Cyprus: two memories in conflict

In July this year, Greeks and Turks commemorated fifty years since the partition of Cyprus. Here we take a look at the political situation, and how it might evolve in the future.

One island; two radically different visions of the past stand in opposition to one another. This is how one could summarize the situation in Cyprus over the past fifty years. For since the Turks took control of the northern part of the island in 1974, two irreconcilable versions of that event have coexisted. On the one hand, the authorities of the republic in the south—whose inhabitants are mostly Greek-speaking and of Greek culture—continue to keep alive the painful memory of what they experienced as a blatant violation of sovereignty. On the other hand, the Turkish Cypriots in the north, supported by Turkey, believe that the Turkish military intervention—because it followed an attempt to