Cyprus has seen a gradual rise in arrivals of migrants and refugees since 2013, mostly due to geopolitical tensions and conflicts in the Middle East. The island’s migration crisis is also a consequence of its fraught history since the 1974 war, which has defeated attempts at mediation for decades. In the context of what is called the “Cyprus problem”, refugees fleeing conflicts are additional collateral damage.
In the north of the island, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared its independence in November 1983. That same month, United Nations Security Council said the move was “legally invalid”; the following May, the council said it was “gravely concerned about the further secessionist acts in the occupied part of the Republic of Cyprus” and reiterated its call on “all States not to recognise” it.
Turkey is the only country that has recognised the TRNC, but it does not acknowledge the internationally recognised government of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) in the island’s south, which joined the European Union in 2004. Hence, the agreement on migrants between Turkey and the EU de facto cuts out Cyprus.
Migration trends in Cyprus
After its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, the established Republic quickly entered a period of tension, leading to the 1974 invasion by Turkey and its occupation of 37% of the island. From that conflict, what remains in Cyprus is a physical and ethnic partition between Greek Cypriots residing south of the UN buffer zone (the “Green Line”) and Turkish Cypriots in the north.
Since 1974, migration within Cyprus has thus taken different forms. In the north, populations from Turkey were settled in various phases to boost population and development. They were incentivised by property and land offers – in areas that had been vacated by Greek Cypriot populations fleeing the war. Turkish populations also arrived independently of formal settlement policy. In the south, many of the Greek Cypriot refugees who had lost their properties migrated to the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Following the general unrest in the Middle East in the 1980s and the Gulf War, Cyprus became the refuge of many Lebanese and Palestinians as well as populations from the Gulf. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Greek and Turkish residents of former Soviet republics could migrate to Greece and Turkey under repatriation schemes, and from there to Cyprus. In the 1990s, labour migration policies instituted in the RoC allowed migration from the “Global South”, mainly for domestic and agricultural work. Similar work schemes in the north targeted Turkish groups from Central Asia, effecting an increase in migration for domestic work. Human rights violations (trafficking, sexual exploitation) began to gradually surface on both sides of the UN buffer zone.
In the 2000s, the system of refugee protection in the RoC took over from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), whose activities had shifted from a focus on displaced Cypriot populations to foreign refugees. With the RoC’s entry into the EU, much of its migration policy came within the purview of EU legislation. After the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, refugees began arriving in Cyprus, which is 190 kilometres from Syria. Lebanese nationals and refugees from Lebanon have also been attempting to reach Cyprus, but the rise of summary pushback or expulsion of migrants has been documented by Human Rights Watch. Cyprus regularly receives the most asylum applications per capita of any of the EU’s 27 member states, with around 21,600 applications in 2022 and 11,600 in 2023.
Anti-migrant hostility in Cyprus
In recent years, the majority of asylum seekers reach the RoC via the northern areas of the TRNC. Cypriot migration policy is tied to EU policies with respect to the south and to Turkish policy with respect to the north. While there is no communication between the two sides, the policing of migration takes account of the island’s internal conflict in various ways.
In the south, the reception and detention systems are managed by the Greek Cypriot authorities and the administration of the capital, Nicosia. The Reception and Accommodation Centre for Applicants for International Protection has operated since 2004 under the supervision of the Asylum Service in Cyprus and is located in Kofinou. A temporary open emergency reception centre for people who are likely to need international protection is located in Kokkinothrimithia. Also called Pournara rescue camp, it was established in 2014 with EU funding and was envisaged to provide 72-hour emergency accommodation to newly arrived asylum seekers. Inhumane conditions have been reported there. Since 2013, asylum seekers and foreigners whose entry and/or residence is deemed irregular by the authorities are detained in the administrative detention centre of Menogeia, but police stations and holding facilities for short-term detention, at Larnaca and Paphos airports, are also used.
In parallel, many migrants are forced to find accommodation in expensive and overcrowded apartments in cities and rural areas. Since the late 1990s, Chloraka was home to a Syrian community of about 200. There are now around 1,300 Syrians – roughly 17% of the southeastern town’s 7,000 residents. This situation has created tension, “fuelled by sensationalist local media reports of rising crime attributed to refugees and asylum seekers in various areas of the island”. Anti-migrant hostility, including a far-right push to intimidate refugees and those working with them, has taken place against the backdrop of restrictive migration policies. The current context in Cyprus is alarming, with “growing violence and harsher policies as Cypriot politicians weaponize migration”.
In the north, Cyprus is a dead end for migrants, who have no hope of continuing their journey to other European countries since the island is not part of the Schengen Area. As the TRNC is not a recognised state, and EU law does not apply there, migrants attempt to irregularly cross the demilitarised buffer zone and enter the RoC where they increasingly face racism, violence and precarity.
The legacy of 1974 in a charged context
The 1974 war in Cyprus left large numbers of the population displaced, and this episode of history “is important to the reception of refugees today, because it has put in place structures and discourses that have an impact on such reception on both sides”. At a time when controlling and restricting migration has become one of the top European priorities, and in the context of increased demonisation of migrants, “the relation between local conflict dynamics and refugee reception will remain uncertain and problems already appearing could be exacerbated”. With majority-Christian Greek Cypriots in the south and majority-Muslim Turkish Cypriots in the north, “[RoC] politicians often pin migration to southern Cyprus as a national security threat, including as a weapon engineered by Turkey to alter the demographic balance”.
European states are increasingly clamping down on migration, contributing to dehumanisation, and Cyprus is not an exception to this trend. However, the internal division on the island, its contested legal and political landscape and its surrounding geopolitics may contribute to it even more. These complexities should not absolve the governments of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) and the TRNC, nor the UNHCR, from their responsibilities to asylum seekers and refugees.
Fanny Christou ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
