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by Michael Jansen
The Daily Star 20/07/99
Twenty-five years ago,
the Turkish Army invaded Cyprus. Ankara claimed that it was obliged to act
to protect the Turkish Cypriot community following a coup against President
Makarios mounted on July 15th by the faltering Greek junta in Athens. The
colonels had named as president Nicos Sampson, a Greek Cypriot right-winger
with a reputation as a Turk fighter. This provocative appointment presented
Turkey with a perfect propaganda ploy to justify intervention under the
Treaty of Guarantee which empowered Greece, Turkey and Britain to take
action if the communal balance on the island were disturbed. Britain, also
obliged to intervene, was instructed to stay out by U.S. Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger.
Under the treaty, the two
should have used force to counter the coup and re-establish the legal
government of the republic. Instead Turkey, acting on its own, occupied the
northern 37 percent of the island and expelled 125,000 Greek Cypriots from
their homes and villages. Later Ankara used its military muscle to compel
Turkish Cypriots still living in the south to move north. The island where
the Greek and Turkish communities once lived together in mixed towns and
villages was divided into two ethnic zones.
Cyprus remains divided,
its people separated by the worlds first Green Line, so named because
during an earlier round of troubles a British officer drew a line in green
ink to divide the capital, Nicosia, into two sectors. After Israel occupied
the West Bank in 1967, the term Green Line was used to refer to the 1948
cease-fire line in Palestine and, of course, Beirut acquired its own Green
Line during the civil war.
The Turkish side says
that the Cyprus problem has been solved. The Greek side argues that the
occupation and de facto partition of Cyprus are illegal and that the
presence of 35,000 Turkish troops on the island poses a threat to the
stability of the eastern Mediterranean. The international community agrees
that the status quo is not acceptable and has called for an end to the arms
race which has turned the island of Aphrodite into one of the most heavily
militarized pieces of real estate in the world.
The Cyprus problem
which had repeatedly threatened to precipitate Greco-Turkish warfare was
supposed to be resolved in 1974. But the men in Athens, Ankara and
Washington (yes, Washington) who planned the summer scenario miscalculated.
Instead of solving the Cyprus problem, they perpetuated it, deepening
Greco-Turkish antagonism.
Two British
journalists, Brendan O'Malley, foreign editor of the Times Educational
Supplement in London, and Ian Craig, political editor of the Manchester
Evening News, have, on the 25th anniversary of the events, brought out a
book entitled The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish
Invasion (published by I.B. Taurus in London).
But the conspiracy
theory is nothing new. The conspiracy was revealed as those events
unfolded. Elements of the plot came out in the British press and many
politicians who disapproved of the Cyprus affair soon spoke out. I used
this material and interviews with Cypriots and U.S. sources for a book
entitled The Aphrodite Plot written during the spring and summer of 1976,
sitting in a house in Chemlan with shells from a 75-millimeter howitzer
positioned on the ridge above Ainab soaring overhead and crashing into
targets in East Beirut.
Lawrence Stern of The
Washington Post wrote about the plot at the same time (The Wrong Horse);
Peter Murtagh, formerly of the Guardian and now with the Irish Times, added
details in a book about the colonels published in 1994 (The Rape of
Greece). There were, of course, many other books which referred to the
plot.
The object of the plot
was to solve the Cyprus problem once and for all. A general outline of a
deal had been thrashed out during clandestine conversations between Greek
and Turkish ministers meeting privately during NATO conferences in the
early 1970s. The deal itself involved the establishment of a Turkish base
on the Karpass Peninsula and arrangements for the protection of the Turkish
Cypriots while most of the island and the Greek Cypriots who made up 82
percent of the population would be granted union, Enosis, with the Greek
motherland.
