- [Newscaster] The Turkish army opened up with tank
and artillery fire,
on Greek Cypriot positions near the Nicosia airport.
- I'm on an island in the Mediterranean,
and I'm at an airport, on the runway right now actually.
This airport is completely empty.
It's totally still, there's no one here.
It's Eerie.
It's empty. It's falling apart.
(background chatter)
The reason this airport is a ghost town
is because we are literally inside of a border.
(suspenseful music)
This is Cypress.
It is an island. That's just under Turkey,
just to the left of Lebanon and Israel.
So yeah, I'm locked inside of a border right now,
which I'll explain what I mean by that in a little bit.
But the shorter answer, is that this is a gray zone,
it is in no man's land. And in fact,
challenges what we even mean by the word country.
This airport used to be a thriving hub
of international travel, people everywhere.
And then that changed. It changed because of an invasion.
- [Newscaster] The Turkish air attacks came sporadically,
but swiftly, the main targets were Greek Cypriot police,
the national guard building, and above all, the airport,
where there was some heavy fighting today.
(dramatic music)
The Greek Cypriots,
sizeably outnumbered by the Turks,
were able to put up a little resistance.
- And not that long ago, we're talking like the 1970s.
It was that conflict that locked this place
into a no man's land,
into a conflict that still continues to this day.
(upbeat music)
This airport is not the story here.
This is just one piece of a huge puzzle.
It's a puzzle and a situation that I've been thinking about
for years, the better part of a decade.
I've been staring at this place, thinking about it,
looking at it.
And I'm finally here.
I'm finally here to look at it in the face to understand it,
to talk to the people,
to look at its story and to try to piece together
an explanation of how this island was divided,
not between two countries, but divided into four.
- [Newscaster] The island where Aphrodite,
the Greek goddess of love was born out of sea spray.
Cyprus is Britain's base in the Middle East
and the Middle East is under constant pressure.
In addition to clashes with rebelling Greek Cypriots,
the British are faced with keeping the peace
between the Turkish, Greek protections.
Sizably outnumbered by the Turks,
we're able to put up little resistance.
The Greeks had no hope for victory.
Hate and fear now rules Cyprus.
- I came to this island because I wanted to understand
something I've been thinking about for years.
I studied it back in grad school,
but never really understood it.
So after years of reading about this conflict
and looking at it on a map, I came,
I met up with some friends who were also traveling
in this region and who also wanted to learn,
to expand their perspectives
on this poorly understood conflict.
(campfire crackling)
- So you say the island is divided into four,
but what are the four parts?
- To understand that,
you have to look at the maps,
(drums beating)
even though the country of Cyprus is a member of the EU
and their flag literally has an island on it.
It has the entire island on it,
the Republic of Cyprus actually
looks like this. It only takes up 60% of the actual island,
it's made up of mostly people who identify as Greek.
So this is it.
This is the country of Cyprus,
only controls this portion of the island.
It's just 60% of the island.
- Wait.
- Okay? So that's not the whole island.
What is the remaining portion?
- The remaining 40% is complicated.
First off, you have a small fraction
of this island that is controlled by, wait for it,
the British, the British, yes, you guessed it.
- I saw that coming.
- Yes, didn't we all, the British,
they mainly use it for military purposes.
And then you have this strip right here,
that is owned by no country.
This is controlled by the United Nations.
It's a buffer zone,
a ceasefire line set up in the sixties and seventies
to stop the fighting.
Now the elephant in the room here,
which is the rest of this map,
all of this up here is controlled by the self-declared
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
According to the UN and almost every other country.
This space is not a country,
the self-declared country, that is occupying
half of this island almost. But if you go to this place,
it feels like a country.
It has like a government that builds roads
and infrastructure and has political parties and elections.
So it's.
- So it is a country?
- Kind of, it's kind of a country.
- How can you be kind of a country?
This land up here is occupied because there was an invasion
in the seventies.
And at that time, Greeks and Turks had to separate.
They left their homes, completely empty.
Thinking, maybe they would come back, but they never did.
- [Newscaster] As the Turks advanced,
the number of Greek Cypriot refugees,
pouring into the Dhekelia base, is growing rapidly.
- There's this city, in what is now the occupied north,
that used to be this beautiful resort town.
When the invasion happened, the people fled.
There was a bombing on this town and they all fled
and they thought, okay, once the bombings over,
we'll come back.
And they never did.
It's been 47 years and they have not gone back.
They left their homes,
they left food in their refrigerators.
They left their pictures, their jewelry,
just in their homes.
