A Quick Survey of Northern Cyprus

Northern Cyprus is another one of those disputed areas of sovereignty that we said we would cover this week on the blog. It has only one state outside of itself that recognizes, Turkey. The rest of the world considers Northern Cyprus to be an occupied territory within the Republic of Cyprus. The question we want to get to the bottom is what is all the kerfuffle about?

It started long ago and with many of our other disputed states this week it has to do with ethnic and religious tensions. In the case of Northern Cyprus we are talking about the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. The Greek Cypriots occupy most of the island while the Turkish Cypriots live in the Northeastern part of the island called Northern Cyprus. The island of Cyprus has an extensive history, one we're not going to cover on this blog post. So, we'll start with the most recent tensions that began shortly after 1960 when the island became independent from England.

There were two competing thoughts on what to do with the islands new found independence. Many Turkish Cypriots wanted to adopt "takism", the Turkish word for partition. This theory of self-rule wanted to split the island into two sections and possibly two distinct states, one for the Greeks and one for the Turks. Many Greek Cypriots however wanted to adopt the policy of "enosis", the Greek word for union. Under this plan Cyprus would become part of Greece. But, in 1960 delegates from both sides agreed to scrap both policies to make Cyprus its own state. The peace however did not last.

In 1963 the Akritas Plan was enacted that was designed to weaken the position of the Turkish Cypriots in the government and ultimately link Cyprus back with Greece. Violence broke out between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots with the Turks getting the worse end of the violence. Looting of Turkish villages within the island nation caused thousands to either withdraw into what would over time become Northern Cyprus or to emigrate to places like Britain, Australia or Turkey proper. The Turkish Cypriot government withdrew from all official government activities and Turkish paramilitary groups began to form that in effect created the partition of the island that constitutes it today.

The 1970's saw some serious action on the island. In 1974 the military junta of Greece decided to directly involve themselves in Cypriot politics and backed a couple of Greek Cypriot groups to host a coup d'état party. They ousted the presiding president, Makarios III, the president that had basically unilaterally acted back in the early 60's to get the tensions snowballing into the spiral as they did. But, Turkey saw this military intervention by Greece as a reason to send in their own troops. The Turkish Army came in shortly after the coup and established the border between Cyprus proper and Northern Cyprus.

A year later, in 1975 the Turkish Cypriots formed the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. This however displeased the Republic of Cyprus and no one in the international community outside of Turkey recognized this new designation. The hopeful and nascent Turkish Federated State of Cyprus tried to negotiate with the UN and the leaders of the Greek Cypriots but to no avail. After eight years the Turkish Cypriots declared independence and formed the disputed state that sits atop northeastern Cyprus today, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Since 1983 there has been a whole bunch of bluster about the politics of reunification. In 2004 the Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly voted against reunification whereas the Turkish north voted for it. This left Cyprus entering the European Union with the North basically left out of the deal. In spite of all the hope for unification continuing sanctions has disillusioned much of the Northern Cyprus population and they recently voted in a government that prefers independence to unification and links with Turkey rather than the EU. But, while this current government is ideologically at odds with unification it is pragmatic and the current president Derviş Eroğlu is still performing ongoing negotiations with the Republic of Cyprus on unification plans.

That's all we'll cover this time, but look this week for a further explanation on the divisions within Cyprus through a historical lens and more on the disputed states in Europe. Tomorrow, barring something horrible, the podcast will resume with the Chalcolithic podcast. I'm excited. I hope you are!

Dwarf Bullying in Prehistoric Cyprus

Modern dwarf hippo baby.
Delicious in stews and on kabobs.

The mega fauna (large animals) that were present during the end of the last ice age simply died out. There has been extensive debate over their extinction. Some claim that climate change led to the extinction, while others maintain that human activity was responsible. This can be split relatively down the middle between your average FOX inundated Republican and CNN-devotee Democrat in America. However, in scientific circles the argument is slightly more nuanced, often depending on where the funding is coming from. I joke. I kid. It has nothing to do with financial backers... ... ...

I needed that triple ellipse to move on.

Anywho, we'll talk about both the Aceramic and Ceramic Neolithic cultures of Cyprus during the Neolithic podcasts (which are written, but not recorded as of yet). Traditionally, the Aceramic culture is considered the oldest culture of the area. This Aceramic culture is supposed to have arrived in Cyprus from somewhere in the Levant during the Holocene, after the Pleistocene animals of Cyprus had died out. Basically, scientists have always assumed that human beings never had any contact with the pygmy species that inhabited the island during the Pleistocene geological epoch. However, I just read an article by Alan H. Simmons entitled The First Humans and Last Pygmy Hippopotami of Cyprus. In the article, Simmons argues that the Aceramic site at Akrotiri Aetokremnos, settled around 10,000 BC, actually contains remains of both human beings and the pygmy hippopotamus in a way that shows contact between the two.

A lot of effort has gone into studying the extinction of the mega fauna all over the world during the last Ice Age. Basically people want to know if the Mammoth and his Ice Age giant buddies were wiped out by man or by natural causes. Simmons notes that pinpointing exact extinctions on humans has been difficult, but when it has it was usually associated with farming groups, rather than hunter-gatherer groups. But, on islands, pointing to human activity as a direct cause of extinction for an animal is easier to prove. Cyprus now might prove just that thing and rework what we know about the earliest human inhabitants of Cyprus.

The research that was gathered at Akrotiri Aetokremnos, if true, has to change the way we think about the population of the Mediterranean isles. First, its early date pushes the settlement back out of the Neolithic, past the Mesolithic and into the late Paleolithic. This alone would be fairly intriguing to certain types of folks. But, for the vast majority of us, who are constantly being inundated with anti-bullying messages nowadays, the interesting bits is what those meanies did to the pygmy hippo and dwarf elephants!

Drawing of a dwarf elephant on Sicily, which was
comparable to their Cypriot cousins. That's a fox to
the right for size purposes.

Both the dwarf elephant and the dwarf hippopotamus got to Cyprus during a period when the Strait of Gibraltar was actually a land bridge between Spain and North Africa. This created in essence a large pool. When the weather stayed dry for a long period, the Mediterranean Sea dried up creating a giant empty bowl with little pockets of water that were probably like the Dead Sea today. This allowed giant elephants and hippopotami to roam the basin. But when the weather got wetter and Sea levels rose a bit, the pool filled back up, trapping animals on what were suddenly islands. On a side note, it was for this reason that the Suez Canal was created, just incase the Mediterranean was ever to dry up again, we could let in water from the Indian Ocean. So Cyprus (and other little islands like Crete, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica) had these mega mammals on them. The mammal developed insular dwarfism and shrunk down to like 2% of their big cousin's size. That's when men showed up on Cyprus and started to bully them. The bullying (as well as the presumed consumption of the little guys) led to animals dying out rapidly. I just can't imagine eating something as cute as pictured in the top left corner. But, to each their own. Gotta run, I'm about to overcook my Veal Saltimbocca!