eight-month-old cat buried together with a human body. The grave is about 9,500 years old, dated to 7500 BC. That predates ancient Egyptian civilisation and pushes back the earliest known link between cats and people. The village of Khirokitia, remarkably well preserved and dated to about 6800 BC, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  From around 1650 BC, copper mined in the Troodos Mountains pulled Cyprus into the wider Mediterranean world. The trade stimulated the growth of urbanised settlements across the island. Texts from the time identify the island, in whole or in part, as Alashiya. Records suggest it was ruled by kings who wrote to other Mediterranean leaders, including the pharaohs of New Kingdom Egypt, as the Amarna letters document. The first Cypriot king whose name survives is Kushmeshusha, mentioned in letters sent to Ugarit in the 13th century BC.

  Around 1400 BC, Mycenaean Greek traders began visiting the island. A larger wave of Greek settlement is believed to have followed the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, between 1100 and 1050 BC. The island's predominantly Greek character dates from that period. Greek myth made Cyprus the birthplace of Aphrodite and Adonis, and the home of King Cinyras, Teucer and Pygmalion.

  The earliest attested form of the island's name is ku-pi-ri-jo, a Mycenaean Greek word from the 15th century BC. Written in the Linear B script, it means Cypriot. Where the name comes from is unknown. Suggestions include the Greek word for the cypress tree, the Greek name of the henna tree, and an Eteocypriot word for copper. Some scholars have proposed Sumerian roots, either zubar for copper or kubar for bronze. Overseas trade carried the island's name into Latin as aes Cyprium, meaning metal of Cyprus, later shortened to Cuprum. Rulers from far beyond the island soon came looking for that metal.

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• 3. Empires Passing Through

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  At Kition, literary evidence points to a Phoenician presence under the rule of Tyre at the start of the 10th century BC. Merchants believed to come from Tyre colonised the area and extended the political influence of Kition. After about 850 BC, the Phoenicians rebuilt and reused the sanctuaries at the Kathari site.

  The Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled Cyprus for a century starting in 708 BC. A brief spell under Egypt followed, and then Achaemenid rule began in 545 BC. In 499 BC, Onesilus, king of Salamis, led the Cypriots into the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt alongside fellow Greeks. The revolt was suppressed, yet Cyprus kept a high degree of autonomy. Its kingdoms enjoyed special privileges, though they remained vassals of the Great King.

  Alexander the Great conquered the island in 333 BC. The Cypriot navy helped him during the siege of Tyre in 332 BC. Two Cypriot generals from Soli, Stasander and Stasanor, later became satraps in his empire. After his death, Cyprus passed to Ptolemaic Egypt, and the island was fully Hellenised in that period. Rome acquired it in 58 BC, and it became Roman Cyprus in 22 BC.

  In 286, the Roman Empire split into eastern and western halves, and Cyprus joined the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. It stayed for some 900 years. Beginning in 649, the Umayyad Caliphate launched repeated raids. The city of Salamis was destroyed and never rebuilt. In 688, Emperor Justinian II and Caliph Abd al-Malik signed a treaty. Cyprus would pay equal amounts to the Caliphate as tribute and to the Empire as tax, and stay politically neutral. No Byzantine churches survive from this impoverished era. Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas restored full Byzantine rule in 965.

  In 1156, Raynald of Châtillon and Thoros II of Armenia occupied Cyprus for three weeks and sacked it. They took heavy tribute and captured prominent citizens for ransom, damaging the economy for decades. In 1185, Isaac Komnenos, a member of the Byzantine imperial family, declared the island independent. Richard I of England captured it from him in 1191, during the Third Crusade, and used it as a supply base. A year later Richard sold it to the Knights Templar. After a bloody revolt, they sold it on to Guy of Lusignan.

  Academics no longer accept the old view that Greeks were treated only as serfs under the French-descended Lusignan aristocracy. Increasing numbers of Greek Cypriots rose into the upper classes, and King John II of Cyprus married Helena Palaiologina. The last Lusignan king, James II, died in 1473. Venice took control, with his Venetian widow, Queen Catherine Cornaro, reigning as figurehead. Venice formally annexed the kingdom in 1489 after her abdication. The Venetians built the Walls of Nicosia. When the Ottomans destroyed Limassol in 1539, they also fortified Famagusta and Kyrenia, fearing worse to come.

