Understanding the Cyprus problem: a small chess piece on a huge board

The island of Cyprus, the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, has witnessed an intermittently-bloody conflict since the latter part of the twentieth century. This island has over the past fifty years turned into a battle ground between the Greek and Turkish ethnic groups. Consequently, hundreds have died and thousands have become refugees and despite various efforts by third-parties, no solution has been achieved to date. This paper examines both the external and internal history of Cyprus and argues that Cyprus has a history of being utilized as a pawn on a larger European chess board and that the present stalemate of Turkey-EU relations has more to do with internal EU politics than with the Cyprus per se.