AndreasConstandinos

                                                  The Cyprus Crisis

Since the summer of 1974, the island of Cyprus has been divided and approximately 200 000 people out of a total population of fewer than 600 000 became refugees. According to one source there were 163 797 displaced Greek Cypriots and 41 700 Turkish Cypriots moved from the south of the island to the northern part of the island, occupied by the Turkish military. To put this into context, if a comparable scenario were to take place in the United Kingdom it would amount to approximately twenty million refugees.

On 20 July 1974, following a coup d’état launched on the island by the military junta in Athens and a subsequent Turkish invasion, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 353 which called upon ‘all States to respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus’. Turkey’s military operation is referred to by some as an ‘invasion’, by others as an ‘intervention’ as well as a ‘peace operation’. It should logically be referred to it as an ‘invasion’for the following reason. There are legal arguments to support the view that initially Turkey ‘intervened’, but due to Turkey’s subsequently illegal (as so declared by one hundred and ninety-one member-states of the United Nations - Turkey is the only member state that disagrees) occupation of the north of Cyprus, one should reasonably conclude that the most accurate expression to be used is ‘invasion’. Article 4 of the Treaty of Guarantee 1960, afforded Britain, Greece and Turkey the legal right to intervene if constitutional order on the island were disrupted. Crucially, however, this extends only to re-establishing the state of affairs as envisaged under Cyprus' Constitution. If Turkey had done so and then left, the events of 20th July 1974 could be described as an 'intervention'. However, the fact that Turkey, thirty-five years later, continues to occupy the northern part of Cyprus, means that what may have begun as an intervention became an invasion. It is worth quoting Article 4 in its entirety:

In the event of a breach of the provisions of the present Treaty, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom undertake to consult together with respect to the representations or measures necessary to ensure observance of those provisions.

In so far as common or concerted action may not prove possible, each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty.

Further, on 6 September 2006, Justice Jack, in the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court in London ruled in the Apostolides vs. Orams case, that ‘On 20th July 1974 the Turkish army invaded the north of the island…'

Further, the United Nations Security Council demanded ‘an immediate end to foreign military intervention in the Republic of Cyprus that is in contravention of the provision of paragraph 1 above’ (This refers to: ‘all States to respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus’) and requested:

…the withdrawal without delay from the Republic of Cyprus of foreign military personnel present otherwise than under the authority of international agreements, including those whose withdrawal was requested by the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, in his letter of 2 July 1974.

On 1 November 1974, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution urging:

…the speedy withdrawal of all foreign armed forces and foreign military presence and personnel from the Republic of Cyprus and the cessation of all foreign interference in its affairs.

Still today, Nicosia remains the world’s last divided capital city, with the northern and the southern parts of the city partitioned by the ‘Green Line’ (so-called because when the intercommunal troubles erupted in 1963/4, the British soldier who first drew the line on a map of Nicosia did so using a green pen; green is the military colour for an obstacle), a demilitarised zone maintained by the United Nations. Both in Athens and Nicosia there was a strong feeling that the US, more specifically the CIA, had been behind the 15 July coup against Makarios. The Cyprus Crisis sparked mass demonstrations and many of those demonstrating in July and August also believed that both Britain and the US colluded with Turkey in her subsequent partition and occupation of 37 per cent of the island. At the very least, Britain, since 1960 a Guarantor of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Cyprus, and the US, as the ‘world’s policeman’, had initially failed to prevent the coup d’état and then not once, but twice, failed to prevent Turkish troops from (a) landing, and (b) occupying the northern part of Cyprus.

These sentiments continue to exist almost thirty-five years later. In 1979, in a well-publicised BBC interview with Michael Parkinson, Dr. Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State at the time of the Cyprus Crisis, was asked what he would class as his professional failures. After mentioning the Watergate scandal, Kissinger replied:

…the handling of the Cyprus crisis in ‘74 coming as it did…coinciding with the disintegration of the Nixon presidency was…could have been more effectively done.

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