It is 50 years today since Turkey invaded Cyprus - the island has been divided ever since

​Then scroll down to the picture, also in Cyprus, showing a ghost town on the Mediterranean island today. Then scroll further down to a black and white picture of is of that same coastal resort in 1974, which was then a luxury destination.

What happened? Cyprus was invaded by Turkey on this day in 1974, in an incident that is simultaneously well remembered and forgotten. It is well remembered by most older people in Europe, say 65 and over. It is largely unknown among people of my age and younger, 50s and below.

The invasion – Turks reject the term, and say that it was a necessary ‘intervention’ to defend Turkish Cypriots from discriminatory Greeks – led to a bitter division of the island that persists to this day. The island is divided into the Republic of Cyprus, the southern half of the island that is a member of the European Union and a famous holiday destination. It is also a territory that has two RAF bases.

And then North Cyprus, which styles itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the much less known northern half of the island that is not a member of the EU. Indeed it is a ‘country’ that is recognised by almost no other nation on earth, apart from Turkey itself. To get there you have to fly via Turkey, because other countries do not allow direct flights to and from it. This makes travel to the north long and complicated, and so increases its isolation.

The history that led to this division is bitterly contested, and indeed is – as some other international issues are too – a source of some disagreement in Northern Ireland, where a number of unionist politicians have shown support for the diplomatically shunned Northern Cyprus.

Earlier this year I travelled to the north of the island. I will write some more about that in the coming weeks, including speaking to Lord Kilclooney (John Taylor) who bought a home there prior to the invasion, in 1972 when it was one country under the leadership of President Makarios (a controversial former Greek Orthodox Archbishop). He still travels to Northern Cyprus and advocates for it to be recognised as an independent state.

In 1878 the island came under British control. The majority of the population was Greek Cypriot, which wanted an end to British rule and union with Greece, known as Enosis. In the 1950s, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) began attacks against government offices. Among those who were killed were British policemen and members of the Royal Ulster Rifles.

Independence was achieved in 1960, and for a while there was an uneasy truce with the Turkish Cypriot population, which wanted the island to be divided. For a while there was a form of power-sharing between the two communities.

Turkey says that it had no option but to intervene in 1974, landing on beaches on the north of the island, because of an attempted coup by Greeks. But the diplomatic isolation of Northern Cyprus to this day suggests that it has failed to persuade the rest of the world that the invasion was necessary.

People of my generation, born 1970s and who became aware of news in the 1980s, tend not to know much about this because Cyprus was rarely in the news in the 80s. The island was by then in a cold war that has persisted to this day. But older Europeans remember the sensational news of the 1974 landings.

I became aware of the scale of what had happened at university in the early 1990s in England, talking to a soldier in his 40s who had served in Northern Ireland and Cyprus. He saw worse atrocities in the latter, he told me.

The resort in the pictures is Varosha. It was near to the newly divided island’s borders, hence why people fled it. It is still empty. The web version of this story will have a video of it.

More next week.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor