On the Love Goddess’ divided isle Jeremy Seal stirs the dust of memory as he explores the sleepy villages of Turkish North Cyprus European Magazine, 12-18th October 1995
As the gorgeous, shattered shells of French Gothic cathedrals, Crusader churches and Venetian palaces soar above Famagusta, only the faintest shafts of light penetrate the gloomy, ramshackle covered market at the heart of this renowned North Cypriot walled city. Even so, it's not every market where every day you can find Rauf Denktas, stalwart president of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, sternly surveying the flies dancing above the marbled slabs of meat and piles of vegetables - as well as a heartthrob footballer from Istanbul club Fenerbahce, founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and even Donald Duck.
Granted, they are only dusty portraits hanging on the walls, but the unlikely company they keep says much about the many varied influences at work in this young, hybrid republic. An enduring post-colonial Britishness combined with a deep-rooted affection for Turkey, the only country to have recognised North Cyprus' existence, pervades a landscape that is part war-zone, part wilderness, and - as the portraits comprehensively demonstrate - all time-warp. Denktas appears as a young man, long dead Ataturk is in sepia, the footballer hung up his boots years ago, Charles and Diana's portrait dates from the halycon run-up to their wedding in 1981 - and Donald Duck is Donald Duck.
21 years have passed since 1974's Turkish troop landings led to the creation of this pariah state, but nobody is about to suggest that North Cyprus has come of age, or anywhere near it. Conflict and international isolation have certainly hamstrung progress here, but the few travellers prepared to put up with the statutory routing
through a mainland Turkish 'entry point' discover an atmospheric, often dilapidated and even bizarre, but finally utterly beguiling anomaly at the eastern end of an otherwise increasingly concreted and familiar Mediterrannean.
Furthermore, North Cyprus' many sights - the ancient seaside city of Salamis, the mountain-top castles of St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara, the beautiful abbey ruins at Bellapais and the antique remnants of the cities of Soli and Vouni in the west - are impressive largely because visitors are likely to have them to themselves.
Ever since bankruptcy stalled Asil Nadir's ambitious attempt in the late eighties to establish North Cyprus as the Med's latest tourist hot spot, much-vaunted projects such as the Crystal Cove Hotel west of Kyrenia, now Girne in Turkish, have been gathering dust and unpaid contractors' bills. Instead, 50s Austin Cambridges and Morris Oxfords prowl past dated boutiques called 'Foxy Lady' and antiquated advertisements for Craven A cigarettes ('Quality, flavour, satisfaction'), without so much as a trace of a Government Health Warning. The icons of modern tourism - bags by Moschino, T-shirts by Gucci, laser discos - are not so much absent here as entirely undreamt of.
The republic's true touristic pulse is best measured among the echoing reception rooms of the 'venerable' Dome Hotel on Kyrenia's waterfront. Here, you're not actually that likely to stumble across the dessicated corpse of an elderly Brit, the mainstay of the republic's miniature tourism industry, who has passed away unnoticed with the sleepiness of it all. It can just feel that way.
Within the Dome, a long corridor of display cases alerts guests to the town's main shopping opportunities. Here, sell-by dates have not so much passed as become ancient history, and the experience is unintentionally akin to visiting a retailing museum.
'My grandparents used to wear/drink/eat/use them', echo the exclamations of startled visitors at the arrays of snuff boxes and pipes, drinks called Pink Lady Sparkling Perry, Jacobs Cream Crackers, Liptons tea bags, Ponds cold creams and fabrics by the likes of Dormeuil. Against this background, the wedding portrait of Charles and Diana actually ends up sounding a discordantly contemporary note.
At the sharp end, the three Zekayi brothers have been running the Hideaway poolside restaurant and bar below the hillside vilage of Karmi, formerly a Greek EOKA stronghold, since 1992. 'The coolest place to be,' as the Zekayis bill the Hideaway, may also be the cleanest since the deserted beaches tend to suffer from occasional accumulations of rubbish which the locals blame on a pernicious Lebanese current. 'Dad offered us the land as an inducement to settle here,' Mustafa explains while Friday night guests shuffle round the pool to slow numbers or try to beat the intros to Abba hits. 'So we decided to leave North London and our dry cleaning businesses behind. But it was less a rootsy thing - we hardly speak Turkish and definitely support Arsenal - than making a go of it in the sun.' This year, the brothers are also building a number of self-catering villas on the plot.
Further west, beyond the bright, if scattered lights of the bars and pubs with maritime or colonial names like 'The Ship', 'Planters' and 'Happy Valley', another landscape entirely kicks in as a winding road high above the sea takes me out along the desolate, little-visited Korucam peninsular to Kayalar village. A middle-aged man called Celal, who has been up since 4am when the daily milk tanker stops to collect a few buckets from the family herd, ushers me into his simple house for a glass of tea. 'After twenty years,' he soon tells me, 'I still feel more Turkish than Cypriot.' On the clearer mornings, for a short time around dawn, he explains, the mountains of Turkey appear as a purple line on the horizon, a constant reminder of home for Celal and the people of Kayalar. In 1976, when the rising waters behind a newly built dam forced the 100 inhabitants of a Turkish Black Sea village from their homes, they made for North Cyprus and the new life on offer in a recently abandoned Greek village called Orga, soon to be renamed as Kayalar.
'Too much water,' Celal says fondly, remembering the dam that altered the course of his life. 'And now so little,' he adds, as he surveys the cracked, parched earth which supports nothing but olive and carob trees. Weeks later, high summer will bring raging fires to the tinder-dry forested slopes above Kyrenia, threatening cherished sites such as the abbey at Bellapais and St Hilarion castle, and destroying several villages nearby.
Beyond Kayalar, the road continues to the end of the peninsular where Turkey is just forty miles away, before turning back on itself and reaching Korucam village. I arrive just as the village tea house by the church - one of the few in North Cyprus not to have been converted into a mosque - is opening for the afternoon. Here, a bustling matron brings me cinnamon tea as old Greek-speaking farmers - the few gnarled survivors of North Cyprus' 1000-year Lebanese Maronite community - settle down to play cards below walls plastered with photographs of the Pope, Maronite patriarchs, drawings of angels and even a football pennant celebrating Racing Club Beirut. As I watch from the window, I am struck by the lack of kids playing football in the street. 'There is nothing for the young here,' explains the priest outside the church. He cannot remember Korucam's last christening.
After negotiating a series of Turkish military checks, I leave the peninsular behind and drive across the great Mesaoria plain. The domes of abandoned churches appear above endless, parched fields where wheat grows to a reluctant eight inches. At Lefkosa (Nicosia), I walk through Arabahmet quarter with its handsome colonial facades that back onto the notorious Green Line. Through this tangle of barbed wire and oil drums, I catch glimpses of No Man's Land where an overgrown football pitch, surely unique in a soccer-mad world, divides the city. Further west, the barrier spills into the sea at Famagusta. Here, swimmers look back at the derelict apartment blocks, hotels and nightclubs of Varosha in the UN buffer zone. Geraniums grow wild on the terraces that the Greeks hurriedly abandoned in 1974 as Turkish troops closed in, leaving lightbulbs to burn out and washing to bleach in the sun as the years passed.
One morning, in search of blooms, I found a florist's among the labyrinth of backstreets above Kyrenia's picture postcard harbour. Pansies, daisies, roses and gladioli appeared to reach the ceiling - as did daffodils, which struck me as strange in the dessicating heat of early summer. 'They are all made of plastic,' explained the florist airily. 'They last longer,' she added unnecessarily. 'In fact they last forever.'
If, as the tourist office has it, North Cyprus really is 'A Corner of Earth Touched by Heaven', then heaven must be a mighty strange place. A baffling but finally exhilarating place too. Get here before North Cyprus starts to resemble the rest of the world.
