Cyprus lies in the eastern Mediterranean, and Nicosia is the capital of the republic that is recognised as the state. A United Nations buffer zone runs through the same city. The island is small. The legal situations on it are not.
The area in the country data is 9,251 square kilometres, the population 1,370,754. These figures describe the country entry. They do not by themselves say which administration controls which place. The republic has its capital in Nicosia. Since 1974 a line has run across the island. Turkish troops stand in the north, and a Turkish Cypriot administration rules there, recognised by Turkey and not carried by the United Nations as a state. The buffer zone crosses the capital. The division there is a street pattern.
Cyprus at a glance
Capital
Nicosia
Area
9,251 km²
Population
1.4 million
Official language(s)
Greek, Turkish
Currency
Euro
Continent
Europe
Distinctive fact
A buffer zone through the capital
The line through the capital
Nicosia is the place where the political split has the pattern of streets. The republic administers the south of the city and of the country. In the north other authorities apply, another everyday language of the offices, another flag on the buildings. Between them lies the United Nations zone, called the Green Line in the city. It is not a third republic. It is also not simply a street. Tell the capital as a city with a single administration and you tell only one side.
The constitution of 1960 presupposed a state of a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot community, with Greek and Turkish as official languages. The line of 1974 is not the beginning of every tension. It is the beginning of today's map. A coup aimed at union with Greece, and the Turkish military intervention that followed it, left the division that has stood since. Neither side of the island owns this history alone. The sequence belongs in the sentence, because otherwise the map becomes a slogan.
The state is recognised. The island is not administered by it everywhere.
— TerraTally · Countries desk
What else on the island is law
Beside the republic and the administration in the north there is British sovereign territory. Akrotiri and Dhekelia are bases that remained, in the arrangement of 1960, British territory on the island. They do not belong to the republic. On a small island that is a further legal situation, not a footnote. Draw Cyprus as a state with a capital and you must draw these areas in, or admit that the silhouette of the island and the silhouette of the republic do not coincide. The capital is nevertheless in Nicosia, not in one of the bases.
The republic belongs to the European Union. Union law is suspended in the areas where the government of the republic does not exercise effective control. That is the legal form of the division inside a European legal space. The north lies on the island of a state that belongs to the Union, without the Union governing there. That is the result of a control that broke in 1974. A later treaty has not made the administration of the island a single one again.
Greek, Turkish, and the money of each side
Greek and Turkish are the official languages of the republic. In the administration people meet in the south, Greek is the everyday language of the state. In the north it is Turkish. The constitution means both. The line has made separate language worlds of the authorities out of that. The official languages are older than the buffer zone. Their present distribution in space follows the distribution of control. See only one of the two languages on a sign and you see the side, not the constitution.
The euro is the currency of the republic. In the north the Turkish lira circulates. The money follows the administrations, not a central bank that collects everywhere. The European Central Bank carries the euro for the republic. It does not carry it for the authorities north of the buffer zone. That too is a map, quieter than the line in the capital and just as clear in ordinary life. Currency here says which order sets the money in a place.
Cyprus is small and tightly described in law. Nicosia shows the description as a city: a recognised republic, a buffer zone, British territory on the same island, and in the north an administration that Ankara recognises.