Pre-Ottoman Cyprus Although there was no settled Muslim population in Cyprus prior to the Ottoman conquest of 1570–71, some Ottoman Turks were captured and carried off as prisoners to Cyprus in the year 1400 during Cypriot raids in the Asiatic and Egyptian coasts. Some of these captives accepted or were forced to convert to Christianity and were baptized; however, there were also some Turkish slaves who remained unbaptized. By 1425, some of these slaves helped the
Mamluke army to gain access to
Limassol Castle. Despite the release of some of the captives, after the payment of ransoms, most of the baptized Turks continued to remain on the island. The medieval Cypriot historian
Leontios Machairas recalled that the baptized Turks were not permitted to leave
Nicosia when the Mamlukes approached the city after the battle of
Khirokitia in 1426. According to Professor
Charles Fraser Beckingham, "there must therefore have been some Cypriots, at least nominally Christian, who were of Turkish, Arab, or Egyptian origin." The Queen of Cyprus,
Caterina Cornaro, was forced to relinquish her crown to the
Republic of Venice in 1489. In the same year, Ottoman ships were seen off the coast of
Karpas and the Venetians began to strengthen the fortifications of the island. By 1500, coastal raids by Ottoman vessels resulted in the heavy loss of Venetian fleets, forcing Venice to negotiate a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire in 1503. However, by May 1539
Suleiman I decided to attack
Limassol because the Venetians had been sheltering pirates who continuously attacked Ottoman ships. Limassol stayed under Ottoman control until a peace treaty was signed in 1540. Cyprus continued to be a haven for pirates who interrupted the safe passage of Ottoman trade ships and Muslim pilgrims sailing to
Mecca and
Medina. By 1569, pirates captured the Ottoman
defterdar (treasurer) of Egypt, and
Selim II decided to safeguard the sea route from
Constantinople to
Alexandria by conquering the island and clearing the eastern Mediterranean of all enemies in 1570–71. The post-conquest period established a significant Muslim community which consisted of soldiers from the campaign who remained behind and further settlers who were brought from
Anatolia as part of a traditional Ottoman population policy. There were also new converts to Islam on the island during the early years of Ottoman rule. This influx of mainly Muslim settlers to Cyprus continued intermittently until the end of the Ottoman period. Their artificial embrace of Islam and their secret maintaining of Christianity led this group of crypto-Christians to be known in Greek as
Linobambaki or the cotton-linen sect as they changed religion to curry favour with Ottoman officials during the day but practiced Catholicism at night. In 1636 the conditions for the Christians became intolerable and certain Christians decided to become Muslims. According to Palmieri (1905) the Maronites who became Muslims lived mainly in the Nicosia District and despite the fact that the Maronites turned to Muslims they never gave up their Christian faith and beliefs hoping to become Christians. This is why they baptized their children according to the Christian faith, but they also practiced circumcision. They also gave their children two names, a Muslim and a Christian one. Many of the villages and neighbouring areas accepted as Turkish Cypriot estates, were formerly Linobambaki activity centers. These include: By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, approximately 30,000 Muslims were living in Cyprus, comprising about 35% of the total population. The fact that Turkish was the main language spoken by the Muslims of the island is a significant indicator that the majority of them were either Turkish-speaking Anatolians or otherwise from a Turkic background. Throughout the Ottoman rule, the demographic ratio between Christian "Greeks" and Muslim "Turks" fluctuated constantly. During 1745–1814, the Muslim Turkish Cypriots constituted the majority on the island compared to the Christian Greek Cypriots, being up to 75% of the total island population. However, by 1841, Turks made up 27% of the island's population. One of the reasons for this decline is because the Turkish community were obliged to serve in the
Ottoman army for years, usually away from home, very often losing their lives in the endless wars of the Ottoman Empire. Another reason for the declining population was because of the emigration trend of some 15,000 Turkish Cypriots to Anatolia in 1878, when the Ottoman Turks handed over the administration of the island to Britain.
