Türkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, arrived in New York on Wednesday to attend UN-hosted talks on Cyprus, a Turkish foreign ministry source said on July 16th.  

The meeting, chaired by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, will bring together senior figures from both sides of the divided island, along with officials from Greece and Britain.

Among the attendees are Fidan’s Greek counterpart Giorgos Gerapetritis, Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, and British Europe Minister Stephen Doughty.

The talks, scheduled for July 16th–17th, aim to encourage cooperation between the island’s two communities. The meetings are aimed at resolving one of the world’s longest-standing geopolitical disputes: the division of Cyprus.

“We never lose our empathy for the other side, but we cannot accept an equation which disregards Turks and their rights,” said Fidan prior to the meeting, adding that Türkiye “has never been a country which shies away from negotiations or avoids discussing issues in a civil, rational, and mature manner.” 

Fidan, a former head of Türkiye’s national intelligence agency (MIT), expressed cautious optimism about this week’s informal discussions. 

“We hope continuing discussions and negotiations will pave the way for both Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reach solutions which will benefit both sides,” he said.

Greek Cypriot administration’s Christodoulides described his conversation with Fidan as “a very interesting discussion,” adding that it lasted longer than expected.

Long history of partition

Cyprus island with a total population of 1.3 million has been split since 1974, when Turkish troops intervened in the north following a Greek-backed coup in Lefkosa that aimed to tether the island to Greece, a vision known as enosis.

Five days after the coup, the Turkish government, citing its guarantor rights under the 1959 London and Zurich Agreements, launched a military intervention to protect the Turkish Cypriot community.

The result was a de facto partition.

Since then, the northern part falls under Turkish Cypriot government and the southern part falls under Greek Cypriot administration.  

Five decades later, the strategic island, which is the third biggest in the Mediterranean, continues to be divided despite many international efforts. 

The roots of Cyprus’s division stretch back much further.

The island was long inhabited by both Muslim and Christian populations since the 7th century when Muslim Umayyad Caliphate forces conquered the island from the Roman Empire.

In the late 10th century, Christian control was formed, which continued until 1571, the year the Ottoman Empire conquered the island from Catholic Venetian rule. 

Ottoman rule was one of the longest periods in Cyprus’s history during which diverse populations of the island had lived in relatively peaceful conditions.  

But in 1878, the weakening Ottomans were forced by the British to lease the island to London.

At the beginning of World War I, the British illegally annexed the island, and Türkiye – the successor state of the empire – was forced to cede the island to Britain under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Under British rule, an irredentist Greek-Cypriot nationalism, which advocated the island’s union with Greece, emerged as terror groups such as X, EOKA EOKA B, led by George Grivas that launched attacks on both British forces and Turkish Cypriots in the 1950s.

In response, Turkish Cypriots furiously opposed this idea. 

Ethnic tensions between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots escalated against Britain’s divisive policy over the island, which used ethnic and religious differences to ensure its colonial rule. 

What is the current conflict about?

In the late 1950s, both native populations of Cyprus and their supporters in Greece and Türkiye understood that the island was on the verge of a civil war as EOKA terror group and Turkish Cypriot resistance forces engaged in battles across different areas. 

In 1959, under British mediation, both sides came to accept the idea of an independent Cyprus Republic with a bi-zonal and bi-communal political structure, signing the London and Zurich agreements alongside Greek Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios III and Turkish Cypriot leader Fazil Kucuk. 

Based on these agreements, in 1960, a federative Cyprus constitution was drafted, recognising the existence of two distinct and politically equal communities on the island, Turkish and Greek Cypriots.

The same year, Cyprus became an independent state with Makarios III being its president and Kucuk its vice president. 

These formative international treaties were backed by three other agreements including the Treaty of Guarantee, which recognised Türkiye, Greece and the UK as guarantor states of the Cyprus Republic, allowing them to intervene in the island’s political affairs if the established status quo was forcefully changed by either side. 

"In so far as common or concerted action may not prove possible, each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty," said the Article 4 of the Treaty of Guarantee.  

Despite constitutional protections, Greek Cypriot leader Makarios III increasingly concentrated power among Greek Cypriots and appointed former EOKA members to senior roles. But pro-Hellenic EOKA under Grivas wanted even more, aiming to make the island as part of Greece. 

This idea of union or enosis was completely against the very constitution of the Republic Cyprus, which excluded "the integral or partial union of Cyprus with any other State or the separatist independence", according to its Article 185.

Seeing this as an obstacle, this led Greek Cypriots wanting to change the constitution, which angered the Turkish community. 

Between 1963 and 1974, political and military pressure from Greek Cypriots on the island’s Turkish minority steadily intensified, forcing many Turkish Cypriots into isolated enclaves. 

The violence peaked in December 1963, when members of the EOKA launched a brutal attack, later known as “Bloody Christmas” killing scores of Turkish Cypriots.

The massacre prompted Turkish Cypriots to withdraw from the government of the Republic of Cyprus. In Türkiye public outrage grew, and policymakers began openly weighing intervention, diplomatic or military, to protect the island’s Turkish community.

On July 15th, 1974, the Cypriot National Guard, which was nominally representative of both communities, staged a coup and deposed President Makarios III, installing Nikos Sampson, a staunch supporter of enosis as president.

The move, backed by the military junta then ruling Athens, proved to be a fatal miscalculation.

Five days later, invoking its rights as a guarantor power under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, the Turkish military landed to protect the Turkish Cypriot community.

In two successive operations, Turkish forces secured control over roughly 36% of the island, a division that persists to this day.

The frozen conflict

Since 1974, Cyprus has remained partitioned.

The ongoing deadlock—commonly referred to as the Cyprus issue—centres on a fundamental disagreement: Western states, particularly Greece, oppose Türkiye’s military presence on the island, while Ankara insists it is necessary to protect the Turkish Cypriot community.

In 1983, Turkish Cypriots declared the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognised only by Ankara. While Greek Cypriots claim to represent the whole island, Türkiye and Turkish Cypriots reject this referring to them as the Greek Cypriot Administration (GCA).

Reunification talks have waxed and waned over the decades, with little to show. The United Nations maintains a buffer zone between the two entities.

The last major effort to break the deadlock and settle the Cyprus dispute was the Annan Plan, the UN proposal for the federation and consequent accession of a united Cyprus to the EU in 2004 initiated by the then Secretary General Kofi Annan. 

While the Turkish Cypriots approved the plan, the Greek Cypriots rejected it overwhelmingly in a disappointing move, signalling the power of continuing anti-Turkish sentiments across the southern part of the island.

Despite this, Brussels still accepted the accession of the GCA to the EU in a controversial move, condemned by both Türkiye and Turkish Cypriots. 

Since the failure of the Annan plan, there have been numerous attempts to address the Cyprus issue particularly after the discovery of rich Eastern Mediterranean gas reserves around the island in the 2010s. 

What’s at stake now?

Beyond historical grievances, the discovery of natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean has added a new layer of urgency to an already fraught situation.

Competing claims over exclusive economic zones (EEZs) have pitted the GCA and Greece against Türkiye, which does not recognise the GCA’s sovereignty over the whole island and thus disputes its maritime entitlements.

Any future gas extraction would require a comprehensive political settlement or, at minimum, bilateral agreements that define clear boundaries for drilling rights. Without such arrangements, energy development risks triggering further confrontation.

The current talks are unlikely to produce a breakthrough, but they may help rebuild trust. If nothing else, they serve as a reminder that while Cyprus may be a small island, its unresolved conflict continues to reverberate across the region.