Cyprus, is a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, east of Greece, and north of Egypt.
Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean island and one of the most popular tourist destinations, attracting over 2.4 million tourists per year.[7] A former British colony, it became an independent republic in 1960[3] and a member of the Commonwealth in 1961. The Republic of Cyprus is one of the advanced economies in the region,[8] and has been a member of the European Union since 1 May 2004.
In 1974, following years of intercommunal violence between ethnic Greeks and Turks and an attempted coup d'état by Greek Cypriot nationalists aimed at annexing the island to Greece and engineered by the military junta then in power in Athens,[9] Turkey invaded and occupied one third of the island. This led to the displacement of thousands of Cypriots and the establishment of a separate Turkish Cypriot political entity in the north. This event and its resulting political situation are matters of ongoing dispute.
The Republic of Cyprus, the internationally recognised state, has de jure sovereignty over the entire island of Cyprus and its surrounding waters except small portions that are allocated by treaty to the United Kingdom as sovereign military bases. The island is de facto partitioned into four main parts:
* the area under the effective control of the Republic of Cyprus, comprising about 59% of the island's area in the south; * the Turkish-occupied area in the north,[10] calling itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, covering about 36% of the island's area and recognised only by Turkey; * the United Nations-controlled Green Line, separating the two, covering about 3% of the island's area; and * two British Sovereign Base Areas (Akrotiri and Dhekelia),[11] covering about 3% of the island's area.
Source: Wikipedia All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
