Into the Forbidden Zone: Varosha, Ghost City of Cyprus | Hacker News Reader

Into the Forbidden Zone: Varosha, Ghost City of Cyprus

ragpickinghistory.co.uk

152 pointshownottowrite42 comments

I had a chance to visit the UN-controlled buffer zone [not the city mentioned in this article] well over a decade ago when I stayed with some soldiers over there. In the buffer zone is the old Nicosia airport, complete with 1970s planes sitting at a disused terminal. There's also a car showroom which is preserved with new (1974 season) cars. You can't wander about much since the whole area is mined and they warn you not to walk off the paths or to touch any "unusual" objects on the ground. I have photographs, but they're on film so I'm going to have to get them digitized some time ...

Edit: Found an Atlantic article with much better photos than mine: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/04/frozen-in-time-the...

> We'll fly you to the ends of earth![0]

WOW!

[0] https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2014/04/f...

Visited Varosha a few years back.

http://ninjito.com/_2015-04-14-Varosha

Our goal was to traverse the entire city, and to then rooftop a hotel on the beach. The military presence is very real, and the city has a beautiful "slipping back to nature vibe" to it. We typically imagine that cities will decay into jungles, but curiously enough, it's the slow spread of garden species plants growing bigger and establishing more foothold.

Is the military presence more than just the perimeter guards this article mentions?

Absolutely. The Turkish army occupy a few buildings on the "main road", with regular patrols, floodlit streets, etc. When we were there, there was also a UN presence, about 1km down the road from the Turkish HQ.

There's a constant flux of hardware (tanks, etc) in the area: 35,122934, 33,950381 / https://binged.it/2IlXXAV - which we saw rumbling around a bit.

At strategic points throughout the entire city there are watchtowers, some of which that are very, very well placed (impossible to see them before they see you)

Now that the city is occupied by the Turks, why haven't they used it? It's a bit late now (and many buildings are no doubt no longer safe), but why didn't they use it then? There's a lot of investment in the structures in the city.

Turkish never intended to use the city, actually army didn't want to push this far neither. When they were able to, they just wanted to use Varosha as a bargaining chip to keep Turkish population in north safe in the negotiations -since city was important for Greek Cypriots-

None expected negotiations would take decades.

That „Mysterious object in a room in Varosha“ (picture 10) looks a lot like the leftovers of a Strohpferd (horse made of straw)

It's hard to imagine a modem city of tens of thousands being evacuated in the wake of a hostile army's invasion.

What's holding back this city from being resettled by it's rightful owners?

A 40000 soldier strong occupation force, nationalism and incompetent politicians.

Mostly incompetent politicians...

> What's holding back this city from being resettled by it's rightful owners?

Its "rightful owners" are greek cypriots. During the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 it became part of the turkic-occupied sector, but rather than resettle it Turkey set it aside as a bargaining chip assuming negotiations would begin soon.

So what's holding back this city from being resettled is that it's a forbidden zone regularly checked on by military patrols.

And in this case by "resettling" it is meant making the robbery official?

What robbery?

Well. These buildings as well as the tens of thousands of buildings in the "Occpied zone" have lawful owners. In civilised societies items often have owners - in the case of important items such as a beach-line hotel in a seaside resort, the ownership is accompanied by a document called a "deed".

These buildings have owners, who can produce those deeds, yet the owners are denied ownership. This did not happen (and is still happening up to this day) through a purchase or another legal act, but through violence, so I call it robbery. This is what it is.

You are not clearly communicating what you mean in your original post. Do you think the TC's are robbing? The GC's? I am not sure anyone is talking about resettling Varosha, so I don't really understand your point. In any case, the is no _money_ to resettle Varosha should the Cypriots every get it back.

What's holding back this city from being resettled by it's rightful owners?

The fact that it's caught in the middle of a conflict between two armed groups who hate each other with an intensity that's almost impossible to grasp?

Greeks and Turks have a lot of nasty history with each other. If you don't want to dig into all of it, just go read the Wikipedia article on the history of Cyprus.

Wow first time I see my home country on HN.

If anyone have questions for a Turkish person for this event, can answer without going too much into politics.

Yes. How come you aren't ashamed of yourselves ? ;)

What's your opinion on the role of the British in this conflict? I have some interesting opinions from Greeks, it would be interesting to compare.

In the times of Cold War, Cyprus was an important base for NATO and UK therefore to keep them there with none-to-low amount of legitimacy it was beneficial to keep Cyprus somehow divided.

There are also 'conspiracy theories' that British intelligence had agenda of creating unrest intentionally on the island so they can keep the bases, but that sounds too much of 4d chess, since this unrest led into Greece leaving military part of NATO and made western alliance look shaky against USSR.

also worth reading : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4632080.stm

Another abandoned Greek/Turkish city... http://turkishtravelblog.com/the-ghost-village-of-kayakoy/

This somehow makes me really curious about which construction techniques make the longest-lasting buildings.

These are a few contenders in the countries around the Mediterranean - rather suspect that the building shown won’t last thousands of years.

Everyone please stop copy-posting .../amp/ links. Here's without: https://ragpickinghistory.co.uk/2013/03/30/into-the-forbidde...

We've changed to that above.

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