The Cyprus Problem: A Cold War Legacy

Glen D. Camp is professor of political science at Bryant College, Smithfield, US. This paper is based in part upon research work done on Cyprus as a Stasinos Grant recipient in June–July, 2000. The author thanks the University of Minnesota, the Public Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus, and Bryant College for underwriting the research.

Like other conflicted international issues such as Northern Ireland, the Cyprus issue is embedded in levels of difficulty corresponding to the actors involved. First, each major participant has its own and very different “national narrative”, and two of these participants, the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, live by subtexts which differ substantially from their motherlands’. Second, ethnic divisions are so severe that there are as many “truths” as participants: a Greek and Turkish truth, a Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot truth, a British and US truth, and a UN narrative truth about how Cyprus became a victim. The scholar’s test is simple if sometimes painful: can he or she follow Socrates’s universalist philosophy, “I am not an Athenian, I am not a Greek, I am a citizen of the world”? This brief paper tries to follow von Ranke’s guide by searching for wie es eigentlich gewesen ist (how it really was). The reader may judge how well I have succeeded. In presenting my views, I apologise for any errors of fact or analysis.

 

Cyprus is the third-largest island of the Mediterranean after Sardinia and Sicily. It is located about 40 miles from Turkey’s southern coast, 500 miles from the Greek mainland, 240 miles north of Egypt, and 60 miles west of Syria and Lebanon. It has an area of about 3,572 square miles and is approximately 140 miles from east to west and 40 miles from north to south. About 80 per cent of the population is Greek, and 18 per cent is Turkish, the remaining 2 per cent being made up of Armenians, Britons and Maronites. In nine thousand years, every major and several minor empires in the eastern Mediterranean have conquered it. This produced a different political culture from that of mainland Greece, a culture with a highly developed administration and a genius for hospitality and courtesy. It also produced a certain cultural unwillingness to “get involved” in politics, especially in incremental reform movements.

The Ethnic Divide

I see the core explanation for the Cyprus tragedy in the ethnic division between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots as manipulated by foreign powers. Existing religious and political divisions are derived from this underlying ethnic division, in my view. The manipulating foreign powers