ANKARA, July 16 (AFP) - Thirty years after its soldiers landed in Cyprus, Turkey is the only country in the world to recognise the mini-state that occupies the north of the divided Mediterranean island, ties up 35,000 troops and swallows huge sums of money from Ankara.
It was on July 20 1974 that Turkish soldiers landed at the holiday town of Kyrenia in the north in what was termed a peace operation. Five days earlier ultra-nationalist Greek Cypriots had seized power, urged on by the junta of colonels in power in Athens, with the aim of reuniting the island with the mainland.
Three decades later the bitter consequences of their coup can still be seen: a divided island, that has defied all international attempts at reunification, physical separation of the two communities, tens of thousands driven from their homes on both sides, a permanent United Nations military presence, the world`s last divided capital.
The Turkish intervention followed intense international negotiations in the aftermath of the coup, led by newspaper publisher Nikos Sampson, who had previously fought the British for independence. He ousted Archbishop Makarios as president.
The Turkish prime minister of the period, Bulent Ecevit, ordered his forces to intervene on the evening of July 19, using the right accorded in 1960 to the states guaranteeing the island`s independence (Britain, Greece and Turkey) to protect the island`s Turkish minority.
On July 22 Turkish forces occupied Kyrenia. That evening Ankara accepted a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. The Greek junta and Sampson`s short-lived government collapsed.
Two conferences bringing together foreign ministers from the three guaranteeing states were held in Geneva from July 25 on.
But Turkey, considering the fate of the Turkish islanders to be a national issue, denounced actions carried out against Turkish Cypriots by members of the armed ultra-nationalist Greek Cypriot group EOKA-B.
Between August 14 and 16 it launched a second operation to reinforce its military presence, occupying a third (37 percent) of the island and seizing the eastern town of Famagusta (Varosha) now a ghost town off limits.
The two sides are separated by a UN-supervised 180 kilometre (110 mile) "green line".
The anniversary of the Turkish intervention is marked each year by a military parade in the north of the island, the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, self-proclaimed in 1983, with a population of 200,000.
For the 30th anniversary Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul may be present. The party to which he belongs, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) was instrumental in launching the last round of intercommunal talks under UN auspices in 2003 to try to end the partition of the island.
But in April, Greek Cypriots voted massively in a referendum against reunification on the basis of a plan drawn up by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Long-serving Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash also opposed the plan but his fellow Turkish Cypriots endorsed it, weakening bis political position.
On May 1 the Greek part of the island, the Republic of Cyprus, was one of 10 states to join the European Union. The Turkish part remains outside the EU, pleading for financial help and an end to its political isolation.