Διαβάστε το άρθρο το BBC Ηνωμένου Βασιλείου που παρουσιάζει ένα οδοιπορικό στην πόλη φάντασμα της κατεχόμενης Μεγαλόνησου. Εκεί, όπου έχουν αφήσει χιλιάδες πρόσφυγες μα και θυσιασθέντες, την ψυχή τους. Εκεί, που για σαράντα σχεδόν χρόνια ο Τούρκικος Αττίλας επιμένει να κρατεί με τις στρατιωτικές δυνάμεις κατοχής, τον άγιο τούτο τόπο.
Δείτε το φωτογραφικό υλικό που εχει δημοσιευθεί πιο κάτω...
Αν έχετε στην κατοχή σας φωτογραφικό υλικό από την κατεχόμενη Κύπρο, θα χαιρόμασταν ιδιαίτερα αν τις μοιραζόσασταν μαζί μας, για να συνδημιουργήσουμε ένα πλούσιο φωτογραφικό άλπουμ για τον κόσμο που δεν έχει επισκεφθεί ή αδυνατεί να πάει στον τόπο που έχει γεννηθεί.
Varosha: The abandoned tourist resort
Welcome to Varosha, the Mediterranean's best kept secret.
Miles of sand where it's just you and nature. Dozens of grand hotels where you'll have the pick of the rooms.
Just remember to pack your bolt cutters to make a hole in the
fence - and watch out for the army patrols with orders to shoot on
sight.
Before the division of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha - a resort in
Famagusta - was booming. The rich and famous were drawn by some of the
best beaches on the island. Richard Burton and Brigitte Bardot all
dropped by - the Argo Hotel on JFK Avenue was said to be Elizabeth
Taylor's favourite.
"Anyone who comes from Varosha has a romanticised notion of
it," says Vasia Markides, 34, an American Greek-Cypriot whose mother
grew up there. "They talk about it being the hub of art and intellectual
activity. They describe it as the French Riviera of Cyprus."
But 40 years ago, after years of inter-ethnic violence
culminating in a coup inspired by Greece's ruling military junta, Turkey
invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern third of the island.
As its troops approached Varosha, a Greek-Cypriot community,
the inhabitants fled, intending to return when the situation calmed
down. However, the resort was fenced off by the Turkish military and has
been a ghost town ever since. A UN resolution of 1984 calls for the
handover of Varosha to UN control and prohibits any attempt to resettle
it by anyone other than those who were forced out.
One of them was Markides' mother Emily - she had just got
married and her wedding presents were still in the attic when they
abandoned the family home. Others tell stories of pots left cooking on
stoves, of lives stopped in mid-frame.
Varosha hotel corridor
In 2003, travel restrictions were eased for the first time,
allowing Cypriots on both sides to cross the UN Buffer Zone, commonly
known as the "Green Line".
"The picture that I had in my mind was of a kind of
paradise," Vasia Markides says of the day when she returned to peer
across the wire at her ancestral home for the first time. "But it felt
like some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare.
"You're seeing nature take over. Prickly pear bushes have
overrun the entire six square kilometres. There are trees that have
sprouted through living rooms. It's a ghost town."
Ermou Street, Varosha
Signs warn tourists peering across the fence that "photos and
movies are forbidden." Trespassers risk death. Exiled residents
regularly pin love-letters and flowers to the barbed wire.
Other than Turkish soldiers, few have ventured inside. Those
that have describe extraordinary sights. A car dealership still stocked
with 1974 cars, window displays of mannequins dressed in long-gone
fashions, the sand dunes that have encroached over the seafront with
rare sea turtles nesting in them.
Pictures of the devastation circulate online but the photographers won't always admit to taking them.
Empty beaches - but enter at your peril
Anything of value is likely to have been
looted long ago and the infrastructure is now damaged beyond repair.
But Markides has big plans for Varosha.
"From the moment I saw it, I felt driven to see this place
revive," she says. "You could feel the energy, its potential, the energy
that was once there."
Life asserts itself as nature takes over
Now living in New York, Markides is spearheading a proposal to
turn Varosha into an eco-city - a model for sustainability and peaceful
coexistence. Her plans have gathered the support of both Greek and
Turkish Cypriots, and she has formed an unlikely friendship.
