Varosha - the tourist resort of ghosts
In addition to being a major tourist attraction for the Europeans in search of the sun sea and sand, Cyprus hosts also one of the strangest hotel clusters of the world. The seaside resort of Varosha was a booming and perhaps the most popular seaside resort in the Mediterranean, or even in the world during the early seventies when Cyprus was a young republic and still territorially undivided. When the crisis between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots escalated and the big brothers Greece and Turkey joined the ballgame resulting the island split in two in 1974, the resort of Varosha - which is part of the City of Famagusta located in the internationally unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus - was killed by politics.
I've visited Famagusta and Varosha three times now while my stay in Cyprus. While it is easy to understand why this unbelievably scenic stretch of the eastern coast of Cyprus was a favorite holiday resort of the likes of late Liz Taylor, it is much more difficult to understand the current decay resulted from pure human stubbornness. What happened n the case of Varosha in 1974 and what has been going on since really puzzles me. I cannot understand whose purposes it serves that dozens of luxurious and beautiful hotels and lively streets were completely closed down and abandoned and have remained so for nearly four decades.
Unfortunately I cannot provide any pictures of the area, since even though it easy to get right next to the derelict hotels on the beach, a mere act of taking the camera out of one's pocket results in immediate shouts of warning from the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot military men parading the balconies of the ghostly wrecks that used to be glamorous hotels. The reason for strict no photographs -policy puzzles me as well, since the Internet is anyway full of photos taken by people who managed to avoid the watchful eyes of these guards.
In any case, the prohibition of photography is a tiny speck compared to the magnitude of the issue of Varosha. Of course, there was attempts to return the area to the control of the Greek Cypriots after the country was divided (the so called Annan plan), but this attempt failed decades ago, and the area has been remained abandoned since. Only UN and Turkish/Turkish Cypriot troops are allowed to visit the area. An apt comparison to the state of the buildings is that of the villages around Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, that I had the privilege to visit a couple of years ago. But Varosha is much more absurd than Chernobyl. The Ukrainan are affected by the unfortunate Soviet legacy remains empty simply because a human being cannot safely live and work in the area, where as the case of Varosha does not seem to have any logical (never mention natural) explanation. The reason why this beautiful spot of nature handed to human beings remains inhabited only by the ghosts of discord is pure human bigotry.
Explanations as to why it remains a ghost town include the Turkish Cypriots not daring to use and invest on the area in fear of losing their investments in the event of (unlikely, as I see things at the moment) case of reunification of the island, but this fear seems not to have slowed down the development processes and building of holiday villas in other parts of the TRNC area... Another, perhaps just as weighty explanation might be that the Varosha remains ruins is simply because the Turkish Cypriots CAN do that. Just like the huge illuminated flag on the side of Pentadaktylos mountains, the state of Varosha can be seen as just another big middle finger raised to the southern co-inhabitants of the island.
No comments:
Post a Comment