Cyprus

Abstract

The Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 and became a European Union (EU) member on May 1, 2004, immediately following an unsuccessful referendum in April 2004 on the United Nations (UN)-brokered Annan Plan aiming to re-unite the island. The ‘Cyprus problem,' which is the name given to the conflict that broke out in 1963, only three years after the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, still remains unsettled today. After the 1974 intervention of Turkey, the island was divided into two with a UN-secured Green Line demarcating the two zones. This de facto geographical division resulted in the development of two separate political cultures on each side of the island, with a broadly Turkish Cypriot north and a generally Greek Cypriot south. Therefore the development of the political systems on both sides of the island has been strongly shaped by the almost 50-year-old Cyprus problem. Thus any historical left-right cleavages were further complicated and became distinctive of party positions towards a resolution of the Cyprus problem.