“It was like having ghost neighbours”
Ceren BogacArchitect and psychologist
"It was just like living
next-door to ghosts," says Ceren Bogac, 34, a Turkish Cypriot who grew
up in a house overlooking Varosha. "The houses had flower pots,
curtains, but no one was living there - it was a space which had been
left suddenly." Her school was by the fence too, so if a ball got kicked
over by mistake, it was gone forever.
Bogac's grandparents were refugees from Larnaca in the South
and had been given a Greek Cypriot home in exchange for the property
they had to abandon. Bogac grew up there, but when she was five or six
years old she made a troubling discovery.
The only remaining photo of the Markides family home taken on Vasia's grandparents' wedding day
"One day I found, in a box, the personal belongings of other
people, like photo albums and journals," says Bogac. "I asked my
grandmother: 'Who does this belong to?' She said: 'It belongs to the
real owners of this house.' And that was the first time I realised that
we don't own the house that we are living in.
"I was shocked," she says. "I was thinking about how this
happened, why these people had to leave their place and what their
psychology was when they were running to get out. What kind of situation
they had been faced with in order to leave everything behind - the
children's toys, the photo albums, everything."
This childhood realisation shaped Bogac's entire career - she
became a psychologist and architect in order to understand how it
affects people to live in someone else's home. As part of her research
she came across Vasia Markides' 2008 documentary Hidden in the Sand in
which Famagustians on both sides talk about how they feel about the
division.
Bogac emailed the documentary maker and they began to correspond regularly.
One day Markides called and said: "Are you still interested in Varosha? Because it's haunting me."
"Yes," said Bogac, "it's haunting me too." They began to share ideas about how to improve the situation and that's how the Famagusta Ecocity Project first took off.
- Ceren Bogac & Vasia Markides spoke to the BBC World Service programme Outlook
- Outlook airs Mon-Thurs
- Tells personal stories from around the world
The idea is for Varosha to become
a model for green technologies. "We need to pay attention to the signs
that nature is giving us," says Markides, referring to the way nature
has reclaimed the town. "It's about using the energy of the sun - that
we have so much of in Cyprus - rather than relying on fossil fuels.
"It's a wonderful opportunity - since we have to rebuild a
city from scratch, why not do it the right way this time? Back in the
1970s when all the hotels were built on the coast, they blocked the sun
from hitting the beach after 1pm!"
“To take a symbol of war, neglect, hatred and abandonment, and turn it into a model for the rest of the world, that's a success story”
Vasia MarkidesFamagusta Ecocity Project
The project launches in January
2014 when Markides will begin making a documentary film about the effort
to turn the Famagusta region into a thriving eco-city. It kicks off on
16 January with an architectural design studio overlooking the ghost
city, where local and international experts will begin planning a
sustainable future.
There is one big snag, however - those barbed wire fences and
patrolling soldiers. While Cyprus remains divided, Varosha is likely to
remain off-limits. Central to any settlement is the idea of
"territorial adjustment" in which property taken from Greek Cypriots
would be reinstated in full - this will also mean re-housing many
Turkish Cypriots.
Nearly all of the property in the fenced-off area of Varosha
belongs to Greek Cypriots - and it is uninhabited. Greek Cypriots argue
that it would be a good confidence-building measure for the town to be
returned before peace talks resume (on hold since March 2012.)
"It is a delicate issue", says Fiona Mullen, an economist and
part of the Famagusta Ecocity Project. "While it is true that it would
make a very big difference to how Greek Cypriots view Turkey, the Turks
and Turkish Cypriots have always worried that if they gave back Varosha,
the Greek Cypriots might just "pocket" it, and not give anything in
return." So the longstanding position of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots
is that Varosha forms part of a comprehensive settlement - past
proposals have included re-opening ports and airports in the north.
"I've left my soul inside, open up"
Bogac is hopeful, despite the challenges. "The problem in
Cyprus is not the politics," she says. "The problem is we are waiting
for others to come and start something in our own country - but if we
start such a movement for the first time I think we can get ready for
any economic or financial situation. We have to do something for this
city."
Markides shares Bogac's optimism.
"To really take a place that is a symbol of war and neglect
and hatred and abandonment, and turn it into a model that the rest of
the world could use - to me it's a success story even if we only bring
awareness, a plan for other communities."
Vasia Markides & Ceren Bogac spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service.
