Is Cyprus part of the Middle East or of Europe? The answer depends on whether you’re thinking geographically or culturally. The eager little predictive text assistant at my side suggests politically. Yes, that too.
So the map shows Cyprus nestled in the arms of the Middle East and the Middle East is the origin of the first settlers, whose excavation site at Choirokitia near Larnaka we’ve visited. They lived in a collection of tiny huts huddled together for safety some nine thousand years ago.
And is the Middle East part of Europe or of Asia? Geography is not geometry. The lines are not always very neatly drawn. And in any case shouldn’t Eurasia be one continent? The others seem more neatly divided. Though not always, perhaps. Think of continental drift. The Appalachians were once part of a range that continued through the Scottish highlands to the Scandinavian mountains. But that fact, interesting as it is, looks like it belongs elsewhere - wandered in from some other blog when the door was open.
Culturally the island is now mostly Greek and Turkish, but it wasn’t always. Physically it’s closest to Türkiye. You can see Türkiye from our north facing salon window on a clear day. The Ottoman Empire held it for some three hundred years and then ceded it to the British in 1878 as part of a deal at the end of the Crimean War. Remember that? No, well anyway that’s recent history. Before that it was Venetian (the walls around the walled city of Famagusta are Venetian) and before that Lusignan….It’s always been a desirable property. A little like Gaza, but that’s for another day. Once it was referred to cynically as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. And from its base at Akrotiri, in the South, British and American planes head southeast to Israel and Gaza for intelligence purposes - and much worse. That too for another day.
And politically it is an EU country. Though the EU understood - or thought they did - that the South and North would get on with the reuniting that hadn’t happened before Cyprus joined at some convenient time later. But that’s for another decade.
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