FACTBOX
GETTING THERE
Jeremy Seal flew to Ercan Airport, North Cyprus with Cyprus Turkish Airlines which has offices in London (44 171 930 4853), Istanbul (90 212 2670973) and Dusseldorf (49 2 11353732). By law, all flights to Ercan must touch down at a Turkish mainland airport en route.
Other airlines, and operators, from the UK include Istanbul Airlines (44 171 249 4002), Akdeniz Airlines (44 171 275 8001), Cricketer Holidays (44 1892 664242) and Sunquest (44 171 499 9991).
From Germany, operators include Asya Tour (49 9113658183) and Oger Tur (49 30 321031-5), In Tour (43 1 58869) in Austria, and Marmara (33 1 42805566) in France. From Turkey, Cyprus Turkish Airlines flies twice daily from Istanbul as well as from other Turkish cities.
Car hire starts at about £9.00 a day low season for the cheapest models. Driving is on the left. Car hire companies include Atlantic (90 392 8153053) and Sur Ltd (90 392 2285818).
The cost of meals in North Cyprus varies considerably, but count on around £10 a head, with wine, in the better restaurants. The port at Girne has an excellent range of atmospherically sited fish restaurants including Set Fish (90 392 815 2336) and the Harbour Club (90 392 815 5135). Other recommendations include the popular Niazi's in Girne (90 392 315 2160) and, for Turkish evenings, the restaurant at the Altinkaya Hotel (90 392 821 18341). The best of the poolside bar/restaurants are Rita on the Rocks near Lapta (90 392 821 8922) and The Hideaway Club, on the road between Karmi and Karaoglanoglu (90 392 822 2620).
Autumn is considered an excellent time to visit. It is signficantly cooler than high summer and the crowds, such as they are, have returned home.
For further information, ring the North Cyprus Tourist Office in London (44 171 930 5069) or the Lefkosa/Nicosia office (90 392 22 89629/30).
As the gorgeous, shattered shells of French Gothic cathedrals, Crusader churches and Venetian palaces soar above Famagusta, only the faintest shafts of light penetrate the gloomy, ramshackle covered market at the heart of this renowned North Cypriot walled city. Even so, it's not every market where every day you can find Rauf Denktas, stalwart president of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, sternly surveying the flies dancing above the marbled slabs of meat and piles of vegetables - as well as a heartthrob footballer from Istanbul club Fenerbahce, founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and even Donald Duck.
Granted, they are only dusty portraits hanging on the walls, but the unlikely company they keep says much about the many varied influences at work in this young, hybrid republic. An enduring post-colonial Britishness combined with a deep-rooted affection for Turkey, the only country to have recognised North Cyprus' existence, pervades a landscape that is part war-zone, part wilderness, and - as the portraits comprehensively demonstrate - all time-warp. Denktas appears as a young man, long dead Ataturk is in sepia, the footballer hung up his boots years ago, Charles and Diana's portrait dates from the halycon run-up to their wedding in 1981 - and Donald Duck is Donald Duck.
21 years have passed since 1974's Turkish troop landings led to the creation of this pariah state, but nobody is about to suggest that North Cyprus has come of age, or anywhere near it. Conflict and international isolation have certainly hamstrung progress here, but the few travellers prepared to put up with the statutory routing
through a mainland Turkish 'entry point' discover an atmospheric, often dilapidated and even bizarre, but finally utterly beguiling anomaly at the eastern end of an otherwise increasingly concreted and familiar Mediterrannean.
Furthermore, North Cyprus' many sights - the ancient seaside city of Salamis, the mountain-top castles of St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara, the beautiful abbey ruins at Bellapais and the antique remnants of the cities of Soli and Vouni in the west - are impressive largely because visitors are likely to have them to themselves.
