The Curious Case of a Cyprus Ghost Town

FAMAGUSTA, Cyprus — Eleni Ellinas can still hear the sound of the air raid sirens that woke her after 5 a.m. on Aug. 14, 1974. The Turkish military had invaded Famagusta, on the eastern coast of Cyprus. Within the city lay Varosha, a 2.3-square-mile, wealthy seaside community that was home to 39,000 people, mostly Greek Cypriots. Ellinas’ family had been in the town for just eight months, boxes of their personal items still unpacked in the hallway.

As they dressed, her mother lowered the front blinds to shield their new apartment from the searing heat of a Cypriot summer.

“She managed to close the ones on the left and the right,” Ellinas says. “But she had only gotten the middle one down partway when our neighbor knocked and said, ‘We need to leave now.’”

Today, the blinds on Ellinas’ apartment still hang at half-mast. Under the watch of stern-faced Turkish guards, buildings throughout Varosha sit vacant, exteriors grown thick with climbing vines, gates groaning on rusted hinges in the breeze off the Mediterranean Sea. The town, frozen in time for nearly half a century, has become emblematic of the island’s long-standing political conflict between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, and between their respective supporters, Turkey and Greece.

Turkey and Greece have been embroiled in a territorial dispute over Cyprus – a pan-shaped island 50 miles off the Turkish coast – since the Ottoman Empire invaded in 1570. At the time, the island had been populated mainly by Indigenous tribes and Peloponnesian colonists, who arrived on Cyprus from Greece around 1200 B.C. The Ottoman Empire ruled over Cyprus until 1878, when it ceded control of the island to Great Britain in exchange for Britain’s protection against Russia.

The Republic of Cyprus gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960 under a treaty of guarantee signed by the U.K., Greece, Turkey and Cyprus meant to share power between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. But “both sides did not get what they wanted, and have never accepted the compromise,” says Lawrence Stevenson, an author who served as a U.N. peacekeeper on the island during the 1970s and 1980s.

Beginning in the 1960s, a string of violent clashes erupted between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. When the ruling military junta in Athens helped orchestrate a coup d’état on July 15, 1974, the Turks used the unrest – and their guarantor power under the treaty – as a pretext for sending 40,000 mainland troops to Cyprus.

Turkey captured about 37% of the island, and Turkish Cypriots eventually declared the northern portion an independent republic, today known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and only recognized internationally by Turkey. As part of the assault, Turkish forces took hold of Varosha along the Famagusta coast, with Turkey and its Cypriot allies seeing the glamorous beach resort area as “a bargaining chip in a future settlement,” according to the International Crisis Group.

The U.N. has held several unsuccessful negotiations to end the protracted division of Cyprus, which has been called a “diplomatic graveyard.” In recent weeks, however, Turkey and Greece – who have long sparred over issues such as migrants, airspace and other claims in addition to Cyprus – have sought to repair relations. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September and agreed to resume confidence-building talks later in the fall.

But Mete Hatay, a Cyprus-born senior research consultant with Peace Research Institute Oslo who has long studied the conflict, says indications are that the countries will not discuss Cyprus even as they intend to “move further with their bilateral relations.”

“This is good for Turkey and Greece but bad for Cyprus,” he says.

In other words, it seems likely the dispute will remain unresolved into 2024, which will mark 50 years since the Turkish invasion.

The Rise and Fall of a Tourism Powerhouse

More than 5,000 Cypriots were killed and about 275,000 were displaced during ethnic conflicts between 1963 and 1974, including the invasion. Yet Varosha initially flourished despite the turmoil. Its sparkling beaches and progressive urban design drew vacationers from around the world, including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. By the late 1960s, the community had every creature comfort, from movie theaters, restaurants and travel agencies to shops managed by some of the world’s biggest brands, including Hoover and Sony.

Eleni Marcovici and her American-born husband built a house in Varosha in 1971. “Life was beautiful, like a dream,” says Marcovici, who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Everybody came and stayed with us.”

Although Turkish Cypriots frequented the town for shopping or entertainment, Marcovici doesn’t recall friction between visitors and Greek Cypriot residents. But tensions simmered underneath. Antonis Kanaris, a secondary school teacher in the capital city of Nicosia – today divided between the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus – grew up in Varosha and recalls “every now and then there were student riots, for or against the governments.”

“No matter how nicely people want to present life there, it was turbulent politically,” Kanaris says.

When Varosha’s residents fled the Turkish invasion, most left with only the clothes on their backs, believing they would return in a couple days, maybe a week. But weeks turned into months. Some settled with family or friends in neighboring cities. Others, Kanaris says, found doors closed against them by their own people. Many developed illnesses and chronic conditions. Thousands evacuated to other countries, especially the United Kingdom.