I met a guy who left that day.
He was 33. He took his two children and they drove.
And after months of talking to the Turkish military,
we got permission to go back with him to visit his old home
and to talk about that experience.
(ethereal music)
- Wait, how could this city possibly go
from idyllic resort, to the ghost town basically?
- That's that is the question I've been thinking about
for a lot of years now. And to understand it,
it really helps to go back.
(snare drums beating)
The first thing to know, and the,
the context of this island is that everyone wanted it.
Always.
This place is located so perfectly in the Mediterranean
at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East
and Northern Africa,
that it is so perfectly strategically located.
Everyone wanted it.
It was the Persians and Alexander the Great.
And then of course,
the Romans show ups with their Jesus religion
and do that thing.
You get the point, like Cyprus was just a strategic pond
being conquered and ruled by one empire after another
for literally thousands of years.
And that gets us up to 500 years ago,
which is closer to the root of today's conflict.
When the empire from Turkey, the Ottoman empire came over,
they threw out the current empire, which has the Venetian,
and they came in and they're like the Ottoman empire,
now rules Cyprus.
- So I don't mean to interrupt
because this is all fascinating,
but I have always had the question of whether Turkey
is named after the bird, or if it's the other way around.
And this is just something that's bugging me forever.
And I figured I'd ask you.
- I mean, we,
we were talking about like the concrete of this land,
but we can talk about turkeys for a little bit.
So the answer to that is, turkey the bird,
is definitely named after Turkey, the empire.
Okay.
The way that it works is that Turkic people used to bring
this bird into Europe and sell it and they would buy it
and they would call it a Turkey fowl.
Oh, there's like this Turkey fowl.
It's this bird coming from Turkey,
when Europeans arrived to North America
and they saw what we call turkeys today.
They're like, oh,
that looks just like the Turkey fowl
from like back in Europe,
the Turks used to bring over.
- Oh Wow
- Let's call it a Turkey.
Even though it's a totally different animal than the,
than the thing that Turks are bringing over.
And that's how we got turkeys.
So the thing you eat for Thanksgiving or whatever is like,
is like named after Turkey.
- So not,
not that dumb of a question.
- Do you feel satisfied with your Turkey answer?
Cause we can move on about the point of the video,
which is about like how the island was divided into four.
Or do you want to keep talking about Turkey?
Because I can tell you about turkeys like all day.
- No, I think it's okay. Yeah.
- You feel satisfied?
- [Johnny's friends] Thanks for taking the time.
- Okay. So we're at the point where the Ottoman empire,
the Turkey empire owns Cyprus. Okay?
And this is where Turkic people arrive to this island
and they find mostly Greek people, Greek Christians,
Turkic Muslims, different cultures.
And yet over the years,
they made a harmonious society together where they lived
next to each other, in the same villages and towns in peace.
Let's get to modern day because it's like the late 1800's,
Ottoman empire is crumbling, like super crumbling.
And who is the new kid on the block that is not crumbling,
but is rising? The British.
- So it's not that surprising to me,
that the next part of the story is the British,
coming into a part of this, but why would they want,
this specific island?
- There was particularly this one little strip of water
that made all the difference.
The Suez canal was this new man-made canal that cut
the time from Britain to India, like in half,
like it was so much easier to get to India.
One of their major colonies and Britain was like,
we need to control that. And oh,
Cyprus is right there next to the Suez canal.
Like it's a perfect Lily pad for us to have.
- [Newscaster] The great importance of Cypress
can be seen from the map,
important little island in the Mediterranean.
It has become a strategic center in the Middle East zone
of this world war.
- So this is the big turning point in the story.
The British owned Cyprus is one of their colonies
and they're doing what the British do well, which is like,
they're making maps, they're doing demographics.
And they're like, oh, you are Turkish Muslims.
And you are Greek Christians.
And they're like separating people by like identity,
just sort of on paper.
The people who've been living here for thousands of years
and being conquered by every empire,
you can imagine, finally start to get fed up with all this.
- [Newscaster] One British army truck is bombed,
killing two soldiers and wounding 12.
- By the 1950s Cypriots were done
with British rule.
And they had risen up in violent attacks
against the British.
The British realized it was time to go home and it looked
like Cypriots for the first time would actually
be able to govern themselves
instead of being tossed around by outside powers.
But the Greek Cypriots didn't want independence.
They actually wanted to join Greece.
This was a political movement called a Enosis.
Meanwhile,
the Turkish Cypriots didn't want to be a part of Greece.
They didn't want to become even more of a minority.
