When a key has no door: Digital archives of displacement in Varosha

By Nilsu Erkul | ISSUE 28

Abandoned entrance in Varosha, Famagusta. Former residential buildings remain sealed and inaccessible, their thresholds marking prolonged absence rather than return. Photo courtesy of the author, Nilsu Erkul

A photograph appears on Facebook. It shows a small cloth bag laid open on a table. Inside are three objects: a swimsuit, a metal key, and a school badge from the Greek Gymnasium of Famagusta. The person who shared the image explains that they found the bag after their parents passed away. The swimsuit was never worn after 1974. The key no longer opens anything. The school badge belongs to a building that no longer exists as a place of learning. Within hours, the post fills with comments. ‘I have the same key.’ ‘My mother kept her badge too.’ ‘We all thought we would go back.’

This post is not labelled as an archive. It does not sit in a museum or a repository. Yet for many displaced Famagustians, it functions as one.

Varosha, an abandoned and militarised quarter of Famagusta in Cyprus, has been inaccessible since 1974. Following the island’s division, the area was sealed off and left to decay, shaped by what is commonly referred to as the unresolved nature of the Cyprus problem. For decades, its streets, homes, and schools remained physically present but unreachable. In 2020, two main streets of Varosha were partially reopened for touristic access, though the conditions of return for its former residents remain unclear. Most former residents now live elsewhere, scattered across Cyprus and the diaspora. Their relationship to the city is shaped by absence, waiting, and memory rather than access.

An empty turtle shell in the shallows of Varosha’s reopened shoreline, with the city in the background. Photo courtesy of the author, Nilsu Erkul

In the absence of institutional or accessible official archives, displaced communities have had to create their own. Over time, Famagustians have built what might be called a “Virtual Varosha” across social media platforms, particularly Facebook. These pages are not curated by professionals, nor do they follow archival standards. They consist of old photographs, scanned documents, stories, objects, anniversaries, and fragments of ordinary life. They are open, informal, and accessible to anyone. For a dispersed community, they have become one of the few spaces where the city can still be collectively inhabited.

The post with the key and the school badge is one such space. It records more than personal loss. Through comments and shared recognition, it becomes a collective act of remembrance. The objects act as anchors, linking individual memory to a shared experience of displacement. The post invites others to respond, not with debate or explanation, but with recognition. In doing so, it transforms a private moment into a communal archive.

What is striking about these digital traces is their ordinariness. There is nothing exceptional about a key or a school badge. Yet, within the context of displacement, these objects take on new meaning. They stand in for streets that cannot be walked, schools that cannot be entered, and homes that remain locked behind fences. They allow memory to circulate when physical movement is denied. This is everyday archival labour: quiet, repetitive, and largely unnoticed.

These practices challenge the silences embedded in state-led narratives about Varosha. Official discussions often frame the city in geopolitical or economic terms, as territory, property, or potential development. What is missing from these accounts are the textures of ordinary life: the objects kept in drawers, the routines interrupted, the emotional weight carried across generations. Digital posts like this one record the everyday  elements  that  formal archives often overlook.

They also capture time differently. Many posts in Varosha’s Facebook groups appear around anniversaries, celebrations, or moments of political change. Together, they form an informal temporal calendar. The key and badge post is part of this rhythm. It is not only about the past, but about the present experience of living with unresolved displacement. The phrase “fifty years and counting” appears often, referring to the period since the island’s division in 1974. Waiting becomes a temporal condition, shared and rehearsed online.

Although these materials do not resemble traditional archives, they function as such for diaspora communities. They sustain continuity in the absence of place. They allow memories to be stored, revisited, and recognised by others who share similar losses. They also carry claims to place, quietly asserting that Varosha is not only a fenced-off site, but a lived city held together through memory.

At the same time, these digital archives are fragile. Posts can be buried by algorithms, removed by platforms, or lost when accounts disappear. Metadata fades. Images circulate without context. As the generation with direct memories of Varosha grows older, these online spaces begin to carry a different weight, raising questions about what is remembered, what is lost and what remains visible over time. 

The photograph of the key and the school badge reminds us that archives do not always announce themselves. Sometimes they appear as ordinary posts, shared late at night, found by chance, and recognised by those who know what they mean. For displaced communities like Varosha’s, archiving migration is not an institutional project. It is something that happens at the tip of everyone’s fingers, through small acts of remembering, sharing, and responding.

In these digital spaces, Varosha continues to exist, not as a place that can be returned to, but as one that is actively held together in the face of displacement.

Nilsu Erkul

Nilsu holds a PhD in Architecture from Cardiff University, where her research focused on contested urban environments, collective memory and the social dimensions of place. Her engagement with these themes is shaped by long-term research and professional ties to Cyprus, a divided island where displacement continues to structure everyday life and intergenerational memory. She currently works as a planning consultant in the UK, contributing to planning practices across residential and commercial development.