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About
Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state comprising the northern third of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, with the international community considering it territory of the Republic of Cyprus under Turkish military occupation. It extends from Cape Apostolos Andreas in the northeast to Morphou Bay in the northwest, with Cape Kormakitis at its westernmost point and the Kokkina exclave west of the mainland. A buffer zone controlled by the UN forms a barrier between both sides of the island and runs through Nicosia, the island's largest city and the capital of both sides.
Read more on Wikipedia →The Flag
History
The flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is the national flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and which is based on the flag of Turkey, with the colors reversed and two additional horizontal red stripes at the top and bottom. The flag was drawn by the Turkish Cypriot artist Emin Çizenel. It was adopted in 1984 by Northern Cyprus, a self-declared state that is recognized only by Turkey, after its unilateral declaration of independence in 1983.
Design & symbolism
The flag of Northern Cyprus was defined in Article 2 of the Flag Law of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus under these terms: "The flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has, under the conditions defined by law, a red star and crescent on a white background and two longitudinal lines". There aren't any official statements about the meaning of the flag. An interpretation is that the star and crescent represent Turkishness, red representing the blood of Turkish Cypriots killed in Cypriot intercommunal violence, white representing peace, the upper line representing Turkey, the bottom line representing Northern Cyprus and the horizontality of the lines represents that "The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus will last forever". In 2019, the flag became the subject of a conspiracy theory falsely claiming it was designed by Necmettin Erbakan and that the upper line represents the Nile, and the bottom one represents the Euphrates while the star and crescent mean the "land between the Nile and the Euphrates will not be for Zionists as long as Turkey exists". The theory was based on allegations claiming two blue stripes on the flag of Israel represent the Nile and Euphrates…
Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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