A trip to the edge of the Forbidden Zone
It was a wet, miserable day with the kind of incessant drizzle that churns everything into a grey melancholy and scolds people indoors. Think West of Ireland on a monotonous Thursday of late January, when cold rain drifts in sideways and an umbrella is barely even a gesture to misplaced hope.
Water splashed up from cars manoeuvring around potholes, veering from the left-hand side of the road. Shopfronts slid past in the gloom as I half-jogged on the disintegrating footpath. A car suddenly ploughed through the sodden verge - drenching me.
Soaked and angry, I pulled up beside a shuttered pub under a sign announcing 'Hangover' and was caught mid-swearing as something bundled into me with a grunt. I spun around and a large hooded young man managed to dance his way into being upright again, narrowly avoiding becoming road-kill.
“I’m sorry, I did not mean to make you afraid, very sorry."
And he was off again, squelching through the night.
Somewhere, the daily call to prayer faintly summoned the faithful few to remember a greater power, yet added to my sense of dislocation. If I closed my eyes, I would have sworn I would open them in Galway city of 2005.
In fact, I was in LefkoÅa, the Turkish Cypriot capital of the northern part of Cyprus. I was here for three days for work, with my wife in tow.
The clues were everywhere. The three-pin-plugs. The left-hand drive cars. The English accents. I was told it was common for those who could afford it to go to Britain for education. Cyprus had once been a British territory, and like so many former outposts of empire, the connection remains long after the Union Jack has gone from the buildings, and the almost obligatory civil war which divided the island, including its capital, post British rule.
Even the name of the city is contested. In the north it is LefkoÅa; in the south it is Nicosia, full stop. Greek Cypriots do not use LefkoÅa to describe the northern part of the city because to do so would be to accept, even implicitly, the reality of partition. Hence why, on the Greek side, the airport is described as Nicosia, while on the Turkish side, and in Turkey itself, it is LefkoÅa.
Language here is not descriptive; it is declarative. It reminded me strongly of the argument over Derry and Londonderry, where the choice of name signals not geography but allegiance, history and what kind of future (or past) one is prepared to accept. For Greek Cypriots, LefkoÅa is not a neutral alternative, it is the vocabulary of occupation.
What struck me, then, was how rare it was to see any public suggestion of something different. In one cluttered shop window, I noticed a small sign calling for a federal Cyprus. It was the only indication I encountered that reunification was still imagined as a possibility on the northern side. The shop itself was darkened and shut, but the sign remained in place, quietly stubborn. In a city where names themselves are checkpoints, it felt like a fragile but deliberate refusal to let the future be settled by default.
It is also, by any honest measure, a poor place. Separated from the rest of the island after decades of conflict, the north exists in an odd limbo, recognised internationally by only one country. While the southern part of Cyprus joined the European Union and prospered, the north fell behind.
In recent years, the embarrassed Turkish government has poured money into the small city centre. You can see it in the pedestrianised area: attractive craft shops, polished signage, smart façades designed to reassure visitors. But the illusion doesn’t last long. Step outside that curated zone to see crumbling footpaths, unrenovated buildings wedged between glossy storefronts, the visible strain of a place trying to look better and largely succeeding in between the gaps. But there are many gaps.
Our hotel manager, Dimitri, explained it plainly. Until about ten years ago, he said, things were extremely poor. His own story reflected the complexity of the place: a Moldovan mother and a Turkish father who arrived 25 years ago, with his son following in 2018, making a life in a half-recognised country that survives on tourism, the Turkish state and patience. There is also a surprising diversity of people here from central and north Africa.
On the Friday, with the rain clearing and a few hours to spare before our flight, I went walking with my camera while my wife stayed behind. The pedestrianised area is smaller than you’d expect, bracketed by mosques and craft shop bazaars. It’s easy - very easy, as I discovered - to wander beyond the invisible line.
I took a photograph of a sign stuck into a wheel rim. It didn’t look official. It simply read 'Forbidden Zone', in a couple of languages, with the stencil outline of a soldier.
I hadn’t realised where I was. That would immediately change.
Behind the sign a gate pulled back. A young soldier emerged and pointed his gun directly at me and ordered me forward. Slowly, deliberately, I raised my hands. I held my phone aloft, hoping my wife wouldn’t ring at that exact moment. Wind cut through the deserted street. Too fast. Slower I was told. Hands higher. Higher! I felt my pulse in my ears.
As I walked toward him, two other men appeared behind him, agitated, talking loudly. I was told a commander would be called. I explained I was a tourist. I explained I was Irish. It seemed to make little difference.
The commander arrived angry and fast, speaking in Turkish. I understood none of it. He barked into a phone and turned away pacing up and down the street. The young sentry, quieter now, told me not to panic. Everything would be fine. He seemed less than thrilled with how his day was going.
I found his indifference reassuring.
Standing there as the minutes wore on, I realised something unexpected: I felt safe. As long as I did nothing stupid, I was safe. I wasn’t in Iran. I wasn’t in Russia. And - this struck me forcefully - I wasn’t in America.
That thought surprised me. With everything unfolding there, with the killings of protestors by ICE officers and the casual proximity of violence, it seemed entirely plausible that this encounter could have gone worse in a country that still insists on calling itself the world’s leading democracy.
Eventually, they went through my phone, looking at my photos of bazaars, mosques and the Hangover bar. They seemed satisfied I wasn’t a spy - or at least not a good one. I was allowed to leave and catch our flight home.
Later, Dimitri explained the wider context. Tensions never really stop here. The southern Greek side, he said, sometimes close the border during northern independence celebrations, disrupting movement for days simply to make a point. Trading barbed insults and threats. Provocation is routine. Paranoia, in that light, is trained behaviour in the soldiers that patrol no-man’s-land running through the city, untouched since the war.
Northern Cyprus declared itself a republic in 1983, following decades of violence that included civil conflict in the 1960s and a Greek-backed coup that prompted a Turkish invasion. The deeper roots, like so much else, run back through British rule and the convenient borders of empire.
It is a familiar story. The British departed, as they did in Ireland and elsewhere, leaving behind unresolved identities, competing claims, and the quiet certainty that someone else would have to live with the consequences. Civil conflict, in that sense, feels less like a tragic accident of post-colonialism and more like a recurring feature of it.
Drive to Ercan Airport and you pass expensive hotels, car showrooms, modern infrastructure. The airport itself is sleek and efficient. Money has arrived. But the place still feels disconnected, unresolved, quietly tense. This is a strange world where old British colonial buildings are draped in Turkish culture, with calls to prayer, language, signage, tourism narratives that omit the war and ignore the other half of the island almost entirely, while enticing tourists to spend money in a strangely dislocated present.
Until a Mayo man takes a photo of a homemade sign stuck in an wheelrim.
