The leaders of war-split Cyprus on Friday appealed for witnesses to help trace hundreds of people that went missing in the violence that tore the island apart, saying time was rapidly running out for families to learn the fate of their loved ones.
Forensics teams operating under the auspices of the United Nations have been working on suspected decades-old mass grave sites on the island since 2006, relying heavily on tips from witnesses, often given anonymously. Those missing are Greek Cypriot victims of a war in 1974, and Turkish Cypriot victims of intercommunal clashes dating from the early 1960s.
But the number of individuals found and identified has been dwindling by the year. Of a total of 2,002 people missing, 1,204 have been exhumed and of those, 1,033 people identified.
"We are encouraging people who know about the sites to come and give information because unless they give information you are not able to explore further sites," said Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar.
"We are encouraging people to come out ... before they die," Tatar said. "There are a lot of people who know."
In a rare display of unity, he and President Nikos Christodoulides, the Greek Cypriot leader, met in no-man's-land dividing the Cypriot capital Lefkoşa (Nicosia) on Friday.
They toured a lab where forensics experts from both communities painstakingly try to piece together human remains and match them with DNA samples offered by relatives.
It has been "so many years for the relatives to wait, I'm sure all of you understand the pain," Christodoulides said. "I'm here, and with Ersin, to examine any way in order to have more teams ... to speed up the process regarding this purely humanitarian issue."
Friday's meeting took place within the compound of an airport complex, abandoned in fighting in 1974 and used as a base for United Nations peacekeeping operations since.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots have lived divided since a Greek Cypriot coup aiming at Greece's annexation led to Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence in 1974. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) marked the 49th anniversary of the Cyprus Peace Operation nearly two weeks ago on July 19.
Sporadic fighting between the two communities dates from the 1960s shortly after independence from Britain when ethnic attacks forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety. Some 1,510 Greek Cypriots vanished in 1974, while 492 Turkish Cypriots disappeared between 1963 and 1974.
The TRNC was founded in 1983.
The island has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including U.N.-brokered settlement talks and a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Greek Cypriot administration entered the European Union in 2004, the same year Greek Cypriots thwarted the U.N.’s Annan plan to end the dispute.
An international embargo against Turkish Cyprus is currently in place in several areas that allow access to international communications, postal services and transport only through Türkiye.
The TRNC has been committed to demanding a two-state solution that would ensure international recognition and equal sovereignty and status. The Greek side rejects it out of hand based on their desire for a federal solution based on the hegemony of the Greeks.
Türkiye, which has the longest continental coastline in the Eastern Mediterranean, also rejects maritime boundary claims by Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration, stressing that their excessive claims violate the sovereign rights of Türkiye and the Turkish Cypriots.
