Let­ting Me Decay. Let­ting You Forget?

In her book A Con­ver­sa­tion with My Sis­ter Fam­a­gus­ta: Par­al­lel Lives, Claire Aggeli­dou per­son­i­fies her home­town. Aggeli­dou, as a refugee, sits in con­ver­sa­tion with Fam­a­gus­ta, rem­i­nisc­ing about life before the vio­lent divi­sion that occurred in 1974 on the island of Cyprus along phys­i­cal and eth­nic lines. Since then, Cyprus has been mil­i­ta­rized, with sev­er­al areas being aban­doned and under­go­ing ruina­tion.[2] Fam­a­gus­ta is one of sev­er­al towns on the north­ern part of the island that is occu­pied, but what dis­tin­guish­es it from oth­ers is that a promi­nent part of the town—the Varosha area—has been fenced off by the Turk­ish mil­i­tary, pro­hibit­ing entry for the last 46 years. For Susan Stew­art, ​“ruina­tion hap­pens at two speeds: furi­ous and slow – that is sud­den and unbid­den or inevitable and imper­cep­ti­ble,”[3] and both speeds were evi­dent in Varosha’s case: an abrupt aban­don­ment, yet grad­ual destruction.

When Cyprus gained its inde­pen­dence from British rule in 1960, the gov­ern­ment iden­ti­fied poten­tial areas that could boost tourism devel­op­ment across the coun­try. The gold­en sand and the blue Mediter­ranean Sea break­ing gen­tly against Varosha’s shore fos­tered an area-wide con­struc­tion boom. Lux­u­ri­ous, mod­ern hotels appeared along the city’s coast­line, trans­form­ing it into a cos­mopoli­tan tourist resort. It was not long after the island’s inde­pen­dence, how­ev­er, that inter­nal tur­moil between Greek and Turk­ish Cypri­ots threat­ened the nation’s peace­ful future. While the Greek Cypri­ots were fight­ing for eno­sis (inte­gra­tion with Greece), the Turk­ish Cypri­ots sup­port­ed tak­sim (the par­ti­tion of Cyprus). Even­tu­al­ly, the Turk­ish armed inva­sion (‘inter­ven­tion’ for Turk­ish Cypri­ots) in 1974 led to the phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion of the two com­mu­ni­ties and con­se­quent­ly put an end to Varosha’s thriv­ing peri­od. The Repub­lic of Cyprus lost the north­ern sec­tor of the island—37 per cent of the island’s landmass—to the Turk­ish occu­pa­tion. This led to the dis­place­ment of around 150,000 Greek Cypri­ots (who were forced to move from the north to the south) and 45,000 Turk­ish Cypri­ots (who moved from the south to the north). Although this was a sit­u­a­tion that many inhab­i­tants, espe­cial­ly refugees, per­ceived as being tem­po­rary, the con­flict in Cyprus has remained unre­solved ever since.

Varosha is now ​‘tem­porar­i­ly stunt­ed’; as Yael Navaro Yashin describes the sit­u­a­tion in the north­ern part of Cyprus due to a lack of inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.[4] The polit­i­cal and admin­is­tra­tive com­pli­ca­tions that gov­ern a place also deter­mines its sta­tus, with, or in the case of Varosha, with­out human pres­ence. Its dilap­i­dat­ed build­ings have stood sus­pend­ed in time, osten­si­bly lead­ing to the degra­da­tion of the area into a decay­ing ​‘ghost-town.’ [ 1–2 ] Pur­port­ed­ly pro­tect­ed by a UN Res­o­lu­tion that ​“con­sid­ers attempts to set­tle any part of Varosha by peo­ple oth­er than its inhab­i­tants as inad­mis­si­ble and calls for the trans­fer of this area to the admin­is­tra­tion of the Unit­ed Nations,”[5] the area has been his­tor­i­cal­ly used by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment as a bar­gain­ing chip, and it has been con­sis­tent­ly plagued by pow­er games and polit­i­cal antag­o­nisms.[6] Varosha was, after all, a strate­gic area for the Greek Cypri­ots that once reflect­ed mod­ern­iza­tion, nation-build­ing, and prosperity. 

