Last month in Geneva the UN brokered an informal 5+1 meeting between the representatives of the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus in yet another fruitless attempt to find a resolution to the island’s “Intractable, identity-based conflict (RJ Fisher, Journal of Peace Research 2001). Also in attendance were the foreign ministers from Cyprus’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and Britain. For ordinary citizens of the country and foreign observers alike, this amounted to a “Groundhog Day” experience. The disputing parties came (with their own agendas), they talked (at each other) while remaining firmly anchored to their core list of non-negotiables. The disputants returned to their bunkers.
No compromise, no progress…the stalemate and the status quo continues. Even the usually “glass half-full” UN head is not sanguine about future prospects…UN secretary-general Guterres emerged from the three-day summit with a ‘realistic’ rather than a hopeful sense of the situation, stating that there was “not enough common ground to resume negotiations” and that new talks were months away (‘Cyprus settlement talks found little common ground: UN chief’, Aljazeera, 29-Apr-2021, www.aljazeera.com).
The rationales
Both sides restated their entrenched positions…the Greek Cypriots and Greece wouldn’t budge from their Greek Cypriot-majority bi-zonal federation model as the precondition to reunification, a formula ensuring the Greek community would still be dominant in the Federation. Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar insisted that to go forward the standing UN resolutions that sanction this approach should be sidestepped in favour of the alternate Turkish Cypriot proposal for a two-state solution, a formula backed by the Turkish government in Ankara and its controversial president Recep Erdogan.
The British connexion and the Cyprus Emergency
The self-interest of Greece and Turkey is transparent, but some may wonder why the UK was one of the participating players in the Cyprus stalemate talks. The British nexus has its genesis in 1878 when expansionist Britain took advantage of the ailing Ottoman Empire to establish a protectorate over Cyprus and add the Eastern Aegean island to its imperial possessions⌖.
Lead up to the 1960 compromise and beyond
Fast forward to 1955, overseas colonies around the globe were increasingly asserting a postwar yearning for independence from their European masters. Anyone familiar with Britain’s colonial policy in the 20th century (eg, Balfour Declaration on Palestine, Aden, British Raj in India, etc), will be aware of its track record on disengagement with its colonies is far from spotless. The Cyprus situation in the years 1955-60 continued this pattern. British policy towards the colony was shortsighted and misguided. By rigidly denying the Greek and Turkish Cypriots a right to self-determination in an increasingly heavy-handed way, the colonial power inadvertently fostered Greek and Turkish Cypriot nationalist sentiments¤. The struggle of Greek Cypriots to free themselves of British rule was taken up by a guerrilla group called Ethniki Organised Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA). EOKA’s aims were not for independence but for union (Enosis) with Greece. Turkish Cypriots on the other hand, perceiving that the 1960 power share perpetuated their inferior place in the republic developed the idea of Taksim (‘partition’) in opposition to the Greeks’ Enosis✪. EOKA’s campaign of violence targetted the police (Greek and Turkish Cypriot as well as British) and basically anyone who opposed Enosis. Britain’s tactless use of Turkish police to quell the revolt of Greek Cypriots further inflamed and created new ethnic divisions and hostilities between the communities.
Although the British military eventually reined in most of the EOKA activists, the island’s slid towards war prompted Britain and the US to bring some kind of resolution to the conflict. Talks in 1959 led to the establishment of a republic in 1960 with a shared power arrangement—Greek Cypriot president, Turkish Cypriot vice president, etc—leadership of the republic thus fell to Archbishop Makarios (“Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).
Cold War considerations
Geostrategic considerations of the Cold War played a part in both Britain’s and the US’ involvement in the Cyprus imbroglio. Cyprus was non-aligned and the western powers were fearful that the USSR could take advantage of the island”s instability with a view to establishing a base there, giving it a much sought-after influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The activism and appeal of AKEL, the Cyprus communist party, augmented those fears (‘The Soviet Union, Turkey and the Cyprus Problem, 1967-1974’, John Sakkas & Nataliya Zhukova, Les Cahiers Rice, 2013/1 (n°10), www.cairn.info). Washington’s later support for the Greek colonels’ dictatorship as a buffer against communism proved disastrous for Cyprus’s long-term stability.
Cyprus in crisis
Trouble in the bi-communal unitary state surfaced in 1963 when Makarios proposed constitutional changes to limit Turkish Cypriot political influence. A civil war broke out between the two communities (inter communal violence, casualties on both sides, arson, displacement of villagers, intervention by UN Peacekeeping Force – which became permanent). The Turkish Cypriot-controlled area was reduced to a few enclaves and Nicosia, the capital, was divided by a cease-fire line called the “Green Line”.
Greek colonels coup and Turkish counter-strike
1974 was the most momentous year of the Cyprus conflict. Athens’ military junta operating through a paramilitary group overthrew the Cyprus government of Makarios and installed a ‘marionette’ government headed by an ex-EOKA leader and convicted murderer. The schemers’ purpose of the coup was to bring about the desired union with Greece. For Ankara though, it provided the opportunity (and pretext) it was waiting for…five days after the coup the Turkish military invaded Cyprus (Operation Atilla), the Greek coup collapsed and the Turkish invaders captured nearly 40% of the island. A cease-fire was negotiated but not before thousands of casualties and expulsions, particularly of Greek Cypriots from the north. Turkey set up a de facto Turkish entity in North Cyprus, which in 1983 was proclaimed to be the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC). TRNC was recognised as a sovereign state only by the regime in Ankara, not by any other country.
Footnote: Megali idea
Enosis grew out the Megali Idea (“Great Idea”), an aspirational irredentist concept that posits that all lost Greek territories will be liberated and united with Greece in the future. The Greek colonels launching their 1974 coup d’etat against the Makarios government echoed the concept in their declaration of “the Hellenic State of Cyprus”.See also the follow-up blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part II’
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⌖ formal annexation didn’t occur to 1914. In 1925 Cyprus was made a British crown colony
¤ an underlying grievance of Greek Cypriots in British Cyprus was what was effectively a system of double taxation. In addition to the standard taxation on many items, the communities had to contribute to Britain’s tribute payments to the Ottoman Empire in return for ‘leasing’ the island
✪ under British rule the two communities had been allowed to self- segregate, this led to an aggregation of “nationalistic fervour”, resulting in the development of Enosis and Taksim (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). See also Footnote above.