The Cyprus Problem

There were 50 years between the first explosions and the last peace plan flop. And still no solution in sight.

This is the final story in a three-part series.

< < Part 1: Life Beyond the Green Line

< < Part 2: Icons, Copper and Conquest (until 1950)

THE WARNING SIGNS were there from the start. When a Greek Orthodox bishop welcomed the first British governor to the island in 1878, the bishop told him that the Cypriots accepted the change of government because they believed that Britain would unite Cyprus with “Mother Greece.” The cry for énosis,
or the union of Cyprus with Greece, would grow more persistent over the years. But Turkish Cypriots, who	Greek and Turkish flags stake out both sides of Paphos Gate in Nicosia. ........................................

were some 18 percent of the population, were dead-set against the idea of becoming an insignificant minority in a greater Greece. In 1954, after Egyptian independence, the British moved their Middle East military headquarters to Cyprus. And the British colonial office declared that certain territories, owing to their particular circumstances, could never expect independence. It was that key word—never—that really rankled the Greek Cypriots.

A series of explosions shook the island on April 1, 1955. The battle for énosis had begun. A year earlier, the Greek Cypriots had secretly formed EOKA, Ethnikí Orgánosis Kypríon Agonistón, or “National Organization of Cypriot Fighters.” They had the blessing of Archbishop Makarios III, who was both the spiritual and civil leader of the Greek Cypriots. But EOKA’s military chief was George Grivas, a native Cypriot who had risen through the officer’s ranks in the army of mainland Greece. His nom de guerre was “Dighenis,” an ominous name to anyone familiar with the Medieval Byzantine folk hero, wrote Lawrence Durrell, a British novelist and colonial flack, in his memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus.

Soon enough, the Turkish Cypriots formed TMT, Turk Mukavemet Teskilati, or Turkish Resistance Organization, which launched its first attack in 1958. TMT wanted taksim, the division of the island into Greek and Turkish zones. The first serious intercommunual violence ensued. Turkish and Greek Cypriots were expelled from mixed neighborhoods. Turkish Cypriot policemen working for the British were assassinated. And unarmed civilians were “shot down like rabbits in church, at the coffee-house, even in hospital,” Durrell wrote. The death toll mounted to around 600, many of them Greek Cypriots that EOKA deemed too pro-British.

By 1959 Britain, Greece and Turkey agreed in principle to grant Cyprus independence, but with a constitution that permanently forbid both énosis and taksim. They also agreed to let an impartial Swiss expert draft the constitution, which the Cypriots themselves had very little voice in creating. Many Greek Cypriots felt betrayed because Makarios had abandoned the dream of énosis for mere independence.

But as far as the Greek Cypriots were concerned, the worst was yet to come. They were most unhappy with the power-sharing agrangement in the constitution, which they felt favored the Turkish minority. There was a single fifty-seat House of Representatives, with 15 seats reserved for Turkish Cypriots. The president would always be a Greek Cypriot, with a Turkish Cypriot vice president, and both would have veto power. But the real seeds of future conflict were buried in three related treaties.

	.............................................. One of many abandoned buildings that comprise the Green Line on the Greek side of Nicosia, the last divided capital city in the world. ..............................................

The Treaty of Establishment set aside 99 square miles, or about 3 percent of the island, for British military bases that are not part of the Republic of Cyprus. The Treaty of Alliance allowed the permanent stationing of Greek and Turkish military forces on the island. And in the Treaty of Guarantee, Britain, Greece and Turkey all agreed to safeguard the island’s independence, should anything alter the conditions of the constitution. In this way, after more than 2,000 years of foreign rule, Cyprus achieved independence—of a sort—on April 16th, 1960.

The honeymoon didn’t last long. The constitution created an unworkable government. For one thing, a majority of both groups was required to pass new legislation, which meant that eight of the 15 Turkish Cypriot representatives could torpedo any potential new law. In November 1963, Makarios, who had been overwhelmingly elected president, proposed 13 constitutional amendments. Each one would have reduced some Turkish Cypriot political advantage. He submitted them to the Turkish Cypriot vice president, who vetoed all 13—including the amendment that would have eliminated the presidential and vice presidential vetoes. It’s unclear what Makarios hoped to gain by this gambit, when he might have foreseen this veto. What he got was a bloody Christmas.

