from the president's palace – the former office of Cyprus's British governor, with heraldic lions at the entrance – through the shady alleys of divided Nicosia.

Denktash was a British-educated barrister, known for his quicksilver mind and twinkling humour. His support for Turkish Cypriot independence was so unyielding, so the joke went, that during his entire legal career he took only one brief. The decades-long leader of the Turkish Cypriots, he declared his own state in the north of the Mediterranean island in 1983.

Rauf Denktash. Photograph: Tarik Tinazay/AFP/Getty Images

Almost 30 years on, only Turkey recognises it. The Turkish government attended Denktash's funeral en masse, a sign of Ankara's continuing support for his project in the face of international rejection. The rest of the world supports the southern (Greek Cypriot)Republic of Cyprus. An EU member since 2004, the republic has been battered by the chilly crisis blowing in from the eurozone and Greece. Its credit rating was reduced this week to junk.

At the funeral, Denktash's grandson Rauf Alp Dentkash said his grandfather had left behind a "fully fledged state".

"It may not have recognition today. But it's democratic," he said. "The Turkish Cypriots are ready for a solution to the Cyprus problem so long as they are guaranteed their security. My grandfather was very much afraid that what happened to the Turks in Crete would happen here."

State or no state, the northern side of the island – which includes the laid-back harbour town of Kyrenia and the strategic port of Famagusta – survives only because of Turkish largesse.