Duplicity over Cyprus survives to this day

by Michael Jansen

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 OMalley, 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 Washingtons 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 preemptive 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 Agencys 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 CIAs Athens asset, but this did not worry the State Depa

rtment 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. Kissingers 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?

Michael Jansen wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

DS: 20/07/99