Tensions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots were running high, and EOKA and TMT members were still swaggering about. On December 21st, they took to the streets. Mainland Turkish and Greek troops stationed on the island left their barracks. Greek and Turkish Cypriots set up makeshift barricades in Nicosia, using tires and old mattresses—barriers that soon became known as the Green Line, after a green marking that a British officer drew on a map. Britain brokered a ceasefire on Christmas day, and U.N. peacekeepers arrived in February. But the killings continued.

By mid-1964, 10,000 mainland Greek troops had landed on Cyprus, and Turkish troops were massed along the Turkish mainland just across the water. Most of the Turkish Cypriots—who had lived for centuries scattered across the island, often in integrated villages—were now wholly segregated in heavily-armed enclaves. Dean Acheson, the U.S. secretary of state, unveiled a plan to partition the island between Greece and Turkey—a sort of double-énosis. The Cypriot experiment with soverignty would come to a swift end. The Acheson plan was soundly rejected.

The hot Cypriot summer wore on. Then in August, Grivas led Greek Cypriot National Guardsmen in an attack on TMT’s stronghold—the Kókkina enclave, on the island’s northwest coast near Polis—where they were landing Turkish arms. Turkey unleashed its warplanes, which bombed and straffed nearby Greek Cypriot villages with rockets and napalm. Makarios threatened reprisals on Turkish Cypriots throughout the island. The airstrikes ended after two days. But by the end of 1964, the Turkish Cypriots were all firmly barricaded in their enclaves. That made it easy for the central government, which was entirely Greek Cypriot by then, to ban a wide range of essential goods from reaching them. One Turkish Cypriot, who grew up in the enclaves, told me that he had never seen a banana until 1974.

.............................................. Ruins such as these are common on the Turkish side of Nicosia, a Medieval- walled city that both Greek and Turkish Cypriots consider their capital. ..............................................

For nearly a decade, Cyprus continued in a sort of suspended animation. In 1973, when the English travel writer Colin Thubron trekked around the island by foot for his book Journey into Cyprus, he observed a state of affairs not unlike the Middle Ages, when knights defended fortified villages on the Cypriot coastline. Thubron even explored ancient Roman passageways in copper mines where Cypriots still toiled, although by the 1970s they worked for an American mining company.

But the timeless world that Thubron described ended dramatically the following year. In the early hours of July 15th, 1974, Greek Cypriot National Guardsmen stormed the presidential palace. They were following the orders of mainland Greek officers. Greece itself had been a military dictatorship ever since a coup in 1967, and Greek Army officers had essentially commanded the Cypriot National Guard from its inception. The soldiers declared that Makarios was dead, and the new president was Nikos Sampson, a long-time EOKA fighter. But Makarios reemerged later that day—very much alive—in the Paphos district of Cyprus. The British troops stationed nearby airlifted him off the island.

Five days later, on July 20th, Turkish troops landed in Kyrenia, in the heart of north Cyprus. To this day, Turkey and many Turkish Cypriots refer to this as the 1974 peace operation. They also prefer the word “intervention” to the word “invasion,” because they say that Turkey was acting properly under the Treaty of Guarantee. But many Greek Cypriots say that Turkey used the Treaty of Guarantee as a pretext for invasion.

On July 23rd, the Greek junta in Athens and its puppet government in Nicosia collapsed. Civilian governments were restored in both capitals. The three guarantor powers—Britain, Greece and Turkey—negotiated a ceasefire on July 30th. But fruitless negotiations continued, while the troops on the ground laced the island with landmines. On August 14th, Turkey mounted a second assault. And by August 16th, Turkey occupied a little more than one-third of the island. The Turkish frontline was not too dissimilar from what Turkey and Turkish Cypriots had long proposed as a partition. From that day on, the Green Line would bisect the entire island; and the United Nations would be responsible for the buffer zone between the Turkish and Greek cease-fire lines.

Learn More About Cyprus: Overview Until 1950 > > Since 1950 < <	In 1983, Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, unilaterally declared a separate state in the north, calling it the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC). Today, some 30,000 mainland Turkish troops occupy north Cyprus, and

Turkey funnels $300 million a year into its upkeep. As one Turkish student studying in North Cyprus put it, “Turkey isn’t a mother to this country, it’s a god to this country.” But Turkey is the only nation that has ever recognized the TRNC as a soverign country.

