The regime of the Turkish-Cypriot state to the north announced in April that it would open the crossing initially at two checkpoints. The move followed a number of street protests by Turkish-Cypriots demanding reunification. The protests were led by opposition parties who support the reunification plan proposed by UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

The UN plan for Cyprus calls for a partition into two federated states, where Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots are separated from the municipal level up. Strict limits are placed on the return of refugees. The special place of the “guarantor powers”— as Greece and Turkey are called—are maintained, each with a garrison.

When the border was first opened, the governments of Greece and the Greek-dominated section of Cyprus counseled against travel by Greek-Cypriots into the occupied north. Their tone changed as a mood of celebration gripped the island and working people crossing were welcomed on either side.

“You’d better pinch me, I can’t believe this is happening,” said Peter Pavlou, a Greek-Cypriot standing in the two-mile-long line of people waiting to cross over to the Turkish-Cypriot side.

Despite decades-long efforts by competing powers to incite and maintain the divisions between the Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot populations, residents on both sides of the partition celebrated the wall coming down.

“We are all in a dream,’ remarked Ayla Djemal, a Turkish-Cypriot. “Our lives were far apart but we all shared the same wall.”

A joint celebration of May Day took place in a square in the southern—Greek-Cypriot—section of Nicosia, the capital. Hundreds of Turkish-Cypriot workers took part.

The walls between the Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot sections of the island were put up following intervention by both Greece and Turkey in 1974. Turkey invaded and occupied the northern section of the island five days after a coup was staged, with Washington’s blessings, by the military dictatorship then ruling Greece against the independent Cypriot government of Archbishop Makarios.

In the wake of the invasion and division of the island, 200,000 Greek-Cypriots and tens of thousands of Turkish-Cypriots were made refugees.

Divisions between the two communities have long been fostered throughout the history of colonial domination of Cyprus. The British, who held Cyprus as a colony from 1878 through 1960, gave Greek landowners and merchants a privileged status, while discriminating against the Turkish-Cypriot minority. London continues to maintain military bases on the island.

The Turkish-Cypriot population today constitutes an oppressed nationality within Cyprus, with an average income that is one-seventh that of their Greek-Cypriot compatriots and double the unemployment rate  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home