Dead zone

Twenty five years ago this month, war split Cyprus into a Turkish- controlled north and a Greek south. Photographer Mykel Nicolaou travelled the Green Line which still separates the two sides, in search of the dark past and an uneasy present. Introduction by Robert Fisk

Nicosia, they tell you on the island, is the last divided city, containing the world's last Wall. The division of Berlin is only a memory, the Lebanon is reunited, Ireland may be close to peace, but in the centre of Nicosia - at the very end of the old Murder Mile where British soldiers once died at the hands of the pro-Greece underground movement Eoka - Greek and Turkish Cypriot soldiers still eyeball each other's sandbag bunkers with suspicion and hatred. Not long ago, I asked the young Greek Cypriot soldier there if he shared anything with his Turkish opposite number. He pointed to a cat prowling between the rusting barbed wire and the undergrowth and trees flourishing in the middle of what had once been a major road intersection. "It visits the Turks for breakfast and comes to us for lunch," he said. And he wasn't laughing.

The British take a lordly view of their former colony. When they were forced to give the island its independence in 1960 after a largely Greek- led insurrection, they left it with a power-sharing government in which a Greek Cypriot - representing the Greek majority on the island - was president and a Turkish Cypriot vice-president.

Turks and Greeks will give you two painfully different versions of what happened next. The Turks tell you of years of oppression by Greek Cypriot nationalists after independence from Britain, of how Turkish citizens were ghettoised and had to be protected by UN troops. They will recall how the Greek military junta in Athens engineered a coup in 1974 which overthrew the president, Archbishop Makarios, and set up a tin-pot dictator called Nicos Sampson who demanded "Enosis" (unity) with Greece. And they will refer to the Turkish army's "peace operation" of 1974 which brought tens of thousands of troops from Turkey to protect the Turkish minority.

The Greeks tell a different tale; of a recalcitrant Turkish population which would never cut its links to Turkey to make a truly independent island, of Turkish "terrorism", of a 1974 Turkish military invasion which turned the Greek population of northern Cyprus into an army of refugees. The Turks murdered and raped and stole. And when they halted their front line - the Attila Line as the Turks actually call it - they held more than one third of the island under Turkish occupation.

The reality of what happened on the island runs like a front line between both versions of history. The Turkish Cypriots were mistreated but the Turkish army's invasion swamped their northern part of the island, dispossessed its Greek Cypriot inhabitants and allowed the setting-up of a Turkish Cypriot "federated" republic which only Turkey would recognise (and in which thousands of Turkish Kurds were settled, to the fury of the local Turkish Cypriots). But the Greek Cypriot gunmen who overthrew Makarios were trying to destroy Cyprus's independence by uniting the island with mainland Greece. The Greeks dispossessed the Turks of Limassol and Larnaca. There were rapes, mostly by Turkish troops.

Twenty-four years after the formal partition of Cyprus, the world recognises the Greek Cypriot government as the lawful authority in Cyprus. The Cyprus government therefore still demands the "return" of the north from Turkey and still prints local currency with Greek and Turkish on the banknotes. Until a few years ago, it was still printing telephone numbers for the long-dispossessed Greek Cypriot residents of the Turkish zone in the local directory, as if these ghostly subscribers could undo history.

The Turkish Cypriots sometimes offer a deal that might give a resort back to the Greeks. But that is all. As the years have gone by, Americans, British, the UN and the European Union have slowly given up hope of reuniting the island. The Greeks will be enraged by such a comment. But it is true.

The communal hatred and suspicion in Cyprus remains. The two peoples are still divided; and perhaps that is how they wish to be. If so, that cat - along with the UN troops in the twilight world of the Green Line, so-called because the British officer who originally drew it on a map used a green crayon - is the only creature which can pass between two worlds. And if so - to our shame - the Cyprus problem is already solved.

Captions: Nicosia Airport

During the 1974 war, Turkish troops advanced to the edge of the northern runway. It was one of their first targets. The airport is now used mainly by Argentinian UN troops who, once a day, make helicopter reconnaissance flights from here along the Green Line. The airport has one unusual facility, a UN-controlled golf course. The Rolls-Royce-engined jet belonging to Cyprus Airways is a reminder of what was once a busy, modern airport, a "Middle Eastern jewel", bringing holidaymakers to the island from across the world. Today passengers arriving in southern Cyprus use two other airports, at Larnaca and Paphos.

View of Nicosia

The last divided city of Europe. On the Turkish Cypriot side, Muslim minarets and Turkish flags can be seen. In the foreground, on the Greek Cypriot side, is the dome of a Greek Orthodox Church. Greek Cypriots are allowed two visits a year to the "other side", as are Turkish Cypriots to the Greek south. Passes are also allowed to visit religious sites: Orthodox Greeks visit the Apostolos Andreas monastery in the north, and Muslim Turks visit a holy mosque in Larnaca.

NIcosia airport terminal

The terminal buildings are now silent, except for the sound of the resident pigeons, whose droppings have stained and discoloured the waiting lounge seats. The baggage carousel, although still working, lies empty and rusted. Hoardings showing pretty young women with packets of Rothmans and Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes are smashed and torn. The airport gift shop has been vandalised and ransacked, the shelves ripped down and destroyed.

Green Line in Nicosia

Walking along the uninhabited Green Line (right and below right), the sounds and languages of both sides reverberate through the shattered ruins of the battle-scarred buildings. The refugees of both sides still make claims on property in each other's territory. Greek Cypriots are not allowed to inhabit the homes of the Turkish Cypriots and vice versa, in the belief that the refugees will one day return to their homes. Occupying refugees' homes would be seen as acknowledging that the island is irreversibly divided.

Check Point Charly

This coffee and snack bar is right on the Green Line, the restaurant's kitchen literally straddling the dividing line. Visitors flock to the bar, trying to get as close to the "scene of the action" as possible. Some shop owners moved away from this buffer zone, while others decided to try to carry on with a normal daily life. Both sides heckle and harass each other.

Life on the Green Line

All along the Green Line, ordinary life continues. Men go to the local barbershop to get their hair cut (left), kids play football (below left). Despite the constant reminders of the 1974 conflict, in the abandoned buildings and blocked roads, most people manage to put the troubles to the backs of their minds, just like the people who once lived alongside the Berlin Wall.

Ledra Palace

The Greek Cypriot mothers of "the missing" (people who vanished during the conflict), regularly ask passersby whether they have heard anything of their relatives. For over 25 years, a vigil has been held outside Ledra Palace, the main gateway for people moving between north and south. During the conflict, over 165,000 Greek Cypriots fled to the southern parts of Cyprus and thousands of Turkish Cypriots who were living in the south were systematically sent to the north by Eoka troops.

Freedom Square

Spyros Kyprianou is a former President of Cyprus and is now President of the Council of Ministers on the Greek Cypriot government. Here he is seen conferring with fellow politicians, during one of the many public meetings which are held in Freedom Square in Nicosia to put forward their views to the public on the political situation. Mutual suspicions between the north and south remain intense, and there is no foreseeable prospect of the island being reunited.