Despite some ugly events in 1996—which left two Greek Cypriots and two Turkish Cypriots dead—tensions eased somewhat early in this decade. Greek Cypriot negotiations to enter the European Union gave many Cypriots fresh hope for a final settlement. But in April 2004, three out of four Greek Cypriots voted down a United Nations-brokered peace plan, called the Annan Plan, which would have reunited the island. Two out of three Turkish Cypriots voted for the plan. Today, many Turkish Cypriots complain that a final peace plan should have been a precondition for Cyprus joining the European Union. Meanwhile, some Greek Cypriots describe the Annan Plan as a “trick,” saying they were rushed into voting for an inferior plan just one week before joining the European Union.

While I spent the summer of 2005 in Cyprus, it felt like a malaise had settled over the island. Many of the top diplomats were leaving, or their posts were already vacant. Kiernan Prendergast, the U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs, had just informed the Security Council that he thought the Greek and Turkish Cypriots were too far apart and the mistrust between them was too deep to resume negotions at that time. But subtle changes were afoot on the island—not in response to anything the politicians or diplomats were doing—but because ordinary Greek and Turkish Cypriots were finally able to meet. In 2003, it became easier for them to travel from one side of the island to the other. Although the peace process remains in limbo, these everyday interactions may be the Cypriots’ best hope for bridging their divide.
tCr

This is the final story in a three-part series.

< < Part 1: Life Beyond the Green Line

< < Part 2: Icons, Copper and Conquest (until 1950)

Icons, Copper and Conquest

For millenia, Cyprus was plundered and occupied by foreign powers. Self-rule is still a relative novelty.

This is the second story in a three-part series.

< < Part 1: Life Beyond the Green Line

Part 3: The Cyprus Problem (1950 - 2003) > >

	APHRODITE SPRANG FROM THE SEA off the shores of Cyprus, according to ancient Greek myth. But in light of future events, it might have been more appropriate if—rather than the Greek goddess of love—the island had spawned Ares, their war god. Because over the centuries, conquerers from east and west have dominated the Mediterranean island. Indeed,
Maronites still worship here, although it's now part of a Turkish Army base in North Cyprus. ........................................	when Cyprus was finally cut loose from the British Empire in 1960, the Cypriots tasted self-rule for the first time since antiquity.

Cyprus has been a coveted piece of real estate since prehistoric times. Stone age artifacts reveal that human beings first settled here over 9,000 years ago. The island rose to prominence in the Bronze age, because of its rich copper deposits. More than 3,000 years ago, the Cypriots were already smelting copper into bronze, and trading with the great empires of the Middle East—the Egyptians, Babylonians and Hittites—who all called the island “Alasia.” But Ancient Greek mariners were on the horizon. There are signs of Minoan influence from at least the 15th century BCE, but the watershed event in the island’s culutral development was the arrival of the Mycenaeans from the Greek Peloponnese, around 1400 BCE. Then the essential Cypriot drama—the tension between eastern and western cultures—was set in motion.

After the arrival of the Mycenaeans, a majority Greek-speaking culture evolved on Cyprus. But the long sea voyage meant that most Cypriots would never see the Greek mainland. So customs often held on here longer than in other parts of the ancient Greek world. Heroic burial practices described by Homer were discovered in Cypriot tombs built centuries after those practices had been abandoned on the Greek mainland. And even today, Cypriot Greek retains some words from ancient Greek that haven’t been spoken in Greece for centuries.

Greek language and culture persisted on Cyprus during the long periods when foreign empires ruled the island from Assyria, Egypt and Persia. In 333 BCE, the Cypriots sided with Alexander the Great in his bid to free them from Persian control, only to become a battleground for Alexander’s successors when he died ten years later. The island became part of the Roman empire, succeeded by the Byzantine empire, which put the final stamp of Greek Orthodoxy on Cyprus.

Christianity arrived early on Cyprus. The island claims one of the prophets, St. Barnabas, as a native son. But a deep-seeded goddess cult already held sway over Cyprus, epitomized by ancient Greek myths about Aphrodite’s birth here, but probably dating back to much earlier days. As in other parts of the Roman Empire, Christianity
and paganism co-existed for centuries. By the 4th century, the Roman overlords had placed scores of stunning floor mosaics in their villas on Cyprus. In a	Tamata, or wax figures, belong to a mystical Greek Orthodox healing ritual that’s popular on Cyprus. ........................................

pastiche of pagan and Christian symbols, some of the Roman gods in the mosaics are surrounded by halos. Elsewhere, shrines to local saints dot the island, including shrines that are literally dug out of the earth. To this day, the Orthodox church wields incredible influence over both spirtual and secular matters in the Greek-controlled part of Cyprus.

