Cyprus: Elusive Peace

Cyprus was divided in 1974 when Turkish troops seized the northern third of the Mediterranean island after a short-lived coup in Nicosia by nationalists seeking to unite the island with Greece. Turkey subsequently declared the area an independent republic, but Ankara is the only government to recognize it. U.N. troops had established a Green Line separating battling Greeks and Turks in the capital 10 years earlier. The 570,000-member Christian Greek Cypriot community maintains close ties to Greece and the 120,000 Turkish Cypriots, mostly Muslim, claim they would be persecuted and harassed by the Greek Cypriot majority if the island were reunited. Cypriots on both sides of the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone that bisects the island and its capital have lived through numerous fruitless peacemaking efforts and U.N. resolutions aimed at resolving the situation.