Population of Cyprus 1800-2020

In 1800, the population of Cyprus was approximately 185 thousand people, a population which would remain stagnant throughout most of the 19^th century. However, following the re-administration of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire to the United Kingdom during the 1878 Cyprus Convention, when it became an integral part of Britain's military presence in the Mediterranean, the population of Cyprus began to grow. It reached over 400,000 people by the beginning of the Second World War, but would plateau at approximately 580 thousand in the early-1960s, after Cyprus, like many British colonies in the decades following the Second World War, gained independence from the empire.

Cyprus crises 1960s and 1970s

There were several periods of conflict and political instability on either side of this transition, as nationalist uprisings led to eventual independence, but this was soon followed by an split between Cyprus' ethnic Greek and Turkish populations. To summarize, Turkish Cypriots, who made up just under twenty percent of the population, felt they were being given a minority status and were not treated as equal citizens to the Greek Cypriots; the 1960s were characterized by political crises and tensions, exacerbated by foreign pressure from the Greek and Turkish governments. In July 1974, the military regime in mainland Greece orchestrated a coup d'état in Cyprus, in an attempt to annex the island, but five days later Turkish forces invaded northern Cyprus, taking control of roughly one-third of the island within two months. Over one thousand people died in the invasion, before a ceasefire was established, and then almost one third of the entire population were relocated to the respective region of their ethnic origin. The United Nations established a buffer zone between the Greek and Turkish regions of Cyprus, which remains the de facto border between the two regions today.

Post-split Cyprus

Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, and the Eurozone in 2008. Cyprus is considered a developed nation with a high-income economy and booming tourism sector. Tensions between the Greek and Turkish regions of Cyprus have gradually eased in the decades since partition, with increased freedom of movement between the north and south; however, in 2020, Turkish oil probes in the Mediterranean have crossed into Cypriot waters, which has worsened relations with the EU and wider international community. Cyprus' population reached one million people in the early 2000s, and in 2020 it is estimated to be just over 1.2 million people.