After the division of the Roman Empire into east and west, Cyprus was first ruled from Antioch in Syria, then from Constantinople, which administered Cyprus from the 5th century until the crusaders swept through the island at the end of the 12th century. Athens never directly ruled over Cyprus. So to many Greek Cypriots, the Byzantine period was their Golden Age. Some Greek Cypriots still whistfully refer to Istanbul as Constantinople.

But the Byzantine Empire had lost control of Cyprus long before Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. The Medieval history of Cyprus reads almost like a storybook, but to the island’s peasant population, it was no fairy tale.

The early crusades bypassed Cyprus. But during the Third Crusade, the island fell to England’s King Richard I (1157-1199), better known as Richard the Lionheart. In 1191, a ship carrying his sister and his fiance, the princess Berengaria of Navarre, moored off the coast of Limassol. The Byzantine ruler of Cyprus denied them provisions, so Richard defeated the Byzantine forces and conquered Cyprus out of revenge. He promptly married Berengaria in Limassol, and then set sail for the Holy Land.

.............................................. Kalo Chorio, a rustic village in the foothills of the Tróödhos Mountains, makes Commandaria, a wine that took its name from the fortress of the Knights Hospitallers. ..............................................

Richard had no real interest in Cyprus, so he sold it to the Knights Templar. But the Templars found this a poor bargain, so they returned it to Richard, who quickly resold it to Guy de Lusignan, a minor French nobleman. Lusignan aligned himself with the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. So within a very short timespan, Cyprus had been plundered, taxed, sold and resold by most of the major crusaders, who essentially treated it as a consolation prize for the loss of Jerusalem.

By all accounts, the Lusignans were a mediocre bunch. But their possession of the last European outpost before Jerusalem allowed them to marry into the major royal houses of Europe. During the 14th century, Farmagusta, their stronghold port, which is now on the Turkish side of the island, became one of the richest cities on earth. It was practically a required stopover for crusaders, a hub of Christian refugees from the east, and a busy trading port. The Venetians assumed power from the Lusignans in 1474, when the Lusignan king and his infant son died mysteriously within a year of the king’s marriage to Caterina Cornaro, a Venetian noblewoman. The Venetians clung to power in Cyprus for another century.

For nearly 400 years, the indigenous Cypriots were essentially the serfs of the Catholic lords and their knights. They toiled in the fields—cultivating olives, wheat and vineyards—including the grapes for a sweet dessert wine that is still called “Commandaria” for the Medieval fortress nearby. The Lusignans and Venetians dotted the island with fortresses and walled cities. Their most dramatic legacy is the vast Medieval wall that encircles Nicosia. Cyprus has always been a difficult place to defend.

	But these fortifications weren’t enough to fend off the Ottoman Empire. Despite the Venetian wall, Nicosia fell to the Turks in 1570. The Ottomans conquered Farmagusta in 1571—after a dramatic 10-month seige—ending Venetian rule on Cyprus. As elsewhere in the Ottoman empire, political divisions were based on religion. The overwhelming
A mosque in North Nicosia, which both the Greek and Turkish sides consider their capital. ........................................	majority of Christians were Greek Orthodox, but not all of them. Even today, there’s a tiny minority of “Latins,” the Cypriots’ name for Roman Catholics, who are most

likely descendants of the Venetians. There’s also a small community of Armenians, who have their own Christian church. And there’s a close-knit community of Maronites—one of the eatern rites of the Roman Catholic church—who may have arrived in Cyprus from their homeland in Lebanon as early as the 7th century.

Learn More About Cyprus: Overview > > Until 1950 < < Since 1950	During the long sunset of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks ceded control of Cyprus to the British Empire. British forces landed in the Cypriot port of Larnaca in 1878, and took control of the island without firing a single shot. Many Greek Orthodox Cypriots welcomed the

change, thinking that Britain would eventually hand Cyprus over to Greece. But the British had other ideas. For one thing, Cyprus was in an excellent spot to secure the Suez Canal, an important passage to India that had only just opened in 1869. So life on Cyprus continued much as it had under the Ottomans—until the 1950s. Then a series of explosions and assassinations rocked the island, ushering in the era of “The Cyprus Problem”.
tCr

This is the second story in a three-part series.

