Revival of a Cyprus "ghost town" or trigger for tensions on divided island?

In its heyday, the glamorous seaside town of Varosha in the city of Famagusta was considered the crown jewel of Cyprus.

Once a peak tourist hub, international stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot and Paul Newman were regular visitors, catered to by dozens of hotels and restaurants that lined the powdery sand beaches overlooking alluring crystalline waters.

But in 1974 – when the island was divided into a Greek-Cypriot controlled southern part and a Turkish-Cypriot administered northern part, where Varosha is – the once bustling and colourful hub became a “ghost town” after Turkish troops sealed off the area to its 17,000 Greek-speaking former residents.

After nearly half a century of occupation, the Turkish-Cypriot administration reopened a sliver of Varosha earlier this year, with plans for a wider demilitarisation of the area.

The move, backed by Ankara, has reopened old wounds for Varosha’s refugees while also raising fresh hopes for their long-awaited return. It has also triggered widespread international concern over the fate of the stalled peace talks.

For Lenia Nikolou, who fled her home town as a 20-year-old newly-wed in 1974, visiting the places of her youth today invokes a mixture of happiness, anger and pain. After fleeing Varosha she settled in the city of Limassol where she still lives. As we walk through the empty streets, she looks longingly from behind ropes at her home and former school. Former residents are still unable to enter their properties with authorities there citing safety reasons.

“It’s so unfair. Nobody had the right to do what they did to us. For 47 years they kept this town and now they’re opening we are not even allowed into our house and you cannot go inside. It’s cruel, honestly. It’s very cruel,” she tells The National.

Tears stream down her face as she looks up at the Tulip hotel that once belonged to her father and where she had her wedding reception only weeks before Turkish forces overran the area along with a third of the island. As with all the properties in the seaside town, it sits empty and derelict, save for a small UN-manned outpost at its entrance.

Bar a handful of visitors, the district looks like a film set waiting for the director to call ‘action’. Gutted hotels and dilapidated houses, left to crumble for half a century, flank newly tarred streets with freshly painted bicycle lanes. Broken windows and faded shopfront signs remain partially hidden by decades of unattended and overgrown foliage. It is a town frozen in time, much like the island’s decades-long peace talks, of which Famagusta has always been a key component.

Ms Nikolou recalls how it was only days after moving into her new marital home that she was back at the Tulip hotel, this time sheltering from the aerial bombardment with her family and hotel guests in the basement.

As ground troops began to approach, she along with the town’s entire inhabitants fled the district altogether for what they thought would be “just a few days”.

“I never got the chance to go back to my house. My wedding dress was left hanging in my bedroom. Our wedding presents, still unopened, stayed there,” she tells me.

“We said we were going to leave until the planes went away and we would come back, but we never did.”

Just three kilometres away, in the walled-off old city of Famagusta, Serdar Atai tells me that his Turkish-Cypriot father volunteered to tell the inhabitants, many of whom he knew personally, to leave Varosha. He says that years later, when his father recounted the pleading anguish of those desperate not to leave, it was the only time he had seen him cry.

A merchant, Mr Atai’s father lived in the ancient enclave - the designated living area for Turkish-Cypriots at the time - but would often go to Varosha to sell his wares and had relatively good relations with Greek-Cypriots despite the uneasy – and intermittently inflamed – coexistence between the two communities.

Like Ms Nikolou, Mr Atai also sheltered from aerial bombardment during the 1974 conflict, hiding from the shells dropped by Athens-backed forces that preceded those from Turkey. When the Turkish forces took control of Famagusta, Turkish-Cypriots like Mr Atai may have been safe, but he says they felt “the absence of Varosha” all the time.

“Varosha was such a colourful and vibrant place with so many hotels and people and fancy cars. It was shocking to live side by side with this ghost town all these years,” says Mr Atai who runs Masder, the Famagusta Walled City Association.

Deprived of the friendships and lucrative business with their former Greek-Cypriot neighbours, he says the city of Famagusta, once home to a very lucrative port, became a “bird with broken wings.”

“Varosha was not only a kind of commercial artery, it was also a cultural activity, with libraries, theatre clubs, and cinemas. Intellectuals, painters and philosophers would visit all the time. Varosha had an impact on the city, and we ended up losing all this strength.”

The long-standing ethnic divisions within the island often overlook that, for centuries, Greek and Turkish Cypriots lived side-by-side if not together. Politics and not ethnicity, say many Cypriots, is the real divisive factor.

“A lot of us are sure that Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots can live together in peace. If only they had given us the chance, but they are afraid to give us the chance. Both sides,” says Mrs Nikolou.

Reconciliation may appear simple on a civilian level, but the same cannot be said militarily.

At the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force in Nicosia, chief communications officer, Aleem Siddique tells me: “Do not be mistaken by the peace and quiet. There are thousands of armed military forces on either side. This is a frozen conflict that has not been resolved.”

The peacekeeping force, UNFCIP, has been manning the 183km long buffer zone between the two parts of the island since the 1974 ceasefire. The main broker for peace talks between the two political sides – who refuse to talk directly to one another – the international body has always maintained the objective of reconciliation and a comprehensive peace plan.

Consequently, the unilateral decision to reopen Varosha and to invite former residents to return by the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, which remains unrecognised by all but Turkey, was condemned by the EU, US, Russia and the UN for whom “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

“There are a number of issues and concerns that both communities have and if we are to secure a solution here, it's important that both sides consider all of their concerns together,” Mr Siddique tells The National.

“Picking one concern of one community and another concern of another community and trying to resolve these issues separately is not how a solution is going to be found. It needs to be a comprehensive approach.”

Earlier this year the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for an “immediate reversal” of the decision on Varosha, fearing a provocation of tensions that “may compromise the ongoing efforts to seek….a lasting settlement of the Cyprus issue.”

Yet more than 60 years of UN presence on the island has failed to solve one of Europe's longest, most intractable conflicts. Known as the "graveyard of diplomats," the Cyprus solution has never materialised despite numerous rounds of UN-mediated talks.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met leaders from both sides on September 27 to press for a path forward.

“The time for finding a solution is becoming tighter,” says Siddique. “The situation on the ground is changing and there is a slow shift taking place within the status quo.”

Greek — and many Turkish — Cypriots see the reopening of Varosha and the invitation of former residents to return to their homes as a Turkish Cypriot ploy to cement control of the area and secure implicit acknowledgement of their authority there.

A cultural cleansing is already under way in Varosha – known as Maras in Turkish – with many Greek-Cypriots dismayed to see Greek letters on public buildings plastered over or covered by Turkish flags.