Thinking of moving and building an apartment in to Cyprus?
Cyprus is officially called the Republic of Cyprus and it is an island that is situated south of Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. If you look for it on a map you will find that it’s North of Egypt, south of Turnkey, west of Levant and east of Greece.
Cyprus is a very popular tourist destination and it attracts over two and a half million tourists per year. It was a British colony until it became independent in 1960 and became a republic a year later. Cyprus is now considered to be a developed country and has formed part of the European Union for four years.
There was a violent period in the 1970's when the Greek and Turkish Cypriots were fighting and Turkey invaded a third of the island. As the Turkish people set up a separate colony in the North, thousands of Greek Cypriots found themselves homeless and or displaced.
The recognized state, the Republic of Cyprus owns and controls ninety-seven percent of the island of Cypress as well as the surrounding waters. The UK has control over the other three percent. The island is split into four parts that consists of the major Republic of Cyprus part in the south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the North, these two parts are split up by a sectioned owned by the United nations that is called the Green Line. The United Kingdom has remained control over two areas (Dhekelia and Akrotiri) after Cypriot independence.
There is some uncertainty on where the name Cyprus has originated. Some people think that it come from the Greek Cupressus sempervirens, which means Mediterranean cypress tree. Others think that it can have been derived from the Eteocypriot word meaning copper. The Republic of Cyprus is also referred to as the island of Aphrodite as this Greek goddess that symbolized love and beauty, was born here.
Cyprus celebrated its independence from the United Kingdom in August 1960. Before the act of independence both the Greek and the Turkish Cypriots considered themselves to be Greeks and Turks living in Cyprus rather than Cypriots who has Greek or Turkish ethnicity. It was quite tricky to draw up the Zurich and London Agreements to ensure that both these two major population groups were happy with the outcome. Neither of the two nationalities was very happy with the agreement but they manage to live together without too much conflict now.