< < Part 1: Life Beyond the Green Line

Part 3: The Cyprus Problem (1950 - 2003) > >

Life Beyond the Green Line

The Green Line is a buffer zone that has kept Greek and Turkish Cypriots apart for decades. Until now.

This is the first story in a three-part series.

Part 2: Icons, Copper and Conquest (Until 1950) > >

Part 3: The Cyprus Problem (Since 1950) > >

SEEN FROM FAR ABOVE THE EARTH, the island of Cyprus looks like a dagger, with its long thin handle pointing towards Syria. Perhaps no other scrap of land has been more contested since antiquity. But what you don’t see from
space is the stretch of barren land that has divided the island between Greek and Turkish-	Cyprus from Space (NASA) click image to enlarge ....................................................

controlled zones since 1974. This is the Green Line. United Nations peackeepers monitor this buffer zone, which stretches 110 miles (180 kilometers) across the island. Until travel restrictions were eased in 2003, it was tough for anyone who wasn’t diplomatic or U.N. personnel to cross from one side of this Mediterranean island to the other.

Many more people can cross now, although some Cypriots are still restricted. And good luck making a phone call from one side of the island to the other side. If you know Cyprus, but you haven’t been there for a while, read my article that ran in the International Herald Tribune—Hostility Persists on Divided Cyprus—to find out what day-to-day life is like there since the crossing points opened in 2003.

But working on this project, I’ve discovered that many people know very little about Cyprus. The island has a fascinating history, sitting as it does at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. It’s now the easternmost part of the European Union, some 45 miles (75 kilometers) south of Turkey and 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Syria.

The Greek part of the island, which is formally known as the Republic of Cyprus, entered the European Union on May 1, 2004—just one week after the Greek Cypriots, who make up roughly 80 percent of the island’s population, soundly defeated a referendum that would have reunified Cyprus. Although Cyprus is relatively peaceful now, peace has never been officially declared since a ceasefire in 1974, when Turkey took control of a third of the island, after a failed coup sponsored by Greece. More than a third of the people—including both Greek and Turkish Cypriots—were forced to flee their homes during the 1974 war.

The Greek Cypriots have prospered since that fatal summer. They’ve gone from living in refugee camps to presiding over some of the hottest resorts in the Mediterranean. In recent years, many of them who owned land in the part of the island that remains under their control have cashed in on soaring real estate prices. But many of their compatriots who had to flee their properties in the north in 74 still live in cookie-cutter apartment blocks, which were hastily constructed in the 1970s to house refugees south of Nicosia, a burgeoning capital city of some 200,000 people.

The Turkish Cypriots have lived in relative isloation since 74. They earn on average one-third of what the Greek Cypriots make. Their economy is entirely dependent on Turkey, which pumps some $300 million a year into north Cyprus. Most international businesses won’t open up shop on the Turkish side of the island—so there’s no McDonald’s, no Starbucks. Unsurprisingly, considering their isolation, the Turkish Cypriots voted overwhelmingly last year for the U.N.-brokered peace deal, which was known as the Annan Plan. Since then they’ve argued that the international community should lift the embargoes against them. But short of a comprehensive peace plan, there’s little hope of improving their lot.

Learn More About Cyprus: > > Overview< < Until 1950 Since 1950	I traveled to Cyprus last summer on a journalism fellowship from The German Marshall Fund of the United States. This program sends American journalists to cover stories in Europe that are under-reported in

the United States. I published two political features from Nicosia in the International Herald Tribune, and also covered some breaking news for the New York Times that was picked up by the Tribune, which is owned by the Times.

But there’s so much more to tell. I spent two months reporting in Cyprus, where I interviewed many long-time foreign diplomats and senior politicians. I attended political rallies on both sides of the island. I met Cypriots who are still waiting to learn about what happened to their family members who disappeared in 1974. And I watched the United Nations destroy some of the last landmines on EU soil.

Now, if you’d like to get up to date on Cypriot history, click on the links below.
tCr

This is the first story in a three-part series.

Part 2: Icons, Copper and Conquest (Until 1950) > >

Part 3: The Cyprus Problem (Since 1950) > >