Berlin Wall in the context of "East Berlin"

The United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus is a demilitarized zone, patrolled by the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), that was established on 4 March 1964. It was extended on 9 August after the Battle of Tillyria and extended again in 1974 after the ceasefire of 16 August 1974, following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the de facto partition of the island into the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus (excluding the British Sovereign Base Areas) and the largely unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the north. The zone, also known as the Green Line (Greek: Πράσινη Γραμμή, Prasini Grammi; Turkish: Yeşil Hat), stretches for 180 kilometres (112 miles) from Paralimni in the east to Kato Pyrgos in the west, where a separate section surrounds Kokkina.

The dividing line is also referred to as the Attila Line, named after Turkey's 1974 military invasion, codenamed Operation Attila. The Turkish army has built a barrier on the zone's northern side, consisting mainly of barbed-wire fencing, concrete wall segments, watchtowers, anti-tank ditches, and minefields. The zone cuts through the centre of Nicosia, separating the city into southern and northern sections. In total, it spans an area of 346 square kilometres (134 sq mi), varying in width from less than 20 metres (66 ft) to more than 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Nicosia remains the last divided capital in Europe. Some 10,000 people live in several villages and work on farms located within the zone; the village of Pyla is famous for being one of the few remaining villages in Cyprus where Greek and Turkish Cypriots still live side by side. Other villages are Deneia, Athienou, and Troulloi. Some areas are untouched by human interference and have remained a safe haven for flora and fauna.

The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary that divided Europe from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. East of the Iron Curtain were the smaller states controlled by the Soviet Union, in 1955 formally allied by the Warsaw Pact. Many nations to the west of this geopolitical divide were NATO members. Over time these economic and military alliances developed into broader, more entrenched, cultural barriers that deepened widespread distrust on both sides. Initially, the term "Iron Curtain" was a literal description of physical barriers such as razor wire, fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers along the borders of the opposing powers. But the term eventually took on a broader, symbolic meaning perceived as a generalized "differentness" of ideology, economy, government, and way of life that emerged when the Cold War severed earlier cultural connections between European populations.

The term's origin is often attributed to the speech "Sinews of Peace" delivered by Winston Churchill on 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri where he said: "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe." In fact, the phrase was originally used by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, when in 1914 when she described an "Iron Curtain" descending between her people and the nation of Germany.

The Monday demonstrations (German: Montagsdemonstrationen in der DDR) were a series of peaceful political protests against the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The demonstrations began in Leipzig on 4 September 1989, starting the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the government, and German reunification.

The demonstrations took place in towns and cities around the GDR on various days of the week from 1989 to 1991. The Leipzig demonstrations, which are the best known, took place on Mondays. The protests are conventionally separated into five cycles.

The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 during the Peaceful Revolution, marking the beginning of the destruction of the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. Sections of the wall were breached, and planned deconstruction began the following June. It was one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterward. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit in early December, and German reunification took place in October the following year.

A political demonstration is an action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause or people partaking in a protest against a cause of concern; it often consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, in order to hear speakers. It is different from mass meeting.

Demonstrations may include actions such as blockades and sit-ins. They can be either nonviolent or violent, with participants often referring to violent demonstrations as "militant." Depending on the circumstances, a demonstration may begin as nonviolent and escalate to violence. Law enforcement, such as riot police, may become involved in these situations. Police involvement at protests is ideally to protect the participants and their right to assemble. However, officers don't always fulfill this responsibility and it's well-documented that many cases of protest intervention result in power abuse. It may be to prevent clashes between rival groups, or to prevent a demonstration from spreading and turning into a riot.

Peace and conflict studies is a field of social science that identifies and analyses violent and nonviolent behaviours as well as the structural mechanisms attending conflicts (including social conflicts), to understand those processes which lead to a more desirable human condition. A variation on this, peace studies, is an interdisciplinary effort aiming at the prevention, de-escalation, and solution of conflicts by peaceful means, based on achieving conflict resolution and dispute resolution at the international and domestic levels based on positive sum, rather than negative sum, solutions.

In contrast with strategic studies or war studies, which focus on traditionally realist objectives based on the state or individual unit level of analysis, peace and conflict studies often focuses on the structural violence, social or human levels of analysis.

A political demonstration is an action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause or people partaking in a protest against a cause of concern; it often consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, in order to hear speakers. It is different from mass meeting.

Demonstrations may include actions such as blockades and sit-ins. They can be either nonviolent or violent, with participants often referring to violent demonstrations as "militant." Depending on the circumstances, a demonstration may begin as nonviolent and escalate to violence. Law enforcement, such as riot police, may become involved in these situations. Police involvement at protests is ideally to protect the participants and their right to assemble. However, officers do not always fulfill this responsibility and it is well-documented that many cases of protest intervention result in power abuse. It may be to prevent clashes between rival groups, or to prevent a demonstration from spreading and turning into a riot.

German Unity Day (German: Tag der Deutschen Einheit, pronounced [ˈtaːk deːɐ̯ ˈdɔʏtʃn̩ ˈʔaɪnhaɪt] ) is the National Day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates German reunification in 1990 when the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) ceased to exist and joined the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), so that for the first time since 1945 there existed a single German state. German Unity Day on 3 October has been the German national holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed.

An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 November 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918, and the defeat of Hitler's first coup in 1923. However, 9 November was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938 (Reichspogromnacht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday (see 9 November in German history). Therefore, 3 October 1990, the day of the formal reunification, was chosen instead. It replaced the "German Unity Day" on 17 June, the national holiday of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954.