How­ev­er, the image of Varosha’s hotels as sym­bols of moder­ni­ty and devel­op­ment was not a shared one. Accord­ing to Rebec­ca Bryant and Mete Hatay, Varosha was most­ly Greek Cypri­ot-con­trolled, while the Turk­ish Cypri­ots liv­ing in near­by vil­lages lacked elec­tric­i­ty. When, at some point after 1974, Bryant and Hatay con­duct­ed inter­views with Turk­ish Cypri­ots liv­ing in hous­es that were once inhab­it­ed by Greek Cypri­ots liv­ing in Fam­a­gus­ta, ​“sev­er­al women described to us col­lect­ing pho­tographs, books, and let­ters in Greek and burn­ing them in the streets or gar­dens.”[7] Even more recent­ly, Varosha’s reopen­ing in Octo­ber 2020, was paired with the removal of all Greek sig­nage, and as such pro­mul­gat­ed the erad­i­ca­tion of any trace of the area’s past. The open­ing of Varosha shifts the focus to the area that Sharon Mac­Don­ald calls a ​‘dif­fi­cult her­itage’, that is ​“atroc­i­ties per­pe­trat­ed and abhorred by the nation that com­mit­ted them.”[8] Such acts, ​“threat­en […] to break through into the present in dis­rup­tive ways, open­ing up social divi­sions, per­haps by play­ing into imag­ined, even night­mar­ish, futures.”[9] Even though she admits that such an approach can­not end a con­flict or elim­i­nate past ten­sions, there are nuances that may arise chal­leng­ing the way col­lec­tive iden­ti­ties are formed. 

Across the island, and par­tic­u­lar­ly after 1974, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mon­u­ments as expres­sions of nation­al­ism on each side of the demar­ca­tion line aimed to main­tain the mem­o­ry of con­flict and divi­sion. The con­flict in Cyprus and its effects on mem­o­ry have been exten­sive­ly dis­cussed, as has the role of these muse­ums and mon­u­ments in con­struct­ing a nation­al iden­ti­ty and col­lec­tive mem­o­ry.[10] Indeed, the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of a pre­vail­ing dichoto­my in which two homo­ge­neous iden­ti­ties are in con­flict through muse­ums and mon­u­ments is antic­i­pat­ed, espe­cial­ly if one con­sid­ers that both sides have been the vic­tims of war and eth­nic strug­gles, unfold­ing at least two nar­ra­tives of col­lec­tive memory. 

In con­trast, the aban­doned Varosha stands as an alter­na­tive form of mem­o­riza­tion, oscil­lat­ing between remem­ber­ing and for­get­ting. For John Ruskin, archi­tec­ture could be under­stood as a mnemon­ic device: ​“We may live with­out archi­tec­ture, and wor­ship with­out her, but we can­not remem­ber with­out her.”[11] For Paul Con­ner­ton in How Soci­eties Remem­ber, how­ev­er, mate­r­i­al objects do not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tribute to the per­pet­u­a­tion of mem­o­ry com­pared to the poten­tial that rit­u­als and nor­ma­tive behav­iors can have.[12] This argu­ment stands in con­trast to the Aris­totelian tra­di­tion, which assumes that the decay and destruc­tion of mnemon­ic objects occur in par­al­lel with the process of for­get­ting. Varosha and its vis­tas, in a state of sus­pen­sion for 46 years, have inspired ini­tia­tives and sto­ries that have occurred both with­in and out­side of the enclo­sure. Per­cep­tu­al­ly, as a mnemon­ic device, Varosha’s ruins have become blurred, not only with the emo­tions and feel­ings of its refugees, but also with the per­cep­tions of the peo­ple who have lived near­by Varosha’s periph­ery, as well as the obser­va­tions of passers-by and tourists. This essay assem­bles images that show the periph­ery of Varosha dur­ing its enclo­sure. Remind­ed of Navaro-Yashin’s con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of ​‘ghosts’—as ethno­graph­i­cal­ly observed in the north­ern ter­ri­to­ry of the island’s cap­i­tal, Nicosia—"the ghost is a thing, the mate­r­i­al object, in itself.”[13] The ghost that is Varosha is haunt­ed by a human pres­ence that comes from out­side in.