Ever since bankruptcy stalled Asil Nadir's ambitious attempt in the late eighties to establish North Cyprus as the Med's latest tourist hot spot, much-vaunted projects such as the Crystal Cove Hotel west of Kyrenia, now Girne in Turkish, have been gathering dust and unpaid contractors' bills. Instead, 50s Austin Cambridges and Morris Oxfords prowl past dated boutiques called 'Foxy Lady' and antiquated advertisements for Craven A cigarettes ('Quality, flavour, satisfaction'), without so much as a trace of a Government Health Warning. The icons of modern tourism - bags by Moschino, T-shirts by Gucci, laser discos - are not so much absent here as entirely undreamt of.
The republic's true touristic pulse is best measured among the echoing reception rooms of the 'venerable' Dome Hotel on Kyrenia's waterfront. Here, you're not actually that likely to stumble across the dessicated corpse of an elderly Brit, the mainstay of the republic's miniature tourism industry, who has passed away unnoticed with the sleepiness of it all. It can just feel that way.
Within the Dome, a long corridor of display cases alerts guests to the town's main shopping opportunities. Here, sell-by dates have not so much passed as become ancient history, and the experience is unintentionally akin to visiting a retailing museum.
'My grandparents used to wear/drink/eat/use them', echo the exclamations of startled visitors at the arrays of snuff boxes and pipes, drinks called Pink Lady Sparkling Perry, Jacobs Cream Crackers, Liptons tea bags, Ponds cold creams and fabrics by the likes of Dormeuil. Against this background, the wedding portrait of Charles and Diana actually ends up sounding a discordantly contemporary note.
At the sharp end, the three Zekayi brothers have been running the Hideaway poolside restaurant and bar below the hillside vilage of Karmi, formerly a Greek EOKA stronghold, since 1992. 'The coolest place to be,' as the Zekayis bill the Hideaway, may also be the cleanest since the deserted beaches tend to suffer from occasional accumulations of rubbish which the locals blame on a pernicious Lebanese current. 'Dad offered us the land as an inducement to settle here,' Mustafa explains while Friday night guests shuffle round the pool to slow numbers or try to beat the intros to Abba hits. 'So we decided to leave North London and our dry cleaning businesses behind. But it was less a rootsy thing - we hardly speak Turkish and definitely support Arsenal - than making a go of it in the sun.' This year, the brothers are also building a number of self-catering villas on the plot.
Further west, beyond the bright, if scattered lights of the bars and pubs with maritime or colonial names like 'The Ship', 'Planters' and 'Happy Valley', another landscape entirely kicks in as a winding road high above the sea takes me out along the desolate, little-visited Korucam peninsular to Kayalar village. A middle-aged man called Celal, who has been up since 4am when the daily milk tanker stops to collect a few buckets from the family herd, ushers me into his simple house for a glass of tea. 'After twenty years,' he soon tells me, 'I still feel more Turkish than Cypriot.' On the clearer mornings, for a short time around dawn, he explains, the mountains of Turkey appear as a purple line on the horizon, a constant reminder of home for Celal and the people of Kayalar. In 1976, when the rising waters behind a newly built dam forced the 100 inhabitants of a Turkish Black Sea village from their homes, they made for North Cyprus and the new life on offer in a recently abandoned Greek village called Orga, soon to be renamed as Kayalar.
'Too much water,' Celal says fondly, remembering the dam that altered the course of his life. 'And now so little,' he adds, as he surveys the cracked, parched earth which supports nothing but olive and carob trees. Weeks later, high summer will bring raging fires to the tinder-dry forested slopes above Kyrenia, threatening cherished sites such as the abbey at Bellapais and St Hilarion castle, and destroying several villages nearby.
