Let­ting Me Decay. Let­ting You Forget?

Ruination ‘In Peace’ in the Wounded Landscape of Cyprus

Savia Palate

She was born when the stars smiled and said: ‘Glory to you!’ They bent down to the ground, and in a small bay they saw small Famagusta, with blue eyes and golden braided hair. The world was filled with light. They closed their eyes for the dream and the beauty they saw not to go away.

Claire Aggelidou[1]

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.

Ghost town Varosha – view from the buffer zone nearby.
1

Ghost town Varosha – view from the buffer zone nearby.

Ghost town Varosha – view from a boat.
2

Ghost town Varosha – view from a boat.

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.

Nature and the ruins.
3

Nature and the ruins.

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:

Flame trees, chinaberries and thickets of hibiscus, oleander and passion lilac sprout from nooks where indoors and outdoors now blend. Houses disappear under magenta mounds of bougainvillea. Lizards and whip snakes skitter through stands of wild asparagus, prickly pear and six-foot grasses. A spreading ground cover of lemon grass sweetens the air. At night, the darkened beachfront, free of moonlight bathers, crawls with nesting loggerhead and green sea turtles.[14]

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,

… purpose and accident, nature and spirit, past and present here resolve the tension of their contrasts—or, rather, preserving this tension, they yet lead to a unity of external image and internal effect. It is as though a segment of existence must collapse before it can become unresistant to all currents and powers coming from all corners of reality.[16]

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 ]

From a protest on the buffer zone after Varosha’s reopening, July 2020.
4

From a protest on the buffer zone after Varosha’s reopening, July 2020.

Camping tents were setup during a protest on the buffer zone after Varosha’s reopening, July 2020.
5

Camping tents were setup during a protest on the buffer zone after Varosha’s reopening, July 2020.

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.

UN prohibition signage on the border nearby Varosha.
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UN prohibition signage on the border nearby Varosha.

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: 

We chose the Palm Beach Hotel because it was next to the deserted border ghost district of Varosha, a place that has fascinated me for years. Before 1974, this was THE place to stay in Cyprus, but now it’s deserted and a military zone. The Palm Beach lies just outside the area, so it’s got both a fab beach and easy access to old Famagusta too. You can walk up to the wire fence and look into the deserted streets. Don’t let the soldiers see you take photos, though – better to get a zoom lens and do it from your hotel balcony…[22]

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]

UN prohibition signage on the border nearby Varosha. For photography, that was also prohibited from the street the advice was to use one of the improvised viewpoints that locals created on their rooftops.
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UN prohibition signage on the border nearby Varosha. For photography, that was also prohibited from the street the advice was to use one of the improvised viewpoints that locals created on their rooftops.

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. 

Fig. 8:
Tourists looking at Varosha from a viewpoint.
8

Fig. 8: Tourists looking at Varosha from a viewpoint.

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. 

  1. 1

    Trans­lat­ed from Greek by the author. Claire Aggeli­dou, A con­ver­sa­tion with my sis­ter Fam­a­gus­ta: Par­al­lel Lives [Συνομιλία με την αδελφή μου Αμμόχωστο: Παράλληλοι Βίοι] (Thes­sa­loni­ki: Malliaris Paideia, 2003), 12.

  2. 2

    See for exam­ple: Costas M. Con­stan­ti­nou et al., Con­flicts of Uses of Cul­tur­al Her­itage in Cyprus,” Jour­nal of Balkan and Near East­ern Stud­ies 14, no. 2 (2012): 177–198; Gül­gün Kay­im, Cross­ing Bound­aries in Cyprus: Land­scapes of Mem­o­ry in the Demil­i­tarised Zone,” in Walls, Bor­ders, Bound­aries: Spa­tial and Cul­tur­al Prac­tices in Europe, eds. Marc Sil­ber­man et al. (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2012), 211–233; Olga Demetri­ou, Grand Ruins: Ledra Palace Hotel and the Ren­der­ing of Con­flict’ as Her­itage in Cyprus,” in War and Cul­tur­al Her­itage: Biogra­phies of Place, eds. Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Dacia Viejo Rose (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2015), 183–207; Panayio­ta Pyla and Pet­ros Phokaides, “‘Dark and Dirty’ His­to­ries of Leisure and Archi­tec­ture: Varosha’s Past and Future,” Archi­tec­tur­al The­o­ry Review (2020): 1–19.

