Saturday February 18, 2006 - A Divided Cyprus

Kane, Steph, "C", and I piled into a rental car for our trek from Limassol to Nicosia to meet up with Aldriene and his wife Melody. Aldriene had arranged for a minivan cab to take the six of us on a tour of non-U.N. recognized region called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and claimed just about half the island for themselves. While the Turkish Cypriots (of Turkish descent) were allowed to stay, Greek Cypriots were forced to flee and become "refugees" in the Southern half of Cyprus. The Greek Cypriot refugees lost all their property in the North (taken over by Turkish Cypriots), which continues to rankle Greek Cypriots. Again there is a lot more detail on the dispute, but that is the real quick summary (of course the Greek Cypriots weren't exactly guilt free either). It was just in 2004 that Turkey began allowing Greek Cypriots to even visit the North.

Since arriving in Cyprus, Aldriene had been mentioning that once you cross the border it will feel like you travelled back in time 30 years (that's 30 Cypriot years which probably equals 75 American/European years). All of us had this vision of black clad Turks with bad teeth trailing behind a donkey carrying a load of vegetables. However, we didn't notice that much of a difference in the level of sophistication once we crossed the border until we ventured farther a field to some backwater villages.

The first stop was St. Hilarion Castle, an 11th century fortification built into steep mountain crags. We then headed to Bellapais Abbey for a taste of 13th century gothic architecture and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. En route to Kyrenia Castle, we were all beckoned by a pastry shop. Without much of a delay we determined that we should pretty much buy a few samples of everything in the window (oink oink) and polish them off with a Turkish coffee. Waddling on, we were impressed with views of Kyrenia harbour from the castle walls and the remains of the oldest shipwreck (300 BCE) ever discovered.

















Before again gorging ourselves on another big PwC team dinner in Nicosia we visited Aldriene's old village. He hadn't been back to the village since his family escaped to southern Cyprus in 1974. It was a pretty moving experience reminiscing with him and sharing in his grief over the decline in the village. Particularly moving was the graffitied and practically destroyed church which had been neglected for thirty years.