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One of the most evocative events was the expulsion of many Greeks from Istanbul 40 years ago. A film set at that time is proving a Greek Cypriot blockbuster.

It is not unusual to encounter traffic jams in the centre of Nicosia.

But I was surprised to run into one a few weeks ago around a cinema complex outside the city.

Greek Cypriots in large numbers were elbowing their way to a ticket booth to see a film set in Istanbul.

“Politiki Kouzina” or “A Touch of Spice” looks like becoming the biggest selling Greek film ever.

It tells the story of a Greek boy growing up in Istanbul - part of the thriving community that live in Turkey - many of them descendants of the Greeks of ancient Byzantium.

The film is set against the background of the mass expulsion of an estimated 30,000 Greeks in 1964, when relations between Greece and Turkey deteriorated rapidly after inter-communal violence in Cyprus.

When the lights went up, the Greek Cypriots sitting around me were wiping away tears.

Most of them had never been to Istanbul, but it retains huge symbolic significance.

Grassroots

Greeks still refer to the city by its older name, Constantinopoli, and every year on the anniversary of the city’s conquest by the Ottomans, churches across Greece and Cyprus ring their bells.

Although most of his congregation now lives elsewhere, the spiritual head of the Greek Orthodox Church, or “patriarch”, remains in Istanbul.

He lives in an area called Phaner - the Greek word for light - which was once a prosperous neighbourhood.

Patriarch Bartholomew is the 270th successor to the apostle St Andrew

Two weeks after seeing the film, I was visiting Istanbul and, climbing the steep streets of Phaner, it was clear just how much the Greeks left behind here.

Tall solidly built town houses with marble steps and beautifully carved front doors. Monuments to the affluence and self-confidence of generations of Greek merchants.

Many of these buildings are now just empty shells. Others more habitable are occupied by Kurdish migrants from south-east Turkey.

Women in pink and red headscarves carried babies and loaves of bread up the hill, washing hung across the street above my head.

There was an overpowering smell of sewage and drains.

It is a transient population, these families will move on as soon as they get a break. And it was clear that nobody felt they owned the buildings.

But remarkably there are still around 2,000 Greeks left here, and at the top of the hill overlooking the narrow, smelly streets, stands Istanbul’s last Greek school.

Intermingled

The rather grandly named “Great School of the Nation” is an austere 19th Century red-brick building with an imposing central tower that looks more like a Victorian prison.

Around 60 children are educated here through a mixture of Greek and Turkish.

The school was established by the Greek Orthodox patriarch shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Online dating match in 1453, and can trace its roots back to a much older school that had flourished under Byzantine rule.

I was taken on a tour of the school by Andreas, originally from Northern Greece. He is one of 16 teachers sent to the school each year under a reciprocal agreement between the Greek and Turkish governments.

As part of the deal, 32 Ethnic dating teachers are seconded annually to Thrace in northern Greece to teach the Turkish minority there.

At a break in lessons, boys and girls in pale blue uniforms raced through the entrance hall, running over black and red floor tiles bearing inscriptions in Greek that exhorted them to strive for knowledge.

The walls of the assembly hall were decorated with frescoes of the Greek heroes, Pericles, Herodotus and Alexander.

But this is a Greek school in Turkey.

Bilingual

In front of them was the obligatory Ataturk corner, a display found in all Turkish schools, praising the free online game adult dating of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, father of the modern Turkish nation.

It is a nation that has not always welcomed ethnic minorities. Until a few years ago the Turkish authorities had decreed that the frescoes in the assembly hall should remain boarded up.

Before leaving I was invited to the principal’s office for tea.

Here was the next generation, effortlessly switching between two languages and two cultures

A dozen pupils - all girls - were being told off for using their mobile phones in class to send each other text messages.

“Do not do it again”, said the principal. “OK” replied one of the girls in Greek, repeating the word in the same breath in Turkish.

Coming from an island where Greeks and Turks still seldom meet, let alone speak each other’s language, I found this exchange extraordinary, and moving.

Here was the next generation, effortlessly switching between two languages and two cultures, with no anxious dating ethnic over ethnic identity or nationality.

For that girl, being a Greek in Turkey and speaking both languages was the most natural thing in the world.

The question is whether a thaw in relations between Greece and Turkey will enable the two populations as a whole, to feel as comfortable with each other.

And will this rapprochement give Greek Cypriots, lamenting the loss of their city, the confidence to go back and rediscover it for themselves as it is today, rather than mourning over a romanticised vision captured on film.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 20 March, 2004 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.