  3. 3

    Susan Stew­art, The Ruin Les­son: Mean­ing and Mate­r­i­al in West­ern Cul­ture (Chica­go: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2020), 5.

  4. 4

    Yael Navaro Yashin, The Make-Believe Space: Affec­tive Geog­ra­phy in a Post­war Poli­ty (Durham and Lon­don: Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2012), 7.

  5. 5

    UNSCR Search Engine for the Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tions,” UNSCR, 1983.

  6. 6

    For­mer Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Kenan Evren had called Fam­a­gus­ta the trump card’ in nego­ti­a­tions. Varosha was used by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment as a bar­gain­ing chip, giv­en that it was not in the orig­i­nal occu­pa­tion plan, but since its res­i­dents, out of fear, ran away, the Turk­ish found no resis­tance, and there­fore it was wis­er for them to main­tain their hold over the area with a view to exploit­ing this in future nego­ti­a­tions. Since then, the term has been wide­ly used by the media in arti­cles about Varosha. See for exam­ple: Ayla Jean Yack­ley, Ghost Town May Hold the Key to Cyprus Reuni­fi­ca­tion Talks,” The Inde­pen­dent — Inde­pen­dent Dig­i­tal News and Media, August 11, 2012; For First Time since War, Greek Cypri­ots Mark Epiphany in Ghost Town | Pic­tures,” Reuters: Thom­son Reuters, Jan­u­ary 6, 2016.

  7. 7

    Rebec­ca Bryant et al., Sov­er­eign­ty Sus­pend­ed: Build­ing the so-called State (Philadel­phia: Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia Press, 2020), 87.

  8. 8

    Sharon Mac­don­ald, Is Dif­fi­cult Her­itage’ Still Dif­fi­cult’? Why Pub­lic Acknowl­edg­ment of Past Per­pe­tra­tion May No Longer Be So Unset­tling to Col­lec­tive Iden­ti­ties,” Muse­um Inter­na­tion­al 67, no.1–4 (2015): 6–22.

  9. 9

    Sharon Mac­don­ald, Dif­fi­cult Her­itage: Nego­ti­at­ing the Nazi Past in Nurem­berg and Beyond (Lon­don: Rout­ledge, 2009), 1.

  10. 10

    See for exam­ple: Yian­nis Papadakis, The Nation­al Strug­gle Muse­ums of a Divid­ed City,” Eth­nic and Racial Stud­ies 17, no. 3 (1994): 400–419; Julie Scott, Map­ping the past: Turk­ish Cypri­ot nar­ra­tives of time and place in the Can­bu­lat Muse­um, North­ern Cyprus,” His­to­ry and Anthro­pol­o­gy 13, no. 3 (2002): 217–230; Theopisti Stylianou-Lam­bert and Alexan­dra Bou­nia, The Polit­i­cal Muse­um: Pow­er, Con­flict, and Iden­ti­ty in Cyprus (New York: Rout­ledge, 2016).

  11. 11

    John Ruskin, The Sev­en Lamps of Archi­tec­ture (Lon­don: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1849), 162.

  12. 12

    Paul Con­ner­ton, How Soci­eties Remem­ber (Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1989).

  13. 13

    Navaro-Yashin, The Make-Believe Space, 17.

  14. 14

    Alan Weis­man, The World With­out Us (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), 97.

  15. 15

    Georg Sim­mel, The Ruin,” in Essays on Soci­ol­o­gy, Phi­los­o­phy, and Aes­thet­ics, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: Harp­er & Row, 1965), 259–266.

  16. 16

    Ibid, 266.

