Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus,
is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is
geographically a part of West Asia, but its cultural ties and
geopolitics are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is
the third largest and third-most populous island in the Mediterranean.
It is east of Greece, north of Egypt, south of Turkey, and
west of Lebanon and Syria. Its capital and largest city is Nicosia.
The northeast portion of the island is de facto governed by the
self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Cyprus was settled by Mycenaean Greeks in two waves in the 2nd
millennium BC. As a strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean,
it was subsequently occupied by several major powers, including
the empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians, from whom
the island was seized in 333 BC by Alexander the Great.
Subsequent rule by Ptolemaic Egypt, the Classical and Eastern
Roman Empire, Arab caliphates for a short period, the French
Lusignan dynasty and the Venetians was followed by over three
centuries of Ottoman rule between 1571 and 1878
(de jure until 1914). Cyprus was placed under
the United Kingdom’s administration based on the Cyprus
Convention in 1878 and was formally annexed by the UK in 1914.
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