EP92: Rauf Denktash

Rauf Denktash was the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from 1983 until 2005.

Given its crucial geopolitical position in the Eastern Med, Cyprus has been contested by different powers for centuries. In the modern day, this contestation occurs between Greece and Turkey, something compounded by the fact that Greeks and Turks both lived on the island and make up the Island’s two largest ethnic groups. In 1974, following a Greek-backed coup on the island, Turkey annexed the Northern half of Cyprus, and established the Republic over which Denktash presided for more than two decades.

Like Kosovo for Serbia, Cyprus poses a cautionary tale for nationalists, teaching them that they shouldn’t fixate on a piece of land that they will never be able to fully control. The Cyprus that Denktash believed in only ever existed in his mind, as he found out in 2003, when he opened the gates between Turkish and Greek Cyprus. To his astonishment, the people he had expected to throw themselves at one another in another episode of sectarian violence merely looked at one another, and carried on.

My guest today met Denktash many times, and is a true authority on Cyprus, having lived there for many years. He is James Ker-Lindsay, a visiting professor at LSEE, a London School of Economics research centre on South Eastern Europe. James also has a popular eponymous YouTube channel with over 100k subscribers, where he discusses various international conflicts and disputes. He is also due to move back to Cyprus very soon.