“It ruined my life,” says Andreas Charalambous, who fled the town at age 14 and now works as an architect in Washington, D.C. “It uprooted my family. My parents lost everything. My dad was in his 40s, my mom in her late 30s, and they had to start from scratch.”

Among some Cypriots, the trauma stoked a deep-seated resentment of the United Kingdom and the United States, which had refused to intervene. In a recently declassified 1974 meeting between newly inaugurated U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the latter advised, “There is no American reason why the Turks should not have one-third of Cyprus.”

Old sentiments – against one another and foreign governments – linger on Cyprus today.

“It is cultivated by the Greek and Turkish Cypriot political leadership,” Kanaris says. “If you follow the mass media in Greek Cyprus, it’s full of animosity and a lack of historical perspective. We have a huge responsibility for what happened, and we don’t want to recognize it.”

Turkey initially abided by a 1984 U.N. resolution declaring attempts to resettle Varosha by anyone but its original inhabitants “inadmissible.” But in the summer of 2021, Erdogan and Turkish Cypriot leadership announced a portion of the seaside community – about 3.5% of its total area – would reopen for tourism and possible resettlement. The U.S. joined the U.K., European Union and Greece in condemning the move, calling it “provocative” and “unacceptable.” Leaders warned the decision would inflame ethnic tensions and derail attempts to find a solution to the conflict.

Today, the Turkish government operates Varosha like a haunted-house attraction. Hundreds of tourists per day take to the town on foot or on rented bikes, scooters or golf carts, stopping to take selfies in front of moldering cafes, homes with branches reaching through broken windows and schools with caved-in roofs. Near the beach, a concession stand sells inexpensive snacks and beer.

Christopher Marcovici, the youngest son of Eleni Marcovici, has returned with his brothers several times since Varosha’s reopening. During his last visit, he says, “I was standing at the water, and I turned back to look at the bombed-out buildings with barbed wire in front of them. And then I see the tourists lying on sunbeds, drinking beverages, taking advantage of a cheap holiday.

“They’re literally yards away from buildings where people lost everything in their lives.”

Although Erdogan promoted a plan to compensate Varosha’s original property owners, the only way to recoup their losses is by suing through the Immovable Property Commission, a court created by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. About 280 former Varosha residents have done so. Many have refused, as it means giving up rights to their property – and lending legitimacy to Turkish Cypriot rule.

Stevenson, the former U.N. peacekeeper who co-authored the book “Cyprus: An Ancient People, a Troubled History, and One Last Chance for Peace,” sees a “velvet divorce” – akin to the formation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 – as the most promising solution for Cyprus on the whole. If that were to occur, he believes the Turkish government would halt the allocation of federal funds toward Varosha and potentially return it to Greek Cypriot control.

Yet as time passes, that prospect may become less likely.

“At a certain stage, [the Turks] are going to say, ‘We poured billions of dollars into Varosha. We’re not just handing it back.’ That’s why a deal today will always be better for the Greek Cypriots than a deal tomorrow. But they don’t believe that,” Stevenson says. “They always believe they’ll have more leverage tomorrow. And that’s never been true.”

For older Greek Cypriots, witnessing Varosha’s deterioration pours acid on unhealed wounds. Ellinas – now a tour guide on Cyprus – says that during a 2021 visit to the town with her mother, the half-closed blinds on their old apartment allowed them to peek inside with binoculars. But little was left besides a bookshelf and the dining table where she blew out the candles on a cake for her 4th birthday.

“My mother said, ‘Thank you for bringing me here, but I do not want to come back,’” Ellinas recalls. “The older generation cannot accept that everything they had is gone.”

Sentiments among younger generations may be shifting, however. Kanaris says he is encouraged by discussions among Greek and Turkish Cypriot youth who show little interest in perpetuating the quarrels of their grandfathers and who recognize that they stand to benefit from Varosha during and after reconstruction – especially in the hospitality sector, which made the town so appealing from the beginning.

“There’s great potential if [Varosha] becomes a source of collaboration versus adversarial action,” says Charalambous, the Washington architect. “If you incorporate the whole city and allow Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live together and learn from each other, and not brainwash everyone to think they hate each other, there is opportunity for people in my generation, who are full of energy and life, to rebuild the city.”

Until a solution materializes, Ellinas says Varosha should remain open – even if it remains under Turkish control.

“So much of the world doesn’t know our story,” she says. “This is our way of telling it.”