Letting Me Decay

The mut­ed, win­dow­less and, almost ​‘face­less’ hotels of the des­o­late Varosha enabled the nat­ur­al world to take over. [ 3 ] Alan Weis­man describes this ​‘recla­ma­tion project,’—as he is one of the few peo­ple who have been grant­ed per­mis­sion to enter the enclosed, decay­ing area—in his book The World With­out Us:

Sen­ti­men­tal­iz­ing Varosha in an almost post-apoc­a­lyp­tic atmos­phere, the enclo­sure would radi­ate a feel­ing of endur­ing in ​‘peace’: a latent con­di­tion that becomes pos­si­ble sole­ly because of human absence. In his sem­i­nal essay ​“The Ruin,” Georg Sim­mel sug­gests a process of ruina­tion that is inher­ent and inevitable to the mate­ri­al­i­ty of archi­tec­ture.[15] Through Simmel’s lens, ruined build­ings hold the poten­tial of no longer being the reminders and rem­nants of a past life, but the cre­ative force behind the gen­e­sis of anoth­er form of life grow­ing in align­ment with the land­scape, despite the jux­ta­po­si­tion of mean­ings that this may embody. In a ruin,

How­ev­er, in the case of Varosha, this ​‘peace’ can only be dis­guised: It was, after all, a mil­i­ta­rized zone jux­ta­posed against a water­front filled with lux­u­ri­ous mod­ern hotels whose archi­tec­tur­al typol­o­gy now act­ed as watch tow­ers hous­ing sol­diers and machine guns. The seem­ing­ly peace­ful dom­i­na­tion of nature over a mil­i­ta­rized real­i­ty would sug­gest Varosha’s poten­tial as ​“a ​‘heal­ing tool’ in the res­o­lu­tion of the wider con­flict in Cyprus.”[17]

In Octo­ber 2020, to everyone’s sur­prise, the area was uni­lat­er­al­ly and inju­di­cious­ly opened by the Turk­ish government—transgressing, once more, UN res­o­lu­tions and inevitably attract­ing local and inter­na­tion­al reac­tions.[18] The moment was a harsh real­i­ty check to those hop­ing that the reopen­ing of Varosha would hap­pen through a com­mon agree­ment and, there­fore, lay a path to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. At the same time, the reac­tions were not lim­it­ed to the polit­i­cal agency of the area’s sov­er­eign­ty. Instead, the reac­tions were also con­cerned Varosha’s cur­rent state: the abrupt reopen­ing was a dis­rup­tor of the area’s sec­ond life as a ​‘ghost town.’ 

The reopen­ing was anoth­er form of ​‘loss’ com­pet­ing with the act of enclo­sure in 1974. The dif­fer­ence was that the lat­ter left a feel­ing of ambiva­lence regard­ing Varosha’s future. The for­mer involved clear­ing things out, metaphor­i­cal­ly and lit­er­al­ly: sur­round­ed by bull­doz­ers that were tasked to remove the filth and dirt from the decay­ing ter­ri­to­ry, the remain­ing high-rise hotels were now fac­ing tan­gi­ble loss­es, not­ing an end to the long-last­ing process of ruina­tion. Loss, how­ev­er, is rarely shared. The reopen­ing was cel­e­brat­ed in the pres­ence of the Turk­ish pres­i­dent, who flew in espe­cial­ly for the occa­sion. There were flag rais­ings and pic­nics sched­uled to take place in the ruins: a cel­e­bra­tion amid decay. At the same time, Greek Cypri­ot refugees were able to rem­i­nisce by vis­it­ing Varosha for the first time in 46 years. Instead of a reopen­ing that would lead to their right to return, this one was accom­pa­nied by mourn­ing. [ 4–5 ]

Letting You Forget?

In his intro­duc­tion to The Art of For­get­ting, Adri­an Forty ques­tions how ​“one might start to think about the rela­tion­ship between mate­r­i­al objects and col­lec­tive for­get­ting.”[19] How­ev­er, the cat­e­go­ry of the col­lec­tive can­not be sin­gu­lar­ly defined in a ​‘place of mem­o­ry,’ which accord­ing to Pierre Nora is a poten­tial instru­ment for col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, under­pin­ning social cohe­sion.[20] For Nora, these ​‘places’ in the French nation­al iden­ti­ty demar­cate a tran­si­tion in the way nation­al iden­ti­ty is formed, which was no longer attached to the his­to­ry of those polit­i­cal­ly deter­mined to con­struct it, but in those spa­tial ele­ments that shape social mem­o­ry. These ​‘places’ would project a plu­ral­ist under­stand­ing of mem­o­ry that, even though not col­lec­tive per se, in var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions could reflect the mem­o­ry of the ​‘French’ indi­vid­u­als. Even though in con­flict­ed ter­ri­to­ries, the sit­u­a­tion becomes more com­plex due to eth­nic divi­sion: the enclosed Varosha would hold on both sides of the demar­ca­tion line, a con­stel­la­tion of mem­o­ries beyond nation­al­ist opposition. 

