History · Cyprus

Cyprus: The Divided Island

Ancient copper and Aphrodite, layer on layer of empire, a British colony, and an island split between Greeks and Turks since 1974

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

A row of slender white marble columns with carved capitals standing among low ruined walls and spring grass, with trees behind under a cloudy sky
Columns of the Roman gymnasium at Salamis, in Northern Cyprus. (Michal Klajban / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0)

An island in the corner of the sea

Cyprus is the third-largest Mediterranean island, tucked into the sea's far-eastern corner within sight of Turkey and Syria. Its 1.2 million people are about seven-eighths Greek Cypriot — Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian — and about one-eighth Turkish Cypriot, Turkish-speaking and Muslim. Since 1974 the island has been physically divided: an internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the Greek Cypriot south, a Turkish-Cypriot statelet recognised only by Turkey in the north, a UN buffer zone between them running through the divided capital, and two British military bases left over from empire. It is the only country in the European Union with part of its territory occupied by a foreign army, and Nicosia is the last divided capital in Europe.

A short history

  1. c. 7000 BCE

    Choirokoitia

    One of the Mediterranean's earliest villages.

  2. c. 1200 BCE

    Greek settlement

    Mycenaean settlers establish the Greek language; city-kingdoms and the cult of Aphrodite.

  3. 58 BCE

    Rome

    Cyprus becomes a Roman province; Christianity arrives with Paul and Barnabas.

  4. 1191

    The Latin East

    Richard the Lionheart takes Cyprus; the French Lusignan kingdom follows.

  5. 1489 / 1571

    Venice, then the Ottomans

    Venice takes the island, then loses it to the Ottoman Empire.

  6. 1878

    Britain

    Britain takes over the administration; a Crown Colony from 1925.

  7. 1955–1959

    The EOKA revolt

    A Greek Cypriot guerrilla campaign for union with Greece.

  8. 1960

    Independence

    A power-sharing Republic of Cyprus — neither union nor partition.

  9. 1963–64

    Breakdown

    The constitution collapses; intercommunal fighting; UN peacekeepers arrive.

  10. 20 July 1974

    The Turkish invasion

    After a Greek-backed coup, Turkey occupies the northern third of the island.

Copper, Greek, and Christian

Cyprus was settled more than 9,000 years ago, and the Neolithic village of Choirokoitia is among the oldest known anywhere. The island's name is bound up with copper, whose mines made Bronze Age Cyprus a Mediterranean power. Around 1200 BCE Mycenaean Greeks settled and organised a set of city-kingdoms; the Greek language and identity established then have held ever since. Aphrodite was said to have risen from the sea at Paphos. Cyprus passed through Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian and Ptolemaic hands before Rome annexed it in 58 BCE, and it became one of the first places Christianity took root — the apostle Barnabas was a Cypriot, and the island's Orthodox Church won its self-governing status directly from a Byzantine emperor.

A detailed Roman floor mosaic showing figures around an infant, in reds, golds and greens
A Roman mosaic at Paphos, from a wealthy town-house floor of the 2nd–4th century CE. Paphos's mosaics are among the finest in the eastern Mediterranean. (George M. Groutas / Wikimedia Commons)

The Latin East, Venice, and the Ottomans

In 1191, on his way to the Third Crusade, Richard the Lionheart seized Cyprus and sold it on, and it became a Frankish kingdom under the French Lusignan dynasty for three centuries — a Latin Catholic aristocracy ruling a Greek Orthodox peasantry, building Gothic cathedrals and abbeys, while the port of Famagusta grew rich after the fall of the Crusader mainland. The last Lusignan queen ceded the island to Venice in 1489.

The layers of Cyprus

A French Gothic cathedral front with pointed arches and rose window, flanked by two tall Ottoman minarets
The Selimiye Mosque in north Nicosia — a 13th-century Lusignan cathedral converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest. (Michal Klajban / Wikimedia Commons)
The ruined Gothic arches and cloister of a hillside medieval abbey overlooking the sea
Bellapais Abbey, a Lusignan-era monastery in the hills above Kyrenia. (Jirro / Wikimedia Commons)

The Ottomans took Cyprus in 1570–71 after a savage siege of Famagusta. They swept away the Latin feudal order, restored the Orthodox Church and made its archbishop the recognised leader of the Greek Cypriots — a political role he kept into the 20th century — and settled Anatolian Turks, founding the Turkish Cypriot community. For three centuries the two communities lived intermixed, village by village, largely without communal violence.

British rule and the demand for enosis

Britain took over the administration of Cyprus in 1878 and annexed it outright in 1914, valuing it as a strategic base. From the start, most Greek Cypriots, led by the Church, wanted enosis — union with Greece — which Britain refused, and which Turkish Cypriots feared. In 1955 a Greek Cypriot guerrilla organisation, EOKA, launched an armed campaign against British rule; Britain fought a four-year counter-insurgency, and intercommunal tension rose sharply.

Independence, breakdown, and division

The 1960 settlement produced an independent Republic of Cyprus that was neither union nor partition, with an intricate power-sharing constitution: a Greek Cypriot president and Turkish Cypriot vice-president, each with a veto, and fixed communal quotas. Britain kept two military bases. The constitution proved unworkable, and in December 1963 fighting broke out. Turkish Cypriots withdrew from government into armed enclaves; hundreds were killed on both sides; and a UN peacekeeping force arrived in 1964, and has never left.

An aerial view of a strip of derelict, overgrown buildings cutting through a city between two inhabited halves
The UN buffer zone — the 'Green Line' — running through Nicosia. It has divided the Cypriot capital since 1964, and the island since 1974. (dronepicr / Wikimedia Commons)

On 15 July 1974 the military junta ruling Greece staged a coup in Cyprus to force enosis. Five days later Turkey invaded, and in two offensives occupied the northern 37 per cent of the island. The Greek junta fell. The fighting and the population transfers that followed drove around 160,000 Greek Cypriots south and tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots north, producing an almost complete ethnic separation across the ceasefire line, with thousands killed and many still missing.

A decaying high-rise beachfront hotel behind a wire fence, its windows empty, on an abandoned coast
An abandoned hotel in Varosha, a suburb of Famagusta that was a booming tourist strip in 1974. The Turkish army sealed it off, and it has stood empty ever since. (Shanomag / Wikimedia Commons)

Two Cypruses

The north declared itself the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" in 1983; Turkey alone recognises it, and it depends on Turkey for money, troops and — through decades of settlement from the mainland — population. The south recovered to become a prosperous economy built on tourism, shipping and offshore finance, and joined the European Union in 2004 — but as a divided island: a UN reunification plan put to referendums that year was approved by Turkish Cypriots and rejected by Greek Cypriots, so EU law is suspended in the north. Crossing points along the Green Line have opened since 2003, but round after round of talks has failed, and the two sides are now further apart than ever, with the Turkish side pressing for two states rather than the federation that was the goal for 50 years.

What Cyprus carries

Cyprus has been ruled by almost everyone — Greeks, Persians, Ptolemies, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Venetians, Ottomans, the British — and absorbed each layer without losing its Greek core or, after 1571, its Turkish minority. The island's tragedy is that its two communities, which lived side by side for four centuries, were pulled apart in a single decade by the ambitions of Athens, Ankara and their own nationalists, and have not found a way back.

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