AP PHOTOS: Remnants of lives cut short by war half a century ago captured in Cyprus buffer zone

NICOSIA, Cyprus — A rickety piano leans crookedly against the peeling wall of an apartment, dusty pots and pans rest on a stove that has seen much better days and a book, its pages turning yellow with age, lies open next to a rusty tin can — signs of homes once teeming with life but suddenly abandoned as they remain frozen in time.

Fifty years ago, Turkey invaded Cyprus — five days after supporters of union with Greece staged a coup backed by the country’s ruling Greek military junta — dividing the eastern Mediterranean island nation along ethnic lines. Only Turkey recognizes a subsequent Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the northern third of the island, where it maintains more than 35,000 troops.

The Associated Press was granted exclusive access inside the 180-kilometer (about 110-mile) United Nations buffer zone where its troops have been stationed since 1974 to preserve peace between Turkish and Turkish Cypriot troops on one side and Greek Cypriot national guards on the other.

The traces of war are everywhere: from the pockmarked walls of houses and businesses that are the target of high-calibre gunfire to the hastily constructed gun nests facing each other. But the most chilling feeling is that of how the heart of a capital stops mid-beat as people flee for their lives, leaving everything behind.

The UN says tensions along the buffer zone are rising again with the emergence of hundreds of new firing points and high-tech surveillance technology with potential military applications.

Talks on forming a federation comprising Greek- and Turkish-speaking areas have been stalled since the last proposal was put forward by the United Nations seven years ago. Many failed attempts preceded it.

Now the move by Turks and Turkish Cypriots away from a federation towards a two-state arrangement, which the Greek Cypriots have flatly rejected, is jeopardising a renewed attempt by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.