Beyond Kayalar, the road continues to the end of the peninsular where Turkey is just forty miles away, before turning back on itself and reaching Korucam village. I arrive just as the village tea house by the church - one of the few in North Cyprus not to have been converted into a mosque - is opening for the afternoon. Here, a bustling matron brings me cinnamon tea as old Greek-speaking farmers - the few gnarled survivors of North Cyprus' 1000-year Lebanese Maronite community - settle down to play cards below walls plastered with photographs of the Pope, Maronite patriarchs, drawings of angels and even a football pennant celebrating Racing Club Beirut. As I watch from the window, I am struck by the lack of kids playing football in the street. 'There is nothing for the young here,' explains the priest outside the church. He cannot remember Korucam's last christening.
After negotiating a series of Turkish military checks, I leave the peninsular behind and drive across the great Mesaoria plain. The domes of abandoned churches appear above endless, parched fields where wheat grows to a reluctant eight inches. At Lefkosa (Nicosia), I walk through Arabahmet quarter with its handsome colonial facades that back onto the notorious Green Line. Through this tangle of barbed wire and oil drums, I catch glimpses of No Man's Land where an overgrown football pitch, surely unique in a soccer-mad world, divides the city. Further west, the barrier spills into the sea at Famagusta. Here, swimmers look back at the derelict apartment blocks, hotels and nightclubs of Varosha in the UN buffer zone. Geraniums grow wild on the terraces that the Greeks hurriedly abandoned in 1974 as Turkish troops closed in, leaving lightbulbs to burn out and washing to bleach in the sun as the years passed.
One morning, in search of blooms, I found a florist's among the labyrinth of backstreets above Kyrenia's picture postcard harbour. Pansies, daisies, roses and gladioli appeared to reach the ceiling - as did daffodils, which struck me as strange in the dessicating heat of early summer. 'They are all made of plastic,' explained the florist airily. 'They last longer,' she added unnecessarily. 'In fact they last forever.'
If, as the tourist office has it, North Cyprus really is 'A Corner of Earth Touched by Heaven', then heaven must be a mighty strange place. A baffling but finally exhilarating place too. Get here before North Cyprus starts to resemble the rest of the world.
FACTBOX
GETTING THERE
Jeremy Seal flew to Ercan Airport, North Cyprus with Cyprus Turkish Airlines which has offices in London (44 171 930 4853), Istanbul (90 212 2670973) and Dusseldorf (49 2 11353732). By law, all flights to Ercan must touch down at a Turkish mainland airport en route.
Other airlines, and operators, from the UK include Istanbul Airlines (44 171 249 4002), Akdeniz Airlines (44 171 275 8001), Cricketer Holidays (44 1892 664242) and Sunquest (44 171 499 9991).
From Germany, operators include Asya Tour (49 9113658183) and Oger Tur (49 30 321031-5), In Tour (43 1 58869) in Austria, and Marmara (33 1 42805566) in France. From Turkey, Cyprus Turkish Airlines flies twice daily from Istanbul as well as from other Turkish cities.
Car hire starts at about £9.00 a day low season for the cheapest models. Driving is on the left. Car hire companies include Atlantic (90 392 8153053) and Sur Ltd (90 392 2285818).
The cost of meals in North Cyprus varies considerably, but count on around £10 a head, with wine, in the better restaurants. The port at Girne has an excellent range of atmospherically sited fish restaurants including Set Fish (90 392 815 2336) and the Harbour Club (90 392 815 5135). Other recommendations include the popular Niazi's in Girne (90 392 315 2160) and, for Turkish evenings, the restaurant at the Altinkaya Hotel (90 392 821 18341). The best of the poolside bar/restaurants are Rita on the Rocks near Lapta (90 392 821 8922) and The Hideaway Club, on the road between Karmi and Karaoglanoglu (90 392 822 2620).
Autumn is considered an excellent time to visit. It is signficantly cooler than high summer and the crowds, such as they are, have returned home.
For further information, ring the North Cyprus Tourist Office in London (44 171 930 5069) or the Lefkosa/Nicosia office (90 392 22 89629/30).