  17. 17

    This was also claimed by a Turk­ish Cypri­ot who served his mil­i­tary ser­vice in Varosha. For him, the peri­od of his ser­vice was a big shock and a big trau­ma’. Quot­ed in Paul Dobraszczyk, Tra­vers­ing the fan­tasies of urban destruc­tion: Ruin gaz­ing in Varosha,” City 19, no. 1 (2015): 49.

  18. 18

    See for exam­ple: Amy Woody­att et al, North Cyprus reopens ghost town’ beach resort for first time since 1970s,” CNN Trav­el, Octo­ber 10, 2020.

  19. 19

    Adri­an Forty, Intro­duc­tion,” in The Art of For­get­ting, eds. Adri­an Forty and Susanne Küch­ler (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 2.

  20. 20

    Places of mem­o­ry” as in Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire. Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritz­man, Realms of Mem­o­ry: Rethink­ing the French Past (New York: Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1996). See also, Peter Car­ri­er, Places, Pol­i­tics, and the Archiv­ing of Con­tem­po­rary Mem­o­ry,” in Mem­o­ry and Method­ol­o­gy, ed. Susan­nah Rad­stone (Lon­don: Blooms­bury, 2000), 37–57.

  21. 21

    Before they were offi­cial­ly formed as ABBA, the mem­bers of the group gave their first per­for­mance in Fam­a­gus­ta for a Swedish peace­keep­ing force. And ABBA were Born! Con­stan­tia Hotel Beach,” (April 1970), [«Και εγένοτο… οι ABBA» Παραλία του ξενοδοχείου Κωνστάντια] Ammo­chos­tos, Jan­u­ary 3, 2015.

  22. 22

    Hotel review North Cyprus Hotel and Hol­i­day Guide,” in North Cyprus Hotels, August 10, 2008.

  23. 23

    Peter Slo­ter­dijk, Cri­tique of Cyn­i­cal Rea­son (Min­neapo­lis: Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press, 1987), 151.

  24. 24

    See for exam­ple: Sla­vok Zizek, The Sub­lime Object of Ide­ol­o­gy (Lon­don and New York: Ver­so Books, 1989), 221.

  25. 25

    See for exam­ple: Michael Row­lands, Remem­ber­ing to For­get: Sub­li­ma­tion as Sac­ri­fice in War Memo­ri­als,” in The Art of For­get­ting, eds. Adri­an Forty and Susanne Küch­ler (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 129–146.

  26. 26

    Forty, Intro­duc­tion,” 4–5.

  27. 27

    See for exam­ple: J.E. Tun­bridge and Gre­go­ry John Ash­worth, Dis­so­nant Her­itage: The Man­age­ment of the Past as a Resource in Con­flict (Chich­ester: Wiley, 1996).

  28. 28

    William Logan and Keir Reeves, eds. Places of Pain and Shame: Deal­ing with Dif­fi­cult Her­itage’ (Lon­don: Rout­ledge, 2009), 1.

  29. 29

    See for exam­ple one of the first uses of the term: John J. Lennon and Mal­com Foley, JFK and dark tourism: a fas­ci­na­tion with assas­si­na­tion”, Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Her­itage Stud­ies 2, no. 1 (1996): 198–211. See also: Richard Sharp­ley and Philip R. Stone, eds. The Dark­er Side of Trav­el: The The­o­ry and Prac­tice of Dark Tourism (Bris­tol: Chan­nel View Pub­li­ca­tions, 2009).

  30. 30

    Višn­ja Kisić, Gov­ern­ing Her­itage Dis­so­nance: Promis­es and Real­i­ties of Select­ed Cul­tur­al Poli­cies (Ams­ter­dam: Euro­pean Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion, 2017), 31.

  31. 31

    See more on an urban read­ing of these prac­tices as dark tourism: Savia Palate, Bor­der Con­di­tions: Sight­see­ing in Con­test­ed Varosha, Cyprus,” InFor­ma: Site Con­di­tions 12 (2019): 204–215.

  32. 32

    Jonathan Hill, The Archi­tec­ture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present, and Future (Lon­don: Rout­ledge, 2019), 296.

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