They instead wanted to divide the island
into two new independent countries,
one for Greek Cypriots and one for Turkish Cypriots.
This is what a power vacuum will do to people.
When the fate of who's going to be in control
is up for grabs,
people latch onto their groups
and inflate their identities
to divide themselves, from the other side.
These were no longer just Cypriots like they had been
for centuries.
Now they had to choose a team,
team Turkey or team Greece. And so this is the climax.
This is actually where the conflict becomes a big deal.
- [Newscaster] 1955 saw Sir John Harding as governor
and commander in-chief,
attempting to reconcile a Greek and Turkish viewpoints,
all British proposals,
however were rejected and a long period of riots
and outrages followed.
- The British realized that these divisions
between Turks and Greeks on the island,
that they had helped create.
We're now getting out of control.
So they pulled a page out of their old playbook.
- [Newscaster] And a new British plan described
as an adventure in partnership
- The plan was a classic one,
to gather in London for a few days,
with a few leaders and outside powers
and decide for the Cypriots,
how their country was going to be run.
And that's what they did.
They all sat in the room and they wrote a constitution
for Cyprus and Greece and Turkey were like both in the room.
And they were like,
we know that you sort of want to like join Greece maybe,
or maybe you want to have your own country.
You're going to get neither of those.
You're going to be an independent country.
And we're going to create this really clever constitution
where the president has to be Greek,
but the vice-president has to be Turkish.
And there has to be like a certain number
of Greeks and Turks.
And like they created this like really clever constitution
that was going to make everyone happy in theory.
And then they're like, you're going to be independent.
But we,
the British get to stay here with our bases and Greece
and Turkey get to kind of have power still.
Like if something goes awry, like they can swoop in.
If they really need to, that was like a caveat to this,
this agreement that they made in London.
And in 1960, it happened.
- [Newscaster] Midnight in Nicosia.
And Sir Hugh Foot entering parliament
is followed by Archbishop Makarios,
who is to take over as first president
of Cyprus.
So representatives of the two Cypriot communities
and of Greece, Turkey, and Britain,
begin the signing ceremony,
there are many documents to be signed.
- Do any of us think that the British crafting
a constitution,
that's cleverly put together to make everyone get along?
It's really going to work. No.
Right.
- That sounds extremely flimsy.
- It's very flimsy.
- Telling other people,
how they should structure their country is.
- Never really works. And it's like,
we've seen that quite a few times. It's like,
is anyone going to learn that, unsurprisingly, the whole,
we wrote you a constitution that says you should
all get along thing,
didn't work out and tensions between Greeks and Turks
started to heat up.
- [Newscaster] For some time,
hatred between the Greek and Turkish elements
have been building up, under such conditions,
it takes more than a treaty to preserve the peace.
- I have this amazing map.
I mean, actually you should see this.
Remember that I mentioned that like Greeks and Turks
sort of live together, as this constitution,
isn't working out violence against Turks
who were always the minority, led them to leave their home.
And they start to gather into these little enclaves around
the country.
- [Newscaster] The Turkish Cypriots were declaring
that it would be impossible, ever again,
to live in harmony with their Greek compatriots.
- And so the map went from looking like this,
to looking like this.
- [Newscaster] The strategic island continues
to be the scene of daily violence and bloodshed.
- Over in Greece,
the new military government saw this happening and thought
that this would be a moment to swoop in and take over
the government of Cyprus
and try to realize this dream of Cyprus
being united with Greece.
Then that's when Turkey's like, Greece,
you violated the agreement.
We weren't supposed to swoop in on the island.
And unless there was something really wrong.
And so we're going to swoop in because we technically
on paper say that we can come in and restore the peace.
Well, they did a lot more than restore the peace.
(suspenseful music)
Turkey swoops in and starts taking over the north
in a full blown invasion with bombs
and tanks and military, like troops,
like hitting the like beaches with guns,
like a full-blown invasion.
And they start just taking over the north of the island
and the people start fleeing,
the Greeks who realized that Turkey
is actually invading and Turkey feels justified
because they feel like Greece did it first.
And so they just keep going.
- [Newscaster] From the battle going high
over the capital city.
The Greek Cypriots sizably outnumbered by the Turks
were able to put up little resistance.
- I've been glued to these early reports of the invasion
of the island of Cyprus by Turkey.
There's this one journalist
from the UK named Jonathan Dimbleby,
who was like one of the first on the ground,
when all of this was happening.
And he captures the feelings of the people who had to flee
their homes to their side of the line.
- We didn't take anything with us.
- In these reports,
you start to hear two totally different narratives.
