Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cyprus to render it familiar and 'safe' to the
British visitor. Constituting 49% of arrivals in
1998, rising to 61% in 2003, UK tourists to
southern Cyprus outnumber by several-fold the
German tourists who form the next largest cate-
largest tourist market after Turkey, at around
10% of total arrivals, with Germany in third
place at 4-5% (Devlet Planlama Örgütü, 2001).
The age profile of tourists to the north tends to
be higher than the south, and includes a good
number of retired British servicemen and their
families revisiting the scene of their military
service from the 1950s. The international club
scene centred on the resort of Ayia Napa, in
contrast, attracts many younger, single tourists to
the south.
The north of Cyprus has attempted to
develop its tourism under substantially differ-
ent conditions from the south, closed off from
the major global tourism players, but with its
border wide open to Turkey (Scott, 2000). Of
the 351,000 visitors to Northern Cyprus in
1994, 73% were short-stay visitors from Turkey
(Sönmez and Apostolopoulos, 2000). This trend
has been deepened by the development in the
north of a casino tourism sector, directed primarily
at gambling tourists from Turkey and Israel
(Bicak and Altinay, 1996; Scott and A
s
iko
H
lu,
to emulate the south's prosperity, and its annual
per capita income of $3538 lags far behind the
$10,591 per capita of the south. However, it
is the north's very exclusion from mainstream
tourism which now makes it potentially a parti-
cularly attractive 'nature/culture' tourism product
for the European market.
meant that only planes from Turkey could land
at Ercan Airport, just northeast of Nicosia, with
passengers from non-Turkish sources such as
London and Frankfurt being required to change
planes or, in some cases, simply touch down en
route at Istanbul, Izmir or Antalya. Like Ercan
airport, the north's seaports of Famagusta and
Kyrenia were deemed illegal points of entry,
and all transport and communication links to
the north were diverted through Turkey.
Internally, traffic across the Green Line was
also closely regulated and liable to be termi-
nated abruptly at times of dispute or political
tension. Limited transit was permitted to enable
a number of Turkish Cypriots to work in the
south, largely in construction and labouring, and
the British sovereign bases, straddling the buffer
zone and occupying roughly 2% of the land area
of Cyprus, also provided employment for both
Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Foreign nationals
entering via a port of entry in the south were
allowed limited entry into the north during day-
light hours, but were not permitted to bring
goods purchased in the north back with them.
Foreigners entering via the north were not
admitted into the south, either across the Green
Line or subsequently, if they carried a TRNC
stamp in their passport.
In April 2004 the Council of Europe called
on the European Commission to bring forward
comprehensive proposals to put an end to the
isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community. A
high priority for the north in this regard has
been to lobby for the authorization of direct
flights, although there seemed little likelihood
that this would be granted in the immediate
in the number of arrivals through Ercan in the
3 years from 2002 (Table 18.1), and there are
plans to expand the existing terminal and even
to build a new runway. The number of non-
Turkish visitors staying in hotels in the north has
also risen over the same period (Table 18.2).
At the beginning of May 2004, following a
period of uncertainty and some disagreement
among government ministries in the south,
foreign nationals with EU passports who had
entered Cyprus via the north were permitted
to cross into the south for the first time. These
first steps inaugurated the free movement of EU
citizens around Cyprus, as provided for by the
Green Line Regulation which had been adopted
Opening up the North: the Green
Line Regulation
The north's seclusion was largely the result of
the cutting of direct transport and communica-
tion links following the war of 1974. Nicosia
International Airport, which had previously
served the island as a whole, remained stranded
and out of use in the buffer zone between the
two sectors. The construction of Larnaca and
subsequently Paphos airports filled this gap in
the south. In the north, by contrast, the inter-
national civil aviation boycott on direct flights
