NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — A rickety piano leans crookedly against a peeling apartment wall, pots and pans filled with dust rest on a stove that has seen much better days and a book, its pages turning yellow with time, lies open next to a rusty tin can; signs of homes, once teeming with life, but suddenly abandoned as they stand frozen in time.
Fifty years ago, Turkey invaded Cyprus — five days after supporters of union with Greece mounted a coup backed by the Greek junta then ruling the country — splitting the east Mediterranean island nation along ethnic lines. Only Turkey recognizes a subsequent Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the island’s northern third where it keeps more than 35,000 troops.
The Associated Press was allowed unique access inside the United Nations 180-kilometer (about (110-mile) buffer zone where its troops have been situated since 1974 to preserve the peace between Turkish and Turkish Cypriot troops on one side and Greek Cypriot national guardsmen.
The marks of war are ubiquitous; from the pock-marked walls of homes and businesses targeted by large-caliber gunfire to hastily-constructed brick-and-mortar gun nests facing off each other. But the eeriest sensation comes from how a capital’s heart stopped mid-beat along the hasty exodus of people fleeing for their lives, leaving everything behind.
The U.N. says tensions along the buffer zone are again being ratcheted up with the appearance of hundreds of new firing positions and high-tech surveillance technology with possible military applications.
Talks about forming a federation composed of Greek and Turkish-speaking zones have been stalemated since the last U.N. facilitated bid seven years ago. Many failed attempts preceded that.
Now, a Turkish and Turkish Cypriot shift away from a federation and toward a two-state deal that Greek Cypriots have dismissed outright is jeopardizing a renewed bid by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to get the two sides back to the negotiating table.