Varosha’s topog­ra­phy and geog­ra­phy were filled with great eco­nom­ic val­ue and poten­tial. Sim­i­lar to the debates that inten­si­fied after Varosha’s reopen­ing about whether these hotels as mod­ern ruins should be pre­served or demolished—as for many, they are noth­ing more than debris—there were dilem­mas con­cern­ing how, dur­ing its time of enclo­sure, this area was seen from afar. In 1974, two years after Varosha was fenced off, a hotel stand­ing on the edge of the pro­hib­it­ed area received per­mis­sion to reopen, sug­gest­ing, per­haps, how the degra­da­tion of one thing can mean the restora­tion of anoth­er. Ini­tial­ly named Con­stan­tia Hotel, it was one of the first on the coast­line of Varosha in 1948. Con­stan­tia Hotel was a promi­nent build­ing in the area; it was fea­tured on tourist guide cov­ers, includ­ing a Swedish guide with the mem­bers of ABBA lay­ing on the Varosha beach,[21] and in Hol­ly­wood films, such as Paul Newman’s 1961 film, Exo­dus.

Like the rest of the hotels in the area, Con­stan­tia was ini­tial­ly aban­doned, but was even­tu­al­ly resold to a Turk­ish Cypri­ot own­er who was eager for it to reopen. How­ev­er, reopen­ing neces­si­tat­ed refurbishment—not an easy task for a com­mu­ni­ty sanc­tioned by eco­nom­ic embar­go. Because of the per­sis­tence of the Turk­ish Cypri­ots liv­ing in the north­ern part of Cyprus to become a sep­a­rate nation from the UN-rec­og­nized Repub­lic of Cyprus, they became iso­lat­ed, espe­cial­ly in eco­nom­ic terms, in the ear­ly years after 1974. The solu­tion to refur­bish­ment was to dis­man­tle and col­lect any usable spare parts that could be found in the vacant hotels with­in the enclosed Varosha. To do so, the new own­ers grant­ed a British elec­tri­cal engi­neer liv­ing in Kyre­nia per­mis­sion to enter the pro­hib­it­ed zone with the goal of rein­stat­ing their hotel.

Weis­man describes the ​‘unbear­able silence’ that the engi­neer had to endure for six months while dis­as­sem­bling air con­di­tion­ers, kitchens, wash­ers, and dry­ers: a man in soli­tude wan­der­ing in and out of vacant hotels sus­pend­ed in time, look­ing to ful­fill his assign­ment. Frag­men­tary traces of life haunt­ed the pres­ence of abrupt depar­tures: keys were left tossed on hotels’ front desks; win­dows were left ajar; untouched place set­tings were left on tables with decay­ing linens; shred­ded laun­dry hung from clothes­lines; cars remained parked along the street; per­son­al belong­ings and pho­tographs lay uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly scat­tered upon the silent, yet res­o­nant landscape. 

Through­out the years of Varosha’s enclo­sure, very few peo­ple oth­er than Turk­ish sol­diers and jour­nal­ists were allowed to enter the pro­hib­it­ed zone. Turk­ish sol­diers con­stant­ly patrolled the area, car­ry­ing orders to shoot any­body who tres­passed. Sig­nage all over the barbed-wire fences sur­round­ing Varosha pro­hib­it­ed not only entry but also pho­tog­ra­phy, and any­one walk­ing around the bor­der would like­ly have been inter­ro­gat­ed. [ 6–7 ] Dri­ving slow­ly around the bor­der would offer a glimpse of the inside; how­ev­er, to stop and stare was for­bid­den. These pro­hi­bi­tions, com­bined with the area’s ruina­tion, became the ingre­di­ents that com­posed Varosha’s mys­ti­cal aura, shift­ing the inter­nal human absence into an exte­ri­or­ized temp­ta­tion for the human eye. Locals and for­eign­ers alike were curi­ous, with many attempt­ing to tres­pass, explore and look through the bound­aries of the enclosure.