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• 4. Ottoman and British Rule

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  In 1570, an Ottoman assault with 60,000 troops brought Cyprus under Ottoman control, despite stiff resistance in Nicosia and Famagusta. Many Greek and Armenian Christians were massacred. The Latin elite was destroyed. The first significant demographic change since antiquity followed, as a Muslim community took shape on the island. It grew from soldiers who settled after the conquest, peasants and craftsmen brought from Anatolia, banished tribes, unwanted persons and local converts.

  The Ottomans abolished the old feudal system and applied the millet system, under which non-Muslim peoples were governed by their own religious authorities. The head of the Church of Cyprus became leader of the Greek Cypriots and their mediator with the Ottoman authorities. That standing let the Church end the Catholic Church's constant efforts to expand on the island.

  In 1777-78, 47,000 Muslims outnumbered the island's 37,000 Christians. By 1872, the population had risen to 144,000, made up of 44,000 Muslims and 100,000 Christians. The Muslim count included crypto-Christians such as the Linobambaki, a crypto-Catholic community that arose from the persecution of Catholics. During British rule, the Linobambaki assimilated into the Turkish Cypriot community.

  When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, several Greek Cypriots left to join the Greek forces. The Ottoman governor responded by arresting and executing 486 prominent Greek Cypriots. Among them were Kyprianos, the Archbishop of Cyprus, and four other bishops. In 1828, Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first president of modern Greece, called for union of Cyprus with Greece. Poverty and ever-present tax collectors fuelled Greek nationalism, and by the 20th century the idea of union was firmly rooted.

  In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin, Cyprus was leased to the British Empire. Britain took over its administration in exchange for guarantees that it would use the island as a base to protect the Ottomans against Russian aggression. Sovereignty stayed Ottoman until the 5th of November 1914, when Britain formally annexed the island after the Ottoman Empire joined the First World War. By 1906, the completed Famagusta harbour made Cyprus a naval outpost overlooking the Suez Canal, the main route to India.

  In October 1915, Britain offered Cyprus to Greece, then ruled by King Constantine I. The condition was that Greece join the war on the British side and help Serbia. The Zaimis administration declined. That refusal is described either as a lost "golden opportunity" for enosis or as a "lost opportunity". In 1923, under the Treaty of Lausanne, the new Turkish republic gave up any claim to Cyprus, and in 1925 it became a crown colony. Many Greek and Turkish Cypriots enlisted in the Cyprus Regiment in the Second World War. Greek Cypriots hoped that British administration would lead to enosis, meaning union with Greece.

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• 5. Independence and Violence

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  In January 1950, the Church of Cyprus organised a referendum under clerical supervision, with no Turkish Cypriot participation. Of the Greek Cypriots who took part, 96% voted for enosis. The 1946 census had put Greeks at 80.2% of the island's population. The British administration proposed restricted autonomy under a constitution, but it was rejected.

  The Megali Idea was a political ambition for a Greek state covering territories with large Greek populations in the former Ottoman Empire, including Cyprus and Asia Minor, with a capital in Constantinople. Enosis grew out of that idea. The Cypriot Orthodox Church actively pursued it and had its members educated in Greece. In 1955, religious officials, Greek military officers and professionals founded EOKA, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters, to seek union through armed struggle.

  Turkish Cypriots first favoured continued British rule. Then they saw the union of Crete with Greece, which led to the exodus of Cretan Turks, as a precedent to avoid. In 1955 they founded the Turkish Resistance Organisation, TMT, calling for taksim, or partition. British officials tolerated it, fearing that enforcing the law against TMT would harm relations with Turkey. In the 1950s, the Turkish leader Menderes called Cyprus an "extension of Anatolia". Turkish Cypriots were only 20% of islanders, which made annexation unfeasible, so Turkey's policy shifted to partition. "Partition or Death" became a frequent protest slogan from the late 1950s through the 1960s.

  Cyprus officially became independent on the 16th of August 1960 under the Zürich and London Agreement. The population was 573,566. Of these, 442,138 (77.1%) were Greeks, 104,320 (18.2%) were Turks and 27,108 (4.7%) were others. Government posts were allocated by ethnic quota. Turkish Cypriots received a permanent veto and 30% of seats in parliament and administration, and Greece, Turkey and Britain gained guarantor rights.

  The division of power soon produced legal impasses and discontent on both sides. The Greek Cypriot leadership believed the Turkish Cypriots' rights were too extensive and designed the Akritas plan. It aimed to reform the constitution in favour of Greek Cypriots, and to subdue Turkish Cypriots violently within days if they refused. Archbishop Makarios III, the Cypriot president, called for constitutional changes. Turkey rejected them, and Turkish Cypriots opposed them.

