“The homes of the richest people, with the best landscaping efforts, now have decorative cactus bursting through porches, while former shrubs greedily eat the roofs and lintels. The place is loud with flocks

of birds, which live off feral lemons and oranges. Every street and sidewalk is thick with knee-high

grass. By the seaside, pigeons dwell in huge rookeries that were once pastel beach resorts.”[i]

Is this the quote of some obscure science fiction writer, describing the bleak outlook for human life in the coming years, or perhaps the wishful musings of some over-zealous environmentalists? No, unfortunately this is a real description of the city of Maras, on the small island of Cyprus. It is a perfect picture of what happens when the pressures of modern ideas, like globalization, mixed with the ethnocentric cultures found in Eastern Europe collide.

The city of Maras was once a populous city in Northern Cyprus, where many Greek-Cypriots lived out there daily lives in peace. After the Turks began their occupation of Northern Cyprus, the Greeks moved out, and the Turkish-Cypriots who considered it a Greek city wouldn’t move in. So still it sits today, 25 years later, a Ghost town.[ii]

In this paper, I will explain why this happened to Cyprus, as well as why this is now happening in Kosovo, Tibet, and East Timor, or anywhere else where there is an oppressive dictatorship killing off the locals, to make room for his own people. I will also present a possible solution to problems involving ethnic conflicts that end in the separation of a state into two parts, one recognized, one not.