At the same time, Varosha’s ruina­tion, entan­gled with con­flict and mem­o­ries of pain, would grad­u­al­ly turn into a spec­ta­cle. The Con­stan­tia Hotel was suc­cess­ful­ly refur­bished and, sub­se­quent­ly, reopened. Known today as the Palm Beach Hotel, the broad­er area would jux­ta­pose a lux­u­ry hotel with wealthy tourists and clean white umbrel­las to the desert­ed Varosha: silent, emp­ty, and ruined. The hotel adja­cent to the Palm Beach Hotel would stand half-col­lapsed and with a machine-gun emplace­ment that had trans­formed it into a mil­i­tary post dur­ing the 1974 inva­sion. Amidst the debris of war and the atmos­phere of relax­ation, the area’s vis­tas were, some­how, voyeuristic. 

The ghost town would become a major attrac­tion. Over the years, many peo­ple have vis­it­ed the adja­cent Con­stan­tia hotel, not only to appre­ci­ate the Mediter­ranean views and relax on the silky coast­line of Fam­a­gus­ta, but, strik­ing­ly, to get a clos­er look at this no man’s land: 

The role of the tourist in this expe­ri­ence is cru­cial. Detached from the emo­tion­al dev­as­ta­tion of the nation­al con­flict and rem­i­nis­cent of Peter Sloterdijk’s sug­ges­tion that ambiva­lence between dis­com­fort and aver­sion can, poten­tial­ly, open oth­er ways of know­ing,[23] the tourist gaze becomes the trig­ger for a rad­i­cal shift: despite the human absence with­in Varosha, the area from the out­side was not aban­doned at all. The emo­tion­al dis­tance pro­duced by the gaze of the tourists who enjoy the sub­lim­i­ty of the ruins can, accord­ing to philoso­pher Edmund Burke on the ​‘sub­lime,’ gen­er­ate feel­ings of both com­pas­sion and uneasi­ness in reac­tion to the sight of human tragedy embod­ied with­in ruina­tion. At the same time, Varosha as a Lacan­ian ​‘sub­lime object’ found itself in 1974 to be ​“the impos­si­ble-real object of desire.” Placed in the thresh­old of two deaths, the sub­lime object per­sists only in this inter­me­di­ary state, and it can­not be approached too close­ly as it endan­gers to become ordi­nary.[24]

For some Varosha was a sac­ri­fice, while for oth­ers it rep­re­sent­ed the spoils of war. In both cas­es, and even though not belong­ing to the cat­e­go­riza­tion of a war memo­r­i­al,[25] it was treat­ed as an ​‘ephemer­al mon­u­ment’, which accord­ing to Forty is con­struct­ed for memo­r­i­al pur­pos­es, but which is ​“made only to be aban­doned imme­di­ate­ly to decay.” These ephemer­al mon­u­ments, even though not ful­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble in the West­ern cul­ture, are con­fir­ma­tions that the men­tal form of mem­o­ry can­not be over­whelmed by the object asso­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry.[26] On the oth­er hand, Varosha is not sole­ly a ​‘place of mem­o­ry’, but also an object of ​‘dis­so­nant her­itage,’[27] which rais­es a series of dilem­mas in which var­i­ous sec­tors of soci­ety inter­sect, includ­ing com­mer­cial and oth­er inter­ests and the ​“destruc­tive and cru­el side of his­to­ry.”[28] These attrac­tions as man­i­fes­ta­tions of con­flict, or, as oth­er­wise known, dark tourism,[29] embody a dis­so­nance, which, for Višn­ja Kisić, is con­cep­tu­al­ized as ​“a ten­sion and qual­i­ty that tes­ti­fies to the play among dif­fer­ent dis­cours­es, and opens the space for a num­ber of diverse actions.”[30] Varosha’s build­ings, though no longer lux­u­ri­ous or touris­tic per se, still remain as con­tain­ers of spec­u­la­tion and tourism endeav­ors, grad­u­al­ly blur­ring the area’s mean­ing, which is no longer a site of suf­fer­ing and dis­as­ter for its past inhab­i­tants as refugees. Instead, for many oth­ers, the area was a site of opportunism. 