Since the Cyprus troubles
began in 1963-64, the U.S. had been determined to get rid of President
Makarios, seen by Washington as the major obstacle to such a deal. The
U.S., a country based on the separation of church and state, had a visceral
dislike for Archbishop Makarios because he was a cleric in politics. He
also drew electoral support from the communist Akel Party while the Cold
War raged on the international scene. He was non-aligned, thus immoral in Washington’s
eyes. He was a friend of the Arabs, while the U.S. backed Israel. And
Makarios was an enemy of Washington s junta friends in Athens who,
according to Peter Murtagh, had allowed Israeli planes to use a U.S. base
in Crete to launch the air strikes on Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian air
fields that decided the outcome of the 1967 war before Arab and Israeli
troops came together on the ground.
After the October War
in 1973, the U.S. became increasingly eager to get rid of Makarios and
secure a strategic foothold on the island by installing its Greek and
Turkish allies on Cyprus. Britain had denied Washington the use of
Cyprus-based communications facilities which might have enabled the U.S. to
warn Israel of the Arabs pre-emptive attack. And Washington was not allowed
to use British bases as staging posts for resupplying Israel with the
weaponry which enabled it to win the war.
The timing of the coup
was crucial. By late 1973, Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators had
reached a constitutional agreement which would have settled the Cyprus
problem within the context of the existing unitary state. Turkish Cypriots
were leaving the communal enclaves they inhabited since 1963 to work and to
settle back in their old homes.
Athens and Ankara took
steps to block the accord. Then Athens began to make arrangements to
overthrow Makarios. He knew full well what was going on and demanded the
withdrawal of mainland Greek officers of the Cyprus National Guard who were
instructed to mount the coup on behalf of Athens. Makarios warned everybody
who would listen, even journalists like my husband and myself during an
interview a few months before the plot was mounted.
The July 1974 coup was
the last of several attempts. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s chief
of station in Athens had been fully informed of the plots development since
early in the year. The State Department was also aware of what was going on
and told the U.S. ambassador in Athens to warn off the colonels. But he did
not make a forceful statement in time to stop them from going ahead. Which
they did. And they botched it.
Just after 8am on the
morning of July 15th, Greek-commanded units of the National Guard rolled up
the curving drive to the presidential palace in armored cars. They were
held off by bodyguards and policemen expecting such a bid. President
Makarios was receiving Greek schoolchildren from Egypt. He led them to
safety in the garden behind the palace, escaped down a path and caught a
taxi which took him to safety. The coup had failed in its first objective.
But not in its second
which was to give Ankara a military foothold on the island. On July 20th,
Turkish troops were parachuted onto the island and landed on the tourist
beaches near the pretty port of Kyrenia. Although Greek Army officers
commanding the National Guard were ordered not to resist, those who did
fought well but could not prevent the Turks from occupying, in two stages,
the entire northern part of the island. But instead of sticking to the deal
which gave Turkey a base in the Karpass, Ankara had decided to implement
its own plan for the partition of the country along a line first put
forward in the mid-1950s.
The Turkish occupation
of northern Cyprus precipitated the collapse of the Greek junta, the CIA’s
Athens asset, but this did not worry the State Department which had
reached the conclusion that the junta was no longer an acceptable partner.
Although Kissinger said later that Washington was too preoccupied with
Watergate to function effectively as the crisis on the island was building,
his excuses must not be taken seriously. It was reported in the press at
the time that Kissinger first discouraged Britain from mounting a joint
intervention with Turkey with the object of restoring the legitimate
government and then told the British foreign secretary, James Callaghan,
not to be a boy scout when he suggested that Britain stage a naval
operation to prevent Turkish landings on Cyprus. Kissinger’s “nos” speak
complicity.
Like many other
well-laid plots, the Cyprus conspiracy went astray. It solved nothing. But
it is important to know that there was a plot. Today, after 25 years of
fruitless settlement talks, Washington, the only power on earth which might
press Turkey to agree to a UN-drafted federal solution, refuses to do so.
The U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, stated as much during his
recent visit to Ankara. Why should Washington intervene to reverse the
outcome of the conspiracy it supported?
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