CREATING CONDITIONS FOR PEACEMAKING: THE CYPRUS CASE

Abstract

The Cyprus conflict remains one of the complex isues on the global agenda. As one American analyst has said ‘the conflict has resisted with tenacity the efforts of many nations to bring about a solution. It frustrates diplomats, irritates those who believe we have made progress in studying techniques of negotiation…’.1 Cyprus has been divided by ethnicity, language and religion; approximately 80 per cent of the people speak Greek as a mother tongue and are Greek Orthodox Christians by religion; approximately 20 per cent are Turkish Muslims. The present dispute between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots is the continuation of a bloody struggle between Greek Christians and the Turkish Muslims in the Near East which began in the Middle Ages with the gradual conquest of the Greek- speaking Byzantine empire by the Turks. The Cyprus conflict has developed around the existence of two nations on the island and their struggle to exercise their selfdetermination – the highest form of patriotism and nationalism.