Cypriot refugees

Cypriot refugees are the Cypriot nationals or Cyprus residents who had their main residence (as opposed to merely owning property) in an area forcibly evacuated during the Cyprus conflict. The government of Cyprus also recognizes as refugees the descendants of the original refugees in the male line regardless of place of birth.

1963–74 background

Tension began in 1963 when Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots were opposed to the proposal since they viewed it as an attempt to remove their constitutional safeguards that Greek Cypriots had claimed to be problematic in the conduct of government. On 21 December 1963, clashes between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots erupted unleashed a wave of violence across the island. Facing violence from Greek Cypriot paramilitaries, in favour of unification with Greece (Enosis), thousands of Turkish Cypriots fled their properties to enclaves with Turkish Cypriot majorities, protected by Turkish troops. By 1974, an attempted coup sponsored by the military Greek military junta of 1967-1974 then ruling Greece, trying to overthrow the Cypriot government and unite the island with Greece, was met with a military invasion of the island by Turkey, which claimed it was acting as a guarantor power to prevent annexation of the island. Turkey's subsequent decades-long occupation of northern Cyprus has attracted widespread international condemnation.

Post–1974

Turkey, in the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, advanced to occupy about 38% of the island in the north of the Republic of Cyprus and thus transforming the Turkish Cypriot objective of Taksim (partition of the island of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek portions, a concept declared as early as 1957 by Dr. Fazil Küçük) into reality.