Talat vows peace efforts in Cyprus will remain top priority
Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat said a long-lasting solution to the decades-old Cyprus dispute will be his primary and basic goal.
Since 1974, Talat’s pronouncement has been a recurring theme on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It’s perhaps one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and I was fortunate enough to have been able to live there. Since the 1974 Turkish invasion of the northern half of Cyprus, Cypriot politics has been akin to something out of “Groundhog Day”. The characters change, but the theme is always the same- “resolving the ‘Cyprus Problem’”. Yet, here we are, almost 32 years later…and nothing has changed. Cyprus is still divided, and while there has been an increased degree of cooperation between the Turkish North and the Greek South, the “Green Line” that separates the two communities is still a military demarcation line.
NICOSIA, Cyprus – A five-minute walk from where a bunker manned by armed soldiers divides the Turkish north and Greek south sides of this Mediterranean island, Starbucks manager Faye Avraamidou serves iced lattes to customers relaxing on a sidewalk patio.
The signs above the cash register are in Greek and English; the coffee prices are in Cypriot pounds.
When Ms. Avraamidou finds out that my husband and I are from Seattle, Starbucks’ headquarters, she offers us drinks on the house.
“Welcome to Cyprus,” she says, extending her hand.
A few days later, on the other side of the bunker, a man named Dervis introduces himself as we walk along a street lined with storefronts with names such as “Dubai Bazaar” and the “Istanbul Shop.”
The signs are in Turkish and English; the prices are in Turkish lira.
Dervis, too, shakes our hands and welcomes us to Cyprus, not with a latte, but with a slice of halva, a Middle Eastern sweet made with ground sesame seeds that his friends, the Yagcioglu family, have been making for five generations.
Imagine a country about the size of Connecticut with 1 million people. Then divide it two-thirds, one-third, each section with its own culture, religion, food, flag, language and traditions.
When I lived there, in 1984-85, I lived in the southern, Greek (and infinitely more prosporous) half of Nicosia. While most of the island’s “Green Line” demarcations have left the Turkish and Greek communities seprated by a distance of several miles, there are places in Nicosia where Cypriot and Turkish soldiers can and do converse, sometimes not altogether pleasantly. Around the time I arrived in Nicosia, there were stories floating around of a Cypriot soldier mooning a Turkish one…and getting himself shot in the ass for his troubles. I’ve never been able to confirm the story, but it is symbolic of the day-to-day silliness of living in a city divided by hatred and distrust.
This is the island of Cyprus. Ruled during various periods by the Greeks, Romans, Ottoman Turks and British, it was politically and physically split in 1974, when tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots came to a head and Turkey intervened to stop a coup led by a Greek military junta.
Nowhere are the contrasts more striking than in the ancient city of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital.
The Green Line, a hodgepodge wall of concrete, barbed wire and sandbagged barriers, divides a compact historical core, easy to navigate on foot and filled with Gothic cathedrals, Venetian-style buildings and Ottoman-era monuments and mosques. Between the two sides is an unpopulated buffer zone of overgrown weeds and abandoned homes and businesses guarded by United Nations peacekeepers and Greek and Turkish Cypriot soldiers.
Such a tiny little island, inhabited by three armies. When I walked around Nicosia’s Old City, Turkish soldiers patrolling the wall would ask me for cigarettes. After awhile, I started carrying packs of cigarettes with me so I could toss a pack or two their way. At least I felt as I was making a small contribution towards peace and understanding. In reality, all I was reality doing was helping a poor, uneducated Turkish private give himself lung cancer.
Then there was the time when I was almost shot (no exaggeration) by a Turkish soldier. Strangely enough, as I almost discovered the hard way, the Turks didn’t take to naive Americans wandering into the neutral zone between Cypriot and Turkish posts with a camera. One day, I noticed that a Turkish post had a banner posted that was clearly directed at a Cypriot post about 100 yards away across a gully. One of my teaching colleagues spoke (among other things) fluent Turkish, so I thought I’d get a picture of the banner and have her translate it for me. The next thing I knew, I heard a soldier screaming something in Turkish. Immediately after that came the clatter of what clearly was a rifle being picked up. At that point, it seemed wise not to hang around to see what would happen next. Seldom in my life have I moved as fast as I did at that moment. Hey, I was a naive 25-year-old whose idea of violence was a snowball fight. The realization that I was living in an honest-to-God war zone was clearly something that took a while to get through my thick skull.
Both sides warmly welcome visitors, but until recently, border-crossing regulations required tourists to essentially pick sides. Most Westerners chose to spend their time in the wealthier, more developed South.
Those rules were lifted when Cyprus entered the European Union last year, and for the first time in recent history, visitors can travel back and forth without restrictions.
Elegant buildings with faded ochre façades and curved wrought-iron balconies line Lidras Street, the main pedestrian shopping street inside the Greek sector of Old Nicosia.
This is certainly a hell of an improvement over when I lived there. Going from Greek Nicosia to Turkish Nicosia in 1985 was a much more difficult and politically-sensitive undertaking. It took an intervention by a friend who worked in the US Embassy for me to be allowed to cross over to the Turkish side of the island.
I walked through a Cypriot checkpoint at the southern end of Lidras Street, and then walked about a third of a mile, past the Lidra Hotel, once the jewel of Nicosia that was then the UN headquarters. Lidras Street between UN headquarters and the Turkish checkpoint, a distance of perhaps another third of a mile, looked like something out of a war zone…which is exactly what it was. Barbed wire and mines peppered both sides of the road, so I was cautioned not to stray…like anyone had to tell me.
Once at the Turkish checkpoint, I was welcomed with something close to open arms. The Turks were frankly glad to see me, because they knew I would be spending money on their side of the island. Given the reality that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is still an international pariah, it’s existence recognized only by Turkey, tourists were, in 1985 at least, a comparatively rare occurrence- especially coming from the Greek side of the island.
While a U.N.-patrolled cease-fire line runs almost the entire length of the country, the Green Line cuts east and west through the old city, turning Lidras and every other north-south street into a dead-end.
Free of conflict since 1996, Cyprus today is a resort popular with sun-seeking Europeans. Most don’t visit the city that’s been the capital for 1,000 years, and from a beach chair, it’s hard to visualize the island as a country broken in two.
In Nicosia, the reminders are everywhere.
The tourist office still distributes maps that leave out the street names in the North. Whole areas are labeled “inaccessible because of Turkish occupation.”
At Holy Cross Cathedral, just west of Lidras Street, the rear door has been sealed because half of the church lies within the buffer zone. A sign on a vacant lot next door reads “Uncontrolled area. No Parking.”
A few blocks from Starbucks, at the Lidras Street Lookout, tourists can climb a ladder and peer over a wall into the buffer zone that separates the two sides.
Almost 32 years after the Turkish invasion, you’d think that the two communities would have been able to see their way clear to come to something resembling a resolution. After all, it’s not as if the two sides can live without one another. The Turkish north supplies drinking water to the Greek south, while the south supplies electricity to the north. Can’t live with ‘em…can’t live without ‘em.
It’s perhaps the silliest and yet most intractable standoff imaginable…and it shows no sign of being resolved any time soon. It’s very likely that you’ll see Yankees and Red Sox fans dancing arm in arm to the strains of “Sweet Caroline” before Greeks and Turks in Cyprus decide they’re better off together than apart.
