Former president of the Republic of (Greek) Cyprus, the author analyses the Nicosia Wall as an emblem of the division of the city and the state of Cyprus. He recounts the island’s history from 1946 to 1960, from the struggle for union with Greece to independence from Britain and the presidency of Archbishop Makarios III, and then 1960-1974 – from the short-lived bi-communal state to the Turkish invasion and the appearance of the Nicosia Wall. The bi-communal state was based on a Greek Cypriot president and a Turkish Cypriot vice-president with the power of a veto. That was an eventful period: a coup d’état in Greece (1967), a coup d’état in Turkey (1971), a coup against Makarios to proclaim Enosis (union) with Greece, and diplomatic efforts to keep the state of Cyprus together. The failure of those efforts resulted in the Turkish invasion of the north of the island and the de facto creation of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. In 2003 a relaxation of controls on the Wall gave people a chance to move from one part of the island to the other, but for the last 16 years nothing else has changed. The author goes on to detail diplomatic and political intiatives, including those taken under his own presidency and the UN’s Ghali Set of Ideas to achieve unification by means of a referendum. In 2004 Cyprus’ accession to the European Union formally included the whole island but in practice only the Greek part, and entry in the Euro zone in 2008 also brought no unification. In 2015 the author expressed his hope that unification could be achieved, and has voiced the same sentiment in 2019. Although this hope seems increasingly forlorn, the author continues to nurture it, since “without hope there is no future” and “to be able to overcome the difficulties and survive we need to have hope. We need to be optimistic that the future will be better than the past”.