And these will go on to be the roots of the modern day
conflict on the island of Cyprus.
The first narrative is the Greek narrative,
from their perspective,
this is an invasion to their country,
a theft of their property.
Turkey was invading their sovereign territory
and forcing them to leave land. That was rightfully theirs.
- [Newscaster] It is unlikely,
- That the Turks will allow them back
and there is no promise that
they will be compensated for their confiscated homes
and businesses.
It is as if the Greek Cypriot world has come to an end.
- We prepared to be dead.
Than to live under the Turkish authority.
(women sobbing)
- But for Turkish Cypriots, this was not an invasion.
This was salvation, Turkish Cypriots
had suffered immense violence and brutality
as minorities on the island,
at the hand of their Greek compatriots.
And now Turkey was swooping in to save them,
to protect them.
That's why Turkish Cypriots call this, the peace operation.
- When I, saw the Turks, I forget my unhappiness,
I was very happy because my, my life was saved.
My children's life was safe. And my, my people, I mean,
the Turks was all safe.
I'm very happy. Of course.
- People, the Turkish population feel more safe,
secure because the Turkish army is there to protect them.
- After three days of an unstoppable offensive,
the Turkish army,
seems to have grabbed just about all the land that
it wants on Cypress,
at least in the Northern and Northeastern parts
of the island.
- And then the Turks in the north declared a new country.
They were like,
we are now the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,
a new country. It's effectively just Turkey by another name
To stop the fighting,
the UN carved out these twin lines that cut right through
the capital of Nicosia,
they stretch across the whole island,
a buffer zone to stop the violence.
And this establishes the lines we know today,
with the Republic of Cyprus controlling all of this,
the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,
up here, then of course,
the British with the land that they held onto when Cyprus
became independent and then this, UN buffer zone,
which locks within its boundaries, the airport,
along with people's homes, businesses, and farms.
This is an island divided into four.
- [Newscaster] In one way only, are Greek and Turk alike.
They both now belong to a nation of refugees.
- One of the reasons I came here was because I wanted to see
what this looks like after years of looking at it on a map,
what does it feel like for the people to pick up and leave
and flee to their side of this new boundary,
abandoning their lives and communities.
We're about to go into Northern Cyprus for the first time.
Here we go.
As you drive through the occupied north,
you see a lot of churches like this.
(piano music)
I'm in a village where Greek Cypriots used to live,
but in 1974, they fled south, leaving this village empty.
The Turkish Cypriots, who were in the south,
fled north and arrived to this village to find empty homes
and this Christian church.
(piano music)
And they converted it into a mosque
so that they could continue their religious practices.
But eventually they built a new mosque, right next door.
And they left this church totally abandoned,
where it lays today, falling apart.
(piano music)
Both sides suffered immense losses.
And now empty buildings are the most visceral solid symbol
of that loss.
These abandoned churches are peppered all throughout
the occupied north,
(piano music)
(campfire crackling)
But perhaps the most haunting symbol of this switching
of sides happened here, in that thriving Greek tourist town
called Famagusta.
- [Newscaster] Famagusta was the tourist resorts
of the island. The major port,
much of the wealth of Greek Cyprus was based here.
Last weekend, the Greeks fled in panic
before the Turkish tanks.
They have abandoned all that they have
and they won't return. Now, the town is deserted.
(ethereal music)
- We're about to go in.
I've been thinking about this place for,
the better part of a decade.
And we're about to go in.
The reason I spent months trying to get access to film
in this ghost town. Wasn't just to capture it,
but rather to understand the human tragedy
that happened here. So I asked this man to come with me.
His name is Mr. Takis,
he's a Greek Cypriot who was my age back in 1974.
He lived here in Famagusta. He owned hotels.
He was in the tourism industry, but when Turkey invaded,
he did what everyone else did in this town.
He left with his family.
And today he's returning for the first time ever.
- This is not easy to bear.
It brings out anger. It brings out confusion.
It brings out disappointment. My wife refused to come.
I came with my daughters today. I came with them, but
they tell me "you don't talk."
I lost my, I cannot connect.
- Can you paint a picture to me on what Famagusta was like?
- The economy was so strong here.
Not only economically, Johnny,
but culturally, educationally.
It was a wonderful period.
- I asked Mr. Takis,
if you would be comfortable showing me his old home.
So we started walking through what used
to be his entire world,
the cafe he used to come to often, his brother's old house,
where he went to school.
- I spent some of my best years yet.
- Wow.
The school is now boarded up and covered with Turkish
and TRNC flags.
