In Nicosia, Europe’s only divided capital, drinking coffee can be a political statement.
Marina Christofides, the Greek-Cypriot author of The Traitor’s Club, her memoir of growing up in Cyprus, remembers how “Turkish” coffee vanished after Turkey invaded the island in 1974. “Practically overnight, it became Greek coffee … as if they could not bear to imbibe the substance that bore the name of the mortal enemy,” she wrote.
Fifty years later, Turkish coffee in the Republic of Cyprus, the Greek-speaking southern two-thirds of the island, is still called “Greek” coffee. In spite of decades of efforts to reassemble the broken island, it remains divided by the UN-patrolled buffer zone that stretches 180 kilometres from east to west, separating the Turkish and Greek sides.
Recent UN-sponsored meetings between Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish leaders, aimed at reviving the unification talks, failed to work their magic, though the mere fact they happened at all was seen as encouraging by some observers.
They also believe that the newfound affinity between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis could open the door for talks, though nothing has been set.
“We are seeing a rare moment of opportunity for the Cyprus Issue, and I hope that both leaders will seize it as if it were the last, because it may well be,” said Colin Stewart, the Canadian who is the current Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the island and head of peacekeeping force.
Ersin Tatar is president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which no country save Turkey recognizes as a sovereign nation.
But the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar, says the talks to make Cyprus a federation – a single country governed by a central government with guarantees for the Turkish Cypriots – have been exhausted. “The federation idea is dead forever,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Tatar, who is 64 and was born in Nicosia, has been the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 2020. He is a Cambridge-educated economist who later became an accountant in London, then a television executive in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and in Nicosia.
He said he finds his job frustrating because he has no official international standing. No country other than Turkey recognizes northern Cyprus as a proper state. Unlike the Republic of Cyprus in the south, it is not a member of the European Union and is under trade embargo from the EU, southern Cyprus and many other countries. “I cannot meet anyone in the EU in any official capacity,” he said. “They are very much against Turkish Cypriots.”
He said his goal is to create a recognized Turkish Cypriot country that is an EU member. “Turkish Cypriots want their own state” he said. “Currently, we are under pressure to be invisible.”
Turkish troops began landing on Cyprus on July 20, 1974, escalating a conflict on an island where UN peacekeepers had been deployed for a decade.
Ex-peacekeeper Ray White, an Albertan who came to Nicosia with his wife, Alana, says he was more hopeful about Cyprus's future when he served there in 1979. Now, 'I do not think there will ever be peace on the island.'
The “Cyprus problem,” as it is known, refers to the occasionally violent standoff between the Greek and Turkish sides of the island, which has endured for more than half a century.
UN peacekeepers, many of them Canadian, have been trying to calm tensions since they arrived in 1964 (some 28,000 Canadians served in Cyprus through 1993). About 850 soldiers are still there, making it one of the UN’s longest-ever peacekeeping missions; it costs about US$56-million a year to operate.
Cyprus’s post-Second World War history is one of endless strife. Cyprus became a British Crown colony in 1925, though it had been a protectorate since 1878, and gained independence in 1960. A few years later, clashes broke out between the largely Turkish north and the largely Greek south, to the point the UN sent in a small army of peacekeepers.
A full war broke out in 1974, when a Greek-inspired coup ousted Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios III and replaced him with a Greek-Cypriot militant whose goal was to hand the island to Greece.
He held office for a mere eight days before Turkey invaded the island, claiming it was compelled to protect the Turkish minority. There were thousands of casualties on both sides and two Canadians were killed in firefights.
The buffer zone has divided the island since then, though in recent years, border access points have allowed Greek and Turkish Cypriots free north-south movement. As a gesture of goodwill, a few more crossings are set to open. In recent decades, extreme violence has been rare, though minor skirmishes are routinely broken up by UN soldiers.
Mr. Tatar, the Turkish-Cypriot leader, was never in favour of a “bi-zonal, bi-communal federation” concept that was floated for years. If adopted, it would have united the island under a central government but granted substantial autonomy to the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. He said he has always been an advocate of forming a sovereign Turkish Cypriot state.
The first round of negotiations to reunite Cyprus failed in 2004; the second round, in 2017, came close to success. The Turkish side seemed ready to forge ahead with the plan. For reasons that were never stated, the Greek Cypriots appeared to lose their nerve. “The Greeks did not have any motivation to make an agreement,” Mr. Tatar said. “They have nothing to lose with the status quo.”
Earlier this year UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed an envoy, María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar, a former foreign minister of Colombia, to determine whether there was enough appetite on both sides to resume reconciliation talks. Her conclusions have been submitted to Mr. Guterres but have yet to be made public.
In the meantime, a few Cypriot civil society groups are forging cultural links between the north and the south. One is the Centre for Visual Arts and Research (CVAR), a museum and art gallery on the Greek side of Nicosia that is run by Rita and Costas Severis.
Ms. Severis grew up on a united island and decries the separation of the two cultures and the lack of commercial integration. She promotes Greek-Turkish harmony and the board of CVAR itself includes members from both sides of the country. “We have to move on,” she said. “We cannot fight 85 million Turks and Turkish Cypriots. It’s time to compromise and share.”
Petros Karadjias/The Associated Press
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