GEOGRAPHY
Cyprus lies in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Syria and south of Turkey Although defined as part of Europe, the island is closer to Asia. The total area is 3,572 square miles. Cyprus narrows in the east near the Syrian coast, forming the Karpas Peninsula. The interior of the island consists of flat plains, called Messaoria. Parallel to the northern coastline lies the Kyrenia range, and to the south lie the Troodos Mountains, where the highest peak, Mount Olympus measuring 6,401 feet, is found. Cyprus has two saltwater lakes, few freshwater lakes, and no rivers.
INCEPTION AS A NATION
Cyprus was ruled by many different peoples in ancient times, among them the Greeks and Romans. While subjects of Byzantines, Cyprus was raided by Arabs many times from the seventh to 10th century c. e. It was captured by the English king Richard I (the Lionhearted) during the Crusades in 1191 and sold the next year to French interests. In 1489 it was acquired by the Venetians. The Ottoman Turks (see Turkics) gained control in 1571. When the Turks lost the Russo-Turkish Wars (1877-78) Cyprus fell under British administration. It became a British colony in 1925 and was proclaimed an independent republic in 1960. The largely Greek population has close ties with Greece (see Greeks: nationality). In 1975 after Turkey had invaded the year before and claimed the northern part of the island, the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus was established (see Turks: nationality). In 1985 the Turkish population proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; only Turkey gave it international recognition, however.
CULTURAL IDENTITY
The nature of the modern Greek-Cypriot identity has involved a struggle between two opposing points of view: Greek-Cypriot nationalism, which emphasizes Cyprus’s ties with Greece, and Cypriotism, an ideology that pledges support to the political independence of the island. With the advent of British colonialism in 1878 Greek-Cypriot nationalism, in the form of the demand for union (enosis) with Greece, began to be transformed into a mass movement. In reaction there gradually arose an opposing Turkish-
Cypriot nationalism, calling for the partition (taksim) of Cyprus along ethnic lines. The balance of power between the two political viewpoints was dramatically realigned after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. A decline of nationalist ideology occurred in the post-1974 years because nationalism was seen as at least partly responsible for the invasion. For the first time since Cyprus’s independence from Britain in 1960, the Cypriot flag began to be publicly displayed on a large scale and to replace, or at least be placed beside, the Greek flag. The events of 1974 increased the psychological distance between the Greek Cypriots and the mainland Greeks. The coup that led to the Turkish invasion was designed and executed by Greeks and their associates on the island. Thus the kalama-rades (pen pushers), as the mainland Greeks are commonly called in Cyprus, were blamed for the Turkish invasion of 1974.
All of these events caused Cypriotism to rise in favor. The official Greek-Cypriot leadership espoused a policy of rapprochement with the Turkish Cypriots, stressing that the Turkish Cypriots were not the enemy and that the two communities could again live together as they had in the past. Cypriotism refers to the idea that Cyprus has its own genuine character and thus must be viewed as an entity that is independent of the motherlands of the two main communities of the island, that is, Greece and Turkey, instead of as two communities that are merely extensions of the motherlands. In this way Cypriotes are seen as having some common ground.
With the victory of Andreas Papandreou’s socialist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in the Greek parliamentary elections of 1981, Greek nationalism in Cyprus again moved to the fore. Papandreou rose to power on an explicitly nationalist anti-West agenda, promising to make the Greeks the true masters of their country For the Greek Cypriots this was a new Greece, different from the Greece that had “betrayed” its own child; it was a Greece with which the Greek Cypriots could again proudly identify even without enosis. What Greek-Cypriot nationalists aspire to now is not union with Greece but the reaffirmation of Greek identity in the context of an independent polity that is tied to Greek culture and is in some way politically anchored to the Greek state.
The argument between nationalists and Cypriotists has taken place in varying interpretations of history amounting to the “invention” of tradition by the two sides. The ideological Clash focuses on key events from the recent history of Cyprus, such as the coup of 1974. Many other issues and turning points in Cypriot history, however, often become objects of ideological contest—from the legacy of the pre-Greek Cypriot past more than three millennia ago or the Phoenician influence to the relations between the island’s Greeks and the Turks during Ottoman rule. Both camps claim to possess the “true” history and accuse the other of the distortion of history.
Further Reading
Andrew Boroweic. Cyprus: A Troubled Island (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000).
Christopher Hitchens. Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger (London: Verso, 1997).
Tom Streissguth. Cyprus: Divided Island (Minneapolis, Minn.: Lerner, 1998).
World History