British Cyprus By 1878, during the
Congress of Berlin, under the terms of the Anglo-Ottoman
Cyprus Convention, the Ottoman Turks had agreed to assign Cyprus to
Britain to occupy and rule, though not to possess as
sovereign territory. According to the first British census of Cyprus, in 1881, 95% of the island's Muslims spoke Turkish as their mother tongue. As of the 1920s, the percentage of
Greek-speaking Muslims had dropped from 5%, in 1881, to just under 2% of the total Muslim population. During the opening years of the twentieth century
Ottomanism became an ever more popular identity held by the Cypriot Muslim intelligentsia, especially in the wake of the
Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Increasing numbers of
Young Turks who had turned against Sultan
Abdul Hamid II sought refuge in Cyprus. A rising class of disgruntled intellectuals in the island's main urban centres gradually began to warm to the ideas of positivism, freedom and modernization. Spurred on by the rising calls for "
enosis", the union with
Greece, emanating from
Greek Cypriots, an initially hesitant "Turkism" was also starting to appear in certain newspaper articles and to be heard in the political debates of the local intelligentsia of Cyprus. In line with the changes introduced in the Ottoman Empire after 1908, the curricula of Cyprus's Muslim schools, such as the "Idadi", were also altered to incorporate more
secular teachings with increasingly
Turkish nationalist undertones. Many of these graduates in due course ended up as teachers in the growing number of urban and rural schools that had begun to proliferate across the island by the 1920s. . The family were Turkish Cypriots who owned the newspaper
Söz Gazetesi. In 1914, the
Ottoman Empire joined the
First World War against the
Allied Forces and Britain annexed the island. Cyprus's Muslim inhabitants were officially asked to choose between adopting either British nationality or retaining their Ottoman subject status; about 4,000–8,500 Muslims decided to leave the island and move to Turkey. Following its defeat in World War I, the Ottoman Empire were faced with the
Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) whereby the Greek incursion into Anatolia aimed at claiming what Greece believed to be historically Greek territory. For the Ottoman Turks of Cyprus, already fearing the aims of enosis-seeking Greek Cypriots, reports of atrocities committed by the Greeks against the Turkish populations in Anatolia, and the Greek
Occupation of Smyrna, produced further fears for their own future. Greek forces were routed in 1922 under the leadership of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who, in 1923, proclaimed the new Republic of
Turkey and renounced irredentist claims to former Ottoman territories beyond the Anatolian heartland. Muslims in Cyprus were thus excluded from the nation-building project, though many still heeded Atatürk's call to join in the establishment of the new nation-state, and opted for
Turkish citizenship. Between 1881 and 1927 approximately 30,000 Turkish Cypriots emigrated to Turkey. At its core were the Kemalist values of
secularism,
modernization and
westernization; reforms such as the introduction of the new
Turkish alphabet, adoption of western dress and secularization, were adopted voluntarily by Muslim Turkish Cypriots, who had been prepared for such changes not just by the
Tanzimat but also by several decades of British rule. Many of those Cypriots who until then had still identified themselves primarily as Muslims began now to see themselves principally as Turks in Cyprus. By 1950, a
Cypriot Enosis referendum in which 95.7% of Greek Cypriot voters supported a fight aimed at
enosis, the union of Cyprus with
Greece were led by an armed organisation, in 1955, called
EOKA by
Georgios Grivas which aimed at bringing down British rule and uniting the island of Cyprus with Greece. Turkish Cypriots had always reacted immediately against the objective of enosis; thus, the 1950s saw many Turkish Cypriots who were forced to flee from their homes. In 1958, Turkish Cypriots set up their own armed group called
Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT) and by early 1958, the first wave of armed conflict between the two communities began; a few hundred Turkish Cypriots left their villages and quarters in the mixed towns and never returned.
Republic of Cyprus ) in
Paphos (1969) By 16 August 1960, the island of Cyprus became an independent state, the
Republic of Cyprus, with power sharing between the two communities under the
1960 Zurich agreements, with Britain, Greece and Turkey as Guarantor Powers. Archbishop
Makarios III was elected as president by the Greek Cypriots and
Dr. Fazıl Küçük was elected as vice-president by the Turkish Cypriots. However, in December 1963, in the events known as "
Bloody Christmas", when Makarios III attempted to modify the Constitution, Greek Cypriots initiated a military campaign against the Turkish Cypriots and began to attack Turkish inhabited villages; by early 1964, the Turkish Cypriots started to withdraw into armed
enclaves where the Greek Cypriots blockaded them, resulting in some 25,000 Turkish Cypriots becoming refugees, or internally "displaced persons". With the rise to power of the
Greek military junta, a decade later, in 1974, a group of right-wing
Greek nationalists,
EOKA B, who supported the union of Cyprus with Greece,
launched a putsch. This action precipitated the
Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which led to the capture of the present-day territory of Northern Cyprus the following month, after a ceasefire collapsed. The Turkish invasion resulted in the occupation of some 37% of the island in the north. During the invasion of the island, a number of
atrocities against the Turkish Cypriot community were committed; such as the
Maratha, Santalaris and Aloda massacre by the Greek Cypriot paramilitary organisation EOKA B. After the Turkish invasion and the ensuing 1975 Vienna agreements, 60,000 Turkish Cypriots who lived in the south of the island fled to the north. The 1974–1975 movement was strictly organised by the Provisional Turkish Administration who tried to preserve village communities intact. In 2004, a referendum for the unification of the island, the "
Annan Plan", was accepted by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots. The majority of Turks born after 1975 in Northern Cyprus are the mixed descendants of native Turkish Cypriots and mainland Turkish settlers. ==Culture==