Despite UN efforts at resolution, Cyprus, and its capital, Nicosia, is the last European area to be crossed by a wall that divides the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. But this division makes Nicosia so fascinating. The streets near the UN buffer zone, are often interrupted by walls. Both side has the Balkan appearance of a bombed city, with palaces in ruins and uninhabited, with sandbags in the windows. Barricades litter the streets erected to defend people that have disappeared from bullets that are no longer shot.
Despite UN efforts at resolution, Cyprus, and its capital, Nicosia, is the last European area to be crossed by a wall that divides the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.
But this division makes Nicosia so fascinating. The streets near the UN buffer zone, are often interrupted by walls. Both side has the Balkan appearance of a bombed city, with palaces in ruins and uninhabited, with sandbags in the windows. Barricades litter the streets erected to defend people that have disappeared from bullets that are no longer shot.
The areas adjacent to the sentry-boxes, on both sides, are industrial, with plenty of mechanics and manufactuers. Only the colors of the wall have changed. The flags of the Turkish mezzelune, sometimes are less than a hundred meters away from the Greek .
Over the wall, there is the no man’s land, the phantom zone, controlled by UN.
But the division of the island, with land, property displaced, has affected both parties. This is one of the major obstacles to reconciliation. Who will come claim their property when it has been confiscated, demolished, re-sold several times? Even the lmilitary base of the English, perhaps too close to the Middle East powder keg, with its cargo of terrorism and fundamentalism, is rumored to be planning to leave soon.
The barricades and trenches of the Green Line, however, despite their threatening appearance, are becoming a memory of the warning not to go back, either in Cyprus or elsewhere.