Turkish invasion of Cyprus in the context of "Nicosia"

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state comprising the northern third of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, with the international community considering it territory of the Republic of Cyprus under Turkish military occupation. It extends from Cape Apostolos Andreas (the tip of the Karpass Peninsula) in the northeast to Morphou Bay in the northwest, with Cape Kormakitis at its westernmost point and the Kokkina exclave west of the mainland. A buffer zone controlled by the UN forms a barrier between both sides of the island and runs through Nicosia, the island's largest city and the capital of both sides.

After gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, Cyprus was dominated by intercommunal violence between the island's Greek and Turkish populations. Greek Cypriots favoured enosis (union with Greece), while Turkish Cypriots favoured taksim (partition of the island). A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of the Greek military junta's attempt to annex the island, prompted Turkey to invade Cyprus and capture the northern third of the island. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population and the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south; the Turkish-occupied north unilaterally declared independence in 1983. UN Security Council Resolution 541 rejected the declaration as illegal and urged UN members not to recognise it. Attempts to resolve the Cyprus problem have been unsuccessful; Northern Cyprus and Turkey favour a two-state solution, while the Republic of Cyprus, the EU, and the UN favour a federalised Cyprus.

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 Treaty of Guarantee is a treaty between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom that was promulgated on 16 August 1960.

Article I banned Cyprus from participating in any political union or economic union with any other state. Article II requires the other parties to guarantee the independence, territorial integrity, and security of Cyprus.Article IV reserves the right of the guarantor powers to take action to re-establish the current state of affairs in Cyprus, a provision that was used for the Turkish invasion of 1974. The treaty also allowed the United Kingdom to retain sovereignty over two military bases, Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

Several distinct periods of intercommunal violence involving the Greek and Turkish Cypriots marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the coup organized by US-backed Greek junta (1974 Cypriot coup d'état), and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

Taksim (Turkish: [takˈsim], lit. 'division') is a Turkish nationalist and secessionist movement of Turkish Cypriots advocating for the independence and recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus under a two-state solution. It was the primary ideology of supporters of the 1974 invasion, with the concept being articulated as early as 1957 by Vice President Fazıl Küçük.

Turkish Cypriot nationalism developed mainly in response to Greek nationalism and the desire for enosis, union of the whole island with Greece. Initially, Turkish Cypriots favoured the continuation of British rule. However, they were alarmed by the Greek Cypriot calls for enosis, as they saw that the union of Crete with Greece had led to the exodus of Cretan Turks, which was a precedent to be avoided, and they took a pro-partition stance in response to the militant activity of EOKA. Turkish Cypriots also viewed themselves as a distinct ethnic group of the island and believed in their having a separate right to self-determination from Greek Cypriots. Meanwhile, in the 1950s, Turkish leader Adnan Menderes considered Cyprus an "extension of Anatolia", rejected the partition of Cyprus along ethnic lines and supported the annexation of the whole island to Turkey. Nationalistic slogans centred on the idea that "Cyprus is Turkish", and the ruling party declared Cyprus to be part of the Turkish homeland and vital for its security. Upon realising that Turkish Cypriots were only 20% of the islanders and so annexation was unfeasible, the national policy was changed to favour partition. The slogan "Partition or Death" was frequently used in Turkish Cypriot and Turkish protests in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Although after the Zurich and London Conferences, Turkey seemed both to accept the existence of the Cypriot state and to distance itself from its policy of favouring the partition of the island, the goal of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot leaders remained that of creating an independent Turkish state in the northern part of the island. In the 21st century, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has expressed support for a two-state solution.

A military coup d'état sponsored by the Greek military junta was executed by the Cypriot National Guard on 15 July 1974. The coup plotters removed the sitting President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, from office and installed pro-Enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. The Sampson regime was described as a puppet state, whose ultimate aim was the annexation of the island by Greece; in the short term, the coupists proclaimed the establishment of the "Hellenic Republic of Cyprus". The coup was viewed as illegal by the United Nations and led immediately to the Turkish invasion and ongoing occupation of Cyprus.

The Greek junta or Regime of the Colonels was a right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. On 21 April 1967, a group of colonels overthrew a caretaker government a month before scheduled elections which Georgios Papandreou's Centre Union was favoured to win.

The dictatorship was characterised by policies such as anti-communism, restrictions on civil liberties, and the imprisonment, torture, and exile of political opponents. It was ruled by Georgios Papadopoulos from 1967 to 1973, but an attempt to renew popular support in a 1973 referendum on the monarchy and gradual democratisation by Papadopoulos was ended by another coup by the hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis. Ioannidis ruled until it fell on 24 July 1974 under the pressure of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, leading to the Metapolitefsi ("regime change"; Greek: Μεταπολίτευση) to democracy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.
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The Cyprus problem, also known as the Cyprus conflict, Cyprus issue, Cyprus dispute, or Cyprus question, is an ongoing dispute between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot community in the north of the island of Cyprus, where troops of the Republic of Turkey are deployed. This dispute is an example of a protracted social conflict. The Cyprus dispute began after the Greek Cypriot community challenged the British occupation of the island in 1955, the 1974 Cypriot coup d'état executed by the Cypriot National Guard and sponsored by the Greek military junta, and the ensuing Turkish military invasion of the island, and hence the presence of Turkish soldiers, despite a legal reinstatement of a stable government. The desire of some of the ethnic Turkish people for the partition of the island of Cyprus through Taksim, the desire of some of the ethnic Greek people for the unification with Greece (Enosis), and mainland Turkish nationalists settling in as a show of force as a supposed means of protecting their people from what they considered to be the threat of Greek Cypriots also plays a role in the dispute.

Initially, with the occupation of the island by the British Empire from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and subsequent annexation in 1914, the "Cyprus dispute" referred to general conflicts between Greek and Turkish islanders.