Cyprus¶

Area

Middle East

Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranian, and a very important place. Its history dates back to the Greeks around 3000 BCE or earlier, when it was an important trading centre, a source of copper (it was the Bronze Age, after all), and a cultural dissemination point whose influence is felt to this day. Unfortunately, all this good stuff made it a target of the Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Macedonian, Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine empires. But wait, that's not all. Richard the Lion-Heart took the island in 1191, and sold it to the Knights Templar. The Franks, the Venetians, and the Ottomons ruled Cyprus over the next 700 years. Britain took over in 1878, and declared Cyprus a Crown Colony in 1925. After all that, Cyprus finally became an independent republic in 1960. But the troubles weren't over. The ethnic Turks stopped participating with the rest of the population in 1964, and 10 years later the Turkish army moved in and forced the Turks and Greeks apart. The Turks in the northern part of the island declared independance in 1983 and stole a name from Greece, but the rest of the world is pretty much ignoring them.

Cyprus on Wikipedia