Because of its strategic location Cyprus has been under the influence and control of regional and global powers throughout its history. For this reason, the island has a mixed population, but for centuries the two identity groups that prevailed in Cyprus have been the Greek Cypriot (GC) community and the Turkish Cypriot (TC) community. With the rise of the nation state, the GC population identified with and embraced the vision of union of the island with Greece (ENOSIS). In response to this TCs identified with and visioned the partitioning of the island between Türkiye and Greece (Taksim). These two competing visions respectively found support in Greece and Türkiye, forming the basis of the Cyprus conflict. At the height of international independence movements, to avoid conflict between two NATO allies in the midst of the Cold War, Britain, the colonial power on the island, chose to give independence to the island in 1960 in the form of an equality-based bi-communal partnership republic—the Republic of Cyprus (RoC).