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Cyprus De Facto Partition, 1974-
![[PDF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/pdf.gif)
Figure 10. Nicosia and the Green Line
About 180,000 people, an estimated one-third of the
population
of Cyprus, became refugees during the fighting. The buffer
zone
occupied by UNFICYP, between the two cease-fire lines,
marked the
almost total segregation of the Greek and Turkish ethnic
communities. At first, tensions were high along the buffer
zone,
which extended for 180 kilometers across the island and
was in most
places 3-7 kilometers wide (although as narrow as 20
meters in the
center of Nicosia)
(see
fig. 10). Sporadic exchanges of
gunfire
across the lines and infiltrations by Turkish patrols
gradually
subsided. By the close of 1978, the UN reported that the
cease-fire
lines were almost completely stabilized. During most of
the 1980s,
cease-fire violations were confined mostly to occasional
incidents
of misbehavior by individual soldiers.
All but a few hundred Greek Cypriots fled from the
Turkish-occupied area in the north or were induced to
leave in the
period following the 1974 fighting. As of late 1989, only
611 Greek
Cypriots lived under Turkish occupation, almost all of
them in the
Karpas Peninsula. A further 276 Maronites were in the
north. Only
about 100 Turkish Cypriots remained in the south. Turkish
soldiers
who had fought on Cyprus were allowed to settle with their
families
and given homes. In addition, a significant number of
immigrants
from Turkey had been allowed to settle in the north. Both
the
Turkish Cypriot refugees from the south and the settlers
from
Turkey were granted homes and property abandoned by Greek
Cypriots.
The presence of Turkish immigrants, the appropriation of
property,
and the fate of more than 1,600 Greek Cypriots missing
since the
1974 fighting complicated the prospects of a settlement to
end the
division of the island. Beginning in 1976, a succession of
low- and
high-level meetings, intercommunal talks, and talks
initiated by
the UN Secretary General made progress on some issues but,
as of
late 1990, had failed to achieve a political solution
(see Search for a New Political Formula
, ch. 4).
Data as of January 1991
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