This periph­er­al obser­va­tion of Varosha was not, how­ev­er, delim­it­ed to those liv­ing adja­cent to the fence that would belong in the Turk­ish-Cypri­ot com­mu­ni­ty. Instead, as anoth­er depic­tion of the world’s plu­ral­i­ty, those liv­ing on the south­ern part of the divid­ed Cyprus would often iden­ti­fy for vis­i­tors the best spots from which to view Varosha from afar. Greek Cypri­ots liv­ing on the oth­er side of the bor­der, but still rel­a­tive­ly close to the ghost town of Varosha, would turn their rooftops into view­points from which tourists could sat­is­fy their curios­i­ty, while oth­ers would ini­ti­ate boat trips to offer a glimpse of the pro­hib­it­ed zone.[31] [ 8 ] Both the impro­vised view­points and the boat trips includ­ed aspects that ​‘muse­u­mi­fied’ the expe­ri­ence of look­ing from afar, with locals show­ing pho­tographs of events relat­ed to the con­flict, as well as objects of Cypri­ot folk­lore. At the same time, the own­ers of these impro­vised obser­va­tion posts and the cap­tains of the boat trips would often take on the role of the nar­ra­tor, recit­ing the sto­ry of the area, vague­ly over­lay­ing touris­tic voyeurism with mem­o­ries of pain and loss. Despite the new lay­ers of mean­ing and rep­re­sen­ta­tion added by the tourist gaze, this act of ​‘look­ing from afar’ was insep­a­ra­ble from the moment of enclo­sure, remind­ing vis­i­tors that Varosha’s ruina­tion was not nat­ur­al, but rather, a dark polit­i­cal spectacle. 

Accord­ing to Jonathan Hill, ​“ruina­tion can enhance the sta­tus of a struc­ture, which may ever more res­olute­ly resound as a mon­u­ment in the mem­o­ry, if its destruc­tion has pro­found social, cul­tur­al, or polit­i­cal mean­ing.”[32] It is worth ques­tion­ing here whether Varosha is an exam­ple of this inter­pre­ta­tion. Dur­ing the 1960s, there were many reac­tions to the envi­ron­men­tal and social reper­cus­sions of the resort’s devel­op­ment on the island’s coast­line. The hotels’ vicin­i­ty to the beach, their height as a sol­id bound­ary between the beach and the rest of the city, as well as their devel­op­ment as sites serv­ing for­eign tourists but not the local pop­u­la­tion were crit­i­cisms raised in the 1960s regard­ing Varosha’s devel­op­ment. More­over, these hotels were care­ful­ly and skill­ful­ly designed to reflect mod­ern­iza­tion and qual­i­ty in spa­tial and, there­fore, cul­tur­al terms, how­ev­er, lit­tle atten­tion was giv­en to their archi­tec­tur­al val­ue. The day Varosha became a spa­tial vic­tim of the Cyprus con­flict, those build­ings, as mod­ern ruins, were sud­den­ly altered in their prominence—and their ini­tial asso­ci­a­tions with ​‘finan­cial­iza­tion’ were assumed to have disappeared. 

The ruina­tion of Varosha, a con­di­tion that was polit­i­cal­ly enforced in order for the life before 1974 to be for­got­ten, has been, in con­trast, a process of remem­ber­ing, even though oth­er inter­ests were inter­twined. Indeed, Varosha’s hotels are now ruins—for some, they are filthy struc­tures requir­ing demo­li­tion, but for oth­ers, they are rep­re­sen­ta­tions of con­flict her­itage. Both sides, iron­i­cal­ly, are dri­ven by touris­tic motives, either rede­vel­op­ing what came to be a 1960s cos­mopoli­tan tourism resort, or a ​‘live’ muse­um of mod­ern ruins. In either case, they are a ruinous for­ma­tion of a past.

Conclusion

Once a cos­mopoli­tan tourism resort offer­ing glimpses of moder­ni­ty and the prospect of a pros­per­ous future for the new­ly inde­pen­dent Cyprus in the 1960s, the enclo­sure of Varosha for­ev­er altered the mean­ings of the place: ruins of a glam­orous past; ruins of war, occu­pa­tion, and mil­i­ta­riza­tion; ruins of aban­don­ment and human absence as well as ruins that can be prof­itable to a tourist’s voyeuris­tic gaze. For some, Varosha after 1974 was a source of hope—both tan­gi­bly, as its build­ings hav­ing endured aban­don­ment, and intan­gi­bly, as it has been used many times as a bar­gain­ing chip in polit­i­cal nego­ti­a­tions. After its reopen­ing in 2020, which was fol­lowed by its occu­pa­tion by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, it quick­ly became a place of loss. In this plu­ral­i­ty of mean­ings, there is always the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the sys­tem to oper­ate in con­trast­ing man­ners, in which any ​‘oth­er’ world can rise and prevail.