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WHEN the Turks invaded Cyprus on July 20, 1974, they landed on Five Mile Beach, a cove a few miles from the little harbour town of Kyrenia. It was badly chosen and the poorly equipped Greek Cypriot National Guard on the high ground above put up a spirited resistance.

The Turks eventually prevailed, however, thanks to naval gunfire and air support. A group of 2,000 Greek civilians took refuge in the Dome hotel, where they waited, under the protection of the United Nations, to be allowed home.

Permission never came. In the months that followed the refugees were divided into groups, taken by bus to a UN checkpoint in Nicosia and told to walk to the Greek side.

More than a quarter of a century later, Greek Cypriots who once lived in Kyrenia and other areas in the island’s north are emerging as the fiercest critics of a plan that could lead to reunification of the island.

By Tuesday morning Glafcos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, the octogenarian leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, are expected to agree to make a 145-page proposal by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, the basis for a settlement.

The Greek Cypriots would have to reconcile themselves to living in a united Cyprus where power would be shared equally with the Turkish minority. For their part the Turks would have to reduce the territory they control from 36% to 28.5%.

Among the Greek Cypriots taken to the checkpoint in 1974 was Savvas Shekersavva, a citrus farmer. He was met at the border by his son Ioannis, who had been visiting England with his British wife, Jennifer.

“It was then we realised this was going to be different from an ordinary war,” said Ioannis Shekersavva, now 54. “They were going to clear us out.”

Under Annan’s plan, only those Greek Cypriots who once lived in parts of the Turkish-controlled area near the border — about half the 162,000 registered Greek Cypriots who fled — are expected to be allowed home. They will include former residents of Varosha, a seaside ghost town the Turks never bothered to inhabit. People from Kyrenia and other northern areas may have to settle for compensation instead.

Ioannis Shekersavva, whose father died in 1997, is the secretary of the Kyrenia Refugee Association. He fears Annan’s peace plan will finally extinguish all hope of a return to the town immortalised in Lawrence Durrell’s book Bitter Lemons.

Shekersavva was born in Kyrenia and returned there in 1973 with his fiancée Jennifer, whom he had met while studying at Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry. Before they were married, they stayed in his parents’ house on Gladstonos Street, near the beach.

“The family owned a big orchard next to the house,” said Jennifer Shekersavva, who now has three grandchildren.

“I wrote to my mother telling her how we sat at the dinner table with a whole bucket full of mandarins. In England I only ever saw one in the bottom of my Christmas stocking.”

When the invasion came, the newlyweds were in England. By the time they got back Kyrenia had become no more than a poignant memory.

“That’s my children’s land,” she said. “Their grandparents worked it for years. My grandson isn’t two yet but every day, when he comes in and sees our picture of Kyrenia on the wall, he shouts ‘Kyrenia!’ ”

Between Kyrenia and Nicosia, where British UN troops patrol the world’s last divided capital, is the Kyrenia Range. Tattooed in painted stones on its southern slopes is a huge rendering of the flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It covers 15,000 square yards and is visible from much of Greek Cypriot-controlled Nicosia. This is the banner of Denktash’s kingdom, a pariah state recognised only by Ankara.

Denktash has encouraged mainland Turks to settle there, most of them from underdeveloped eastern Anatolia. The women wear Islamic dress and have large families.Turkish Cypriots, who are mostly secular, have become a minority within their own “republic”.

Annan wants an initial agreement by December 12, when, united or not, Cyprus is expected to be offered full membership of the European Union. The deal would have to be approved in a referendum.

There is a widespread belief in the region that Annan’s plan could work. “The Greek prime minister said as much earlier this week,” said James Ker-Lindsay, director of Civilitas Research, a Nicosia political consultancy. “For the first time Turkey recognises there is a link between its own EU membership hopes and the Cyprus issue. It it is now or never for Cyprus.”

Undoubtedly, some will prefer “never” to compromise. One of the addresses on Shekersavva’s calling card remains: “3 Gladstonos Street, Kyrenia”. It is the house in which he was brought up."