  On the 21st of December 1963, intercommunal violence erupted after two Turkish Cypriots were killed in an incident involving Greek Cypriot police. It left 364 Turkish and 174 Greek Cypriots dead and destroyed 109 Turkish Cypriot or mixed villages. Between 25,000 and 30,000 Turkish Cypriots were displaced. The nature of the event is still controversial. In some areas Greek Cypriots stopped Turkish Cypriots from travelling or entering government buildings. Elsewhere some Turkish Cypriots withdrew willingly after calls from their own administration. Turkish Cypriots began living in enclaves, and UNFICYP troops arrived as the Green Line divided Nicosia.

  On the 5th of June 1964, a strongly worded telegram from US President Lyndon B. Johnson halted a Turkish threat to invade. It warned that the United States would not stand beside Turkey if the Soviet Union then invaded Turkish territory. Greece dispatched 10,000 troops to Cyprus to counter a possible Turkish invasion.

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• 6. Summer of 1974

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  On the 15th of July 1974, the Greek military junta under Dimitrios Ioannides staged a coup d'état in Cyprus, aiming to unite the island with Greece. The coup ousted President Makarios III. In his place came Nikos Sampson, a pro-enosis nationalist.

  Five days later, on the 20th of July, the Turkish army invaded. It cited a right to restore constitutional order under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, a justification the United Nations and the international community have rejected. The Turkish air force bombed Greek positions. Hundreds of paratroopers dropped between Nicosia and Kyrenia, where armed Turkish Cypriot enclaves had long existed. Off the Kyrenia coast, troop ships landed 6,000 men with tanks, trucks and armoured vehicles. When a ceasefire was agreed three days later, Turkey had landed 30,000 troops. It held Kyrenia, the corridor linking Kyrenia to Nicosia, and the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Nicosia itself.

  The junta in Athens fell, and then the Sampson regime in Cyprus. Glafkos Clerides temporarily took the presidency in Nicosia. After peace negotiations in Geneva, Turkey reinforced its Kyrenia bridgehead and launched a second invasion on the 14th of August. Morphou, Karpass, Famagusta and the Mesaoria came under Turkish control. By the next ceasefire, 36% of the island had been taken. Well over 150,000 Greek Cypriots had been evicted from their homes in the north, and around 50,000 Turkish Cypriots moved north into the abandoned properties.

  In mid-1975, the US Congress imposed an arms embargo on Turkey for using US-supplied equipment in the invasion. The fighting between 1963 and 1974 left 1,534 Greek Cypriots and 502 Turkish Cypriots missing. Archbishop Makarios III returned to Cyprus in December 1974, but Turkish troops stayed. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriot parliament, led by Rauf Denktaş, proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which only Turkey recognises. UN resolutions condemn the invasion, the occupation and that declaration, and the Security Council reaffirms them every year.

  Turkish settlers have been settled in the north with the encouragement of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot states. The Republic of Cyprus considers their presence a violation of the Geneva Convention. Many settlers have since cut their ties to Turkey, and their second generation considers Cyprus its homeland.

  In April 2003, Northern Cyprus unilaterally eased checkpoint restrictions, and Cypriots could cross between the two sides for the first time in 30 years. In 2004, the Annan Plan, drafted by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, went to a referendum on both sides. Some 65% of Turkish Cypriots voted for it, while 74% of Greek Cypriots voted against, arguing it favoured Turkish Cypriots disproportionately and gave Turkey unreasonable influence. In total, 66.7% of voters rejected it. On the 1st of May 2004, Cyprus joined the European Union with nine other countries. It was admitted as a whole, although EU legislation is suspended in the north until a final settlement.

  The two sides relaunched reunification talks in 2015, but they collapsed in 2017. In July 2024, on the 50th anniversary of the invasion, Turkish President Erdoğan rejected a United Nations-endorsed plan for a federal government. He backed two separate states instead. Greek Cypriots immediately rejected the idea, calling it a "non-starter".

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• 7. Sun, Mountains, and Water

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  Cyprus measures 240 kilometres from end to end and 100 kilometres across at its widest. It ranks third in the Mediterranean in both area and population, behind Sicily and Sardinia. In the world it is 80th by area and 51st by population. Turkey lies 75 kilometres to the north, Lebanon and Syria 105 and 108 kilometres to the northeast, Israel 200 kilometres to the southeast, and Egypt 380 kilometres to the south. To the west, the small Greek island of Kastellorizo is 280 kilometres away. Some sources place Cyprus in Europe, and others in Western Asia and the Middle East.

