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a short history of Cyprus

Brief History of Cyprus

The earliest traces of human presence and activity on the territory of today's Cyprus were found on the Akrotiri Peninsula and date back to 10000 BC. The village communities emerged later, around 8200 BC, when their inhabitants practiced some agriculture, animal breeding and hunting. This period was followed by the Neolithic and Chalcolithic epochs, when the settlements covered all parts of the island and the people produced decorated pottery, which distinguished from the other cultures in the region. It was during the Bronze Age that the locals learned how to work the copper mines available on the island.

Around 1600 BC, the Mycenaean culture came to Cyprus and a century later, the people from the island made contact with Egypt, which became their main partner in trade. Many years later, in the 6th Century AD, Egypt conquered Cyrus only to be ruled by the Persians when conquered itself. Being part of the Persian Empire, Cyprus had to provide the Persians with crews and ships. In 499 BC, the Ionian Greeks revolted against Persia and were joined by the Cyprus citizens, but the rebellion was crushed by the Persians. It was in the period 356-323 when Cyprus came under the rule of Greek king Alexander III of Macedonia. When the king died, Cyprus went under the control of Egypt and was finally annexed by Rome in the years 58-57 BC. During the entire period of ancient history, despite all the changes, its people worshiped Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, whose mythical birthplace was believed to be on the island.

With the division of the Roman Empire in 395, Cyprus became part of the Byzantine Empire for a period of eight hundred years. In the year 1191, during the Third Crusade, the island was captured by King Richard I of England. A year later, a French knight named Guy of Lusignan bought the island from the Templars as compensation for the loss of his kingdom. Three and a half centuries later when the last Lusignan king of Cyprus died and his widow abdicated, the island was taken by the Republic of Venice. During the rule of Venice, the island of Cyprus was regularly attacked by the Ottoman Turks. As the Ottoman Empire expanded, the Venetians fortified the cities of Nicosia, Kyrenia and Famagusta. When the Turks invaded Cyprus with 60,000 troops comprised of cavalry and artillery, the island was too weak to defend itself and fell under Ottoman rule in 1570. With the Ottomans came two issues that changed the island significantly. The first was a new population group, these neing the Turks. These Turks were soldiers who were given land if they agreed to settle on the island with their families. The Turks' population in the 17th Century grew significantly, and many of them decided to stay on the island even when Cyprus was ceded to Britain in 1878 with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Some of these left for Turkey in the 1920s, though the percentage of ethnic Turks still remained high (18%). Thus two groups were formed, that of the Greeks and that of the Turks, who differentiated from each other in language and religion. The second major issue that happened when the Turks came was that they benefited the Greek peasants and gave them the land they were working on. In the early years of the occupancy, the locals were suffering heavy taxes and many abuses from Ottoman rulers, which led to opposition. As a result of this, the sultan proved his good attitude towards the Cypriots; however his orders weren't very strictly followed by the Turkish administration. Highly disappointed by that, the local people started to look for help from the outside and especially from Western Europe.

In the period from 1567-1668, twenty-eight uprisings were formed on the island, all of them unsuccessful and very bloody. In 1670, Cyprus was handed over to the jurisdiction of the Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, and was thus no longer under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. In 1703, Cyprus came under the jurisdiction of the Grand Vizier, who sent a civil and military administrator and soon heavy taxes were imposed, which led to a situation of intolerance. The situation became even worse when a plague epidemic reached the island, followed by bad crops and several terrible earthquakes. The further doubling of taxes led to a new dissatisfaction, and finally led to the killing of the collector. Unfortunately for the Cypriots, this uprising was also crushed. A century later, in 1878, when the Ottoman Empire was crushed control over the island was taken by the British as a return for the support the kingdom offered the Ottoman Empire in the Russian-Turkish war. This gift was very precious for the Brits, as they had a strategic naval port and influence over the Suez Canal and the eastern part of Mediterranean. Under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, Turkey relinquished its claims on Cyprus, and two years later the island was declared a colony of the crown. When that happened, the Cypriots demanded their desire for a union with Greece.

A referendum regarding that union was boycotted. Some years later in 1955, an armed struggle against the Brits erupted, but didn't lead to annexation by Greece. Five years later, Cyprus gained its independence after long negotiations which were attended by Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom. When Cyprus was declared independent, it adopted a new constitution that recognized the two main ethnic communities, the Greek one with 92% and the Turkish one with 8%. According to that constitution, the small Turkish minority was granted more rights than normal. The Greek Cypriots considered themselves Greeks and the Turkish Cypriots considered themselves Turks, thus each group had a completely different idea for the future of the country.

In the period 1960-1963, many disputes arose and the relations between the two communities started preparing for a military confrontation. As the constitution wasn't accepted by the communities, thirteen amendments were proposed at the end of 1963. These amendments attempted to make the constitution better, and remove the causes of friction in the country. The amendments were rejected by the Turkish Cypriots and a street brawl erupted in Nicosia. At the beginning of 1964, United Nations peacekeeping forces established themselves in Cyprus, and remain there today. A decade later, after a long period of violence and riots between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots and one attempt to annex the island to Greece, Turkey took one-third of the island. Since then, the economy of Cyprus has grown significantly, allowing Cypriots to have a good standard of living. In 2004, Cyprus joined the European Union as a divided country, after the Greek Cypriots refused to unify with the Turkish Cypriots according to the Kofi Annan Plan for Cyprus. In March 2007, the separation was symbolically overcome with the demolition of the symbol of the partition, a wall on a main street in the heart of the tourist area, at the boundary between the buffer zone of the United Nations and the Greek Cypriot side.