What caused the once-peaceful island of Cyprus to split in two?
The answer lies in the inner workings of the complicated relationship between Cyprus' two main communities: the Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Both have made the island their home since long before the modern day but when the age of European imperialism came to an end, they each had very different ideas for what Cyprus should become. The Greeks advocated for Enosis—union with Greece—while the Turks sought Taksim—division of the island between Greece and Turkey—but most members of each community certainly would've preferred the situation to be resolved peacefully. What they got was two decades of civil and political strife culminating in invasion and forced partition.


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Sources Consulted:
“Ethnic Distribution” from Issues of the Middle East, 1973. Accessed via the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas.
https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/cypr...

Ker-Lindsay, James. The Cyprus Problem: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press, 2011.
https://books.google.com/books/about/...

Miller, Stuart T. Mastering Modern European History. London: Macmillan Education LTD, 1990.