- To see this in this situation makes me very, very sad.
- As we walked through this ghost town,
I kept trying to get Mr. Takis
to go back to the Famagusta of before the invasion
and to point out the places that he had good memories from.
What do you remember about that time. But after a while,
he finally just stopped me.
- Johnny, I told you before, I cannot connect. I cannot.
You are asking about my memories.
- Yeah.
- They don't bring out,
the full memories I want to describe
because, there is a reservation,
this is not the town I lived.
This is not the town that I was proud of.
- Yeah.
- This is not the town that has tremendous history
and success.
It is unbelievable.
- On that day that everyone had to flee,
you thought you'd be coming back.
- Yes, for sure.
Everybody who left, thought they were going away
for two, three days.
They didn't take anything more than clothes and food.
- We walked through this city deep in conversation.
And then Mr. Takis's friend, who was with us,
signaled that we were getting close to the house.
The one he hadn't seen since he fled all those years ago,
Mr. Takis didn't pick up that we were getting so close.
And when he looked up, he realized we were here.
Tell me about this building?
- What should I say?
- I could tell he felt caught off guard.
And I began to regret having set this whole thing up.
- Well, you didn't prepare me.
- [Johnny] I was subjecting this man
to a traumatic reopening of his old wounds.
All so I could make my video about the conflict.
It started to not feel right,
but he assured me that we could keep going
and that he wanted to do this.
- No, I want to go on the other side.
Let's go from the beach.
- He didn't want me to see his home
from this angle, from this bombed out street.
Instead he wanted to see it from the other side,
from the beach,
the part of this town that still has some semblance
of its former glory.
- Not from here. From the other side.
I didn't realize, we had reached the house.
- Yeah, It looks like there's an entrance over here, maybe.
- Now you will get, an idea of why it was so popular.
I think seeing.
- [Johnny] Yeah, I haven't seen the beach yet.
- This is the famous sandy beach of Famagusta.
- As we walked towards his house. Now from the beach side,
it was clear that Mr. Takis still felt deep pride
for this place, this beach, this city.
- In certain areas, there is even turquoise water.
- It's stunning. It's beautiful.
And though his city and his property and his stories are now
a ghost town, occupied by an invading power.
When you're on this beach, you don't feel it as much.
- Beaches like this, there are not many in the world.
- No there really aren't.
- Especially with turquoise water.
(ethereal music)
- And then after a moment walking along this beach,
we finally approached his home.
This is the first time you're seeing this.
- The first time I have seen it after 47 years.
It hurts me, I cannot connect in the sense that,
what I see doesn't bring out all those nice memories
and the good times that you had.
You have to close your eyes and then it all comes back.
- [Newscaster] Famagusta was the tourist resort
of the island.
All this belonged to the Greeks.
Famagusta this morning, was a ghost town.
It is unlikely that the Turks will allow them back.
- We didn't prepare.
My wife still refuses to come
because it's painful.
I come here to do what?
Like now we see it and I cannot go into it.
What is the purpose?
I'm not a tourist. It's my home. It's my town.
And I come here and you can't go here, you can't go there.
You can see your house from distance.
It's a torture, It's a torture.
I know it's difficult for everybody
to get into somebody else's shoes,
but I'm sure you appreciate that it hurts a lot.
It hurts a lot, hurts a lot.
It's not right.
- I watched Mr. Takis take a photo with his daughters,
who he had brought to see the house they almost grew up in,
they stood in front of the Turkish military border
that bars them from actually going inside.
And in that moment, I felt a profound sadness for it all.
Unlike anything that I'd felt in the years
of studying this conflict.
(campfire crackling)
Those conversations are so important because like this isn't
just a international relations issue.
This is like a human issue.
It's like people and their identity
and their homes being lost because
of great power conflicts. To me,
it's much more important to have those types
of conversations then just to be zoomed out,
looking at a map.
Both Greek and Turkish Cypriots suffered immense violence
and loss of their homes and communities
in 1974 and the years leading up to it.
And throughout this series, I want to shed light,
not just on this history,
but what it feels like to live in this place today.
A country divided into four, full of buffer zones
and barriers and division.
At the end of the day,
this is a division, that was constructed by outside powers,
which is the story of Cyprus.
The story of a strategically placed island that everyone
wanted and was ripped apart,
purely because of where it was located.
(piano music)
Okay, well, you made it through episode one of Uncharted,
this pilot series of something that I want
to do a lot more of. There are three more episodes.
So this is just the beginning.
This is a new form of journalism that I am pushing.
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(trumpet music)