Cyprus is an island state in the eastern Mediterranean. With an area of 9,251 square kilometers (3,572 square miles), it is the third largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia. Its two mountain ranges, one running along the northern coast and the other in the center and southwest, are separated by the fertile Mesaoria plain.

In the thirteenth century B.C.E., the Mycenaean Greeks started settling in Cyprus, introducing the Greek language and culture, which have been preserved into the twenty-first century. In 1571 Cyprus was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, who held the island for more than three hundred years. It is to this period that the Turkish-Cypriot minority community is traced. Cyprus was ceded to Britain in 1878.

(MAP BY MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS/THE GALE GROUP)

In 1955 the Greek Cypriots' liberation struggle against the British, which had the aim of uniting Cyprus with Greece, ended with the limited...