  The Troodos Mountains cover most of the south and west and make up roughly half the island's area. Mount Olympus, at 1952 metres in the centre of the range, is the highest point on Cyprus. The narrow Kyrenia Range along the northern coast tops out at 1024 metres. Between them lies the Mesaoria plain, drained by the Pedieos River, the longest on the island. Endemic species include the Cypriot mouse, the golden oak and the Cyprus cedar.

  The Republic of Cyprus occupies 59.74% of the island. The north covers 34.85%, and the UN-controlled Green Line buffer zone covers 2.67%. The two British bases take the remaining 2.74%. Dhekelia has four exclaves inside it, including the villages of Ormidhia and Xylotymvou. One more is the Dhekelia Power Station, whose southern half sits beside the sea yet has no territorial waters of its own.

  On the coast, daytime temperatures average around 24 °C and nights around 14 °C. Summers last about eight months, from April to November. Snow is possible only in the Troodos Mountains. Coastal areas get around 3,200 hours of sunshine a year, roughly double that of cities in northern Europe. London receives about 1,540. In December, coastal Cyprus gets about 180 hours of sunshine, against about 50 in London.

  Cyprus suffers from a chronic shortage of water. Between 2001 and 2004, exceptionally heavy rainfall lifted reservoir storage to an all-time high by the start of 2005. Since then demand has risen every year with population growth, new residents and tourists, while droughts have grown more frequent. The island has 108 dams and reservoirs. Desalination plants have supplied almost 50 per cent of domestic water since 2001. Turkey has built a pipeline under the sea from Anamur on its southern coast to bring drinking and irrigation water to the northern coast of Cyprus.

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• 8. Money, Language, and Art

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  On the 1st of January 2008, Cyprus adopted the euro and retired the Cypriot pound. In June 2012, the government announced it needed €1.8 billion in foreign aid to support the Cyprus Popular Bank, and Fitch downgraded its credit rating to junk status. In March 2013, an agreement with the Eurogroup split that bank into a "bad" bank to be wound down and a "good" bank to be absorbed by the Bank of Cyprus. The country received a €10 billion bailout from the so-called troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In return it imposed a significant haircut on uninsured deposits, many of them held by wealthy Russians who used Cyprus as a tax haven. Insured deposits of €100,000 or less were untouched. By 2023, IMF estimates put its per capita GDP at $54,611, the highest in Southern Europe.

  The Aphrodite gas field lies in the island's exclusive economic zone, about 175 kilometres south of Limassol. In August 2011, the US firm Noble Energy signed a production-sharing agreement with the Cypriot government. Turkey, which does not recognise Cyprus's maritime border agreements, threatened to mobilise its navy if drilling went ahead. Drilling at Block 12 began on the 19th of September 2011, and no incidents were reported.

  In February 2019, the European Union warned that Cyprus was selling EU passports to Russian oligarchs. Leaked documents in 2020 showed that officials from Afghanistan, China, Dubai, Lebanon, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Vietnam had bought Cypriot citizenship before the law changed in July 2019. In November 2023, the Cyprus Confidential leak, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, tied the country's financial network to Russian oligarchs and figures close to the Kremlin.

  Greek and Turkish are the two official languages, while Armenian and Cypriot Maronite Arabic are recognised minority languages. English was the sole official language under British rule. Courts used it de facto until 1989 and legislation until 1996. In 2010-80.4% of Cypriots were proficient in English as a second language. In Limassol and Paphos, Russian is often the third language on shop and restaurant signs. Education is a point of pride: 47% of Cypriots aged 25-34 have tertiary education, the highest share in the EU. Meanwhile 78.7% of Cypriot students study at universities outside the island.

  Lefkara lace, a traditional art dating at least from the 14th century, comes from the village of Lefkara and is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. The same village produced Cypriot filigree, locally called Trifourenio, a jewellery made from twisted silver threads. Souvla and halloumi are traditional foods shared by Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike. The Cypria, an epic poem attributed to Stasinus and probably composed in the late 7th century BC, is one of the first specimens of Greek and European poetry. Zeno of Citium, a Cypriot, founded the Stoic school of philosophy. Most of Shakespeare's Othello is set on the island. From 1952 until 1956, the British writer Lawrence Durrell lived in Cyprus while working for the colonial government. His book about that time, Bitter Lemons, won the second Duff Cooper Prize in 1957.

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