Culture Smart! - Cyprus - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Adapted from Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past.

ISBN 978 1 78702 260 7

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library

First published in Great Britain

by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd

59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440

www.culturesmart.co.uk

Inquiries:

Design Bobby Birchall

Printed in Turkey

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand. All Culture Smart! guides are available as e-books, and many as audio books. For further information and latest titles visit www.culturesmart.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CONSTANTINE BUHAYER is a Londoner of Greek heritage. He has supervised for the International Liaison and Communication M.A. program at the University of Westminster, London, and lectured British military personnel, Chinese policemen (in preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games), and foreign journalists on culturally sensitive bilingual translation. He was also the country analyst on Cyprus, Greece, and North Macedonia for Janes Sentinel, Security Assessment. He has reported on Greece and Europe for the BBC and Monocle Radio, and was guest Associate Producer on related CBS 60 Minutes programs.

Constantine was for many years a columnist on Parikiaki, a Cypriot newspaper in London, and a contributor to the Cypriot press. He has been active as an elected representative in political, community, and interfaith affairs in London, and is involved in Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot bicommunal dialogue. He is also the author of Culture Smart! Greece.

Cyprus is a single geographical entity. It is home to two political units. The Republic of Cyprus officially represents the whole island but does not control the northern section, which is occupied and recognized only by Turkey and is a de facto state.

As shadows envelop your land

The winds, Cyprus, are blowing with your love.

You are the jewel of the Mediterranean, unique.

(From Cyprus, by the Turkish-Cypriot poet Emine Otan.)

Land of the lemon tree, of the olive grove.

Land of the southerly winds.

Cyprus, this golden-green leaf cast in the ocean.

(From Chrysoprasino Fyllo, by the Greek-Cypriot poet Malenis Leonidas)

As you fly over the Eastern Mediterranean, you see glittering in the blue sea below the island of Cyprus, which lies at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Like Aphrodite, the Cypriot Goddess of Beauty and Love, it emerged out of a primordial ocean; its highest mountain, Troodos, is a fragment of that ancient seabed.

More than any other sea, the Mediterranean has been the crucible of great civilizations. Across the island of Cyprus they have left not only their imprint but their legacies down the ages, and current ownership is subject to hard negotiations.

Indeed, history never stops. In the latest sequel, the Republic of Cyprus was forcibly divided in 1974, its people dislocated. The Greek Cypriot South is controlled by the government, attuned to the world, a member of the European Union, and accommodating the international community. All this within a stones throw from idyllic beaches and the majestic landscapes of the hinterland. Visitors will find a generous country enjoying a take-it-easy, sig-sig, yava-yava lifestyle, great food, and cultural heritage.

The breakaway North Cyprus is isolated but not forgotten. It is administered by the Turkish Cypriots and occupied and recognized only by Turkey, which acts both as its lifejacket and its Achilles heel. It contrasts with the South, but all communities on the island, even those who think they stand apart, possess a shared Cypriotness and common hopes and memories.

Culture Smart! Cyprus is unique in its approach. It combines essential insights into the Cypriot people of todaytheir values and attitudes, and the ways geography and history play into their liveswith practical advice on how to approach unexpected social situations, especially if on occasion you have the impression of walking on eggshells. What one person might see as cultural, another sees as political, and a third as territorial.

The Cypriots have a deep-seated experience of trauma and survival. They can present a variety of faces to confront, accommodate, or welcome outsiders as and when necessary. They are instinctively welcoming and generous and enjoy good companionship, lively debates, and mellow conversations.

So let the discovery begin of this multifaceted, surprising people, for the poet is right when she says Cyprus is the jewel of the Mediterranean.

Texts adapted from the Turkish and Greek by Constantine Buhayer.