Not quite a geography fact, but Greek mythology says the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite was born here, also it's divided in two nations, south Cyprus is Greek majority, part of the EU and north Cyprus is Turkish majority and mostly unrecognized by other nations, the border is a UN buffer zone, and is in that central plain where the capital (also divided in two) is situated
Divided in 3, actually, due to the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri & Dhekalia, which is a British Overseas Territory, with a population of almost 20k people & covering 3% of the island's land area.
Greek mythology says the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite was born here
This probably has historic origins! The Greek pantheon was for a great part derived from neighbouring deities. Aphrodite was influenced by the goddess Innana/Ishtar from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Innana/Ishtar's cult then spread westwards, so it's not strange that Cyprus was the first area of the Greek world to be influenced by her, as it's just over 100 km at its closest point to modern-day Syria.
In Cyprus, Innana/Ishtar then further changed into Aphrodite due to local influences (in 1000 or so BCE, religious traditions weren't unified but varied from region to region or even city to city). Aphrodite's cult then spread to the rest of the Greek world.
It’s not a Greek and Turkish majority, rather Greek speaking Cypriots and Turkish speaking Cypriots. You wouldn’t call us citizens “English people” either.
Historically, Cyprus was under the Ottoman empire (now Turkey), and then the British. And geographically, Cyprus is much closer to Turkey than Greece.
That region always had ethnic Turks and Greeks with a Greek majority. The Greeks wanted Cyprus to be a part of Greece and the Turks wanted to continue under British occupation.
When they became independent, the government gave a somewhat disproportionate amount of representation to the Turks (about 30%).
This led to the Greeks getting extremely violent against them, so a lot of them fled for their lives and were banned from entering governmental buildings and what not and started to form enclaves to protect themselves.
Turkey also threatened to invade at that time though they didn't.
In 1974, Greece attempted to annex the Island which was a move that split the Greek population in half via a pro independence politician's coup d'etat in favor of a pro annexation one.
Turkey afterwards decided to invade to remove the pro annexation politician and didn't want to leave until Cyprus had guaranteed independence.
This was reasonable until they started demanding that the Turkish Cypriots who were about 18% of the population get 34% of the land and have it be a split country. Unsurprisingly the Cypriot government was not happy with that proposal, but Turkey wouldn't budge.
So most likely they invaded so they could have a pretext to have some control of the island since these are unreasonable demands.
I think you might have skipped over the few thousand years before the Ottoman invasion when Cyprus had no turks, which btw was in the late 16th century, more recent than the colonisation of the Americas and certainly a much smaller timeframe than your "always".
When I say they have always been there, I am referring to people of that ethnicity being a native of that region long enough that there should be no geopolitical dispute in current times to their right to be there.
The late 16th century is 1500s. America is colonized in 17th century (1600s)
I do not refer to Americans as colonizers when talking about modern day geopolitics. I won't tell a white or black American that they should go back to Europe or Africa. That doesn't really make any sense. To me, if they don't really know their ancestors that came to America, they are basically a native of the country.
If you have been around for a few centuries that the grandparents of your grandparents wouldn't know the ancestors that moved, I feel you can say that a group of people has always been around in a geopolitical sense.
In regards to Cyprus, 400 years is a long time. 100 years more than America
If the Turks in Cyprus don't count as natives, can we say any American count? Most people in Latin America, particularly Argentina have post colonial blood. Do they not count? Do the ethnic Chinese in Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia not count as natives in a modern sense.
Where do we make the cut off for practical modern day geopolitics to say whose been around and who hasn't?
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u/Electrical_Stage_656 Geography Enthusiast Oct 29 '24
Not quite a geography fact, but Greek mythology says the goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite was born here, also it's divided in two nations, south Cyprus is Greek majority, part of the EU and north Cyprus is Turkish majority and mostly unrecognized by other nations, the border is a UN buffer zone, and is in that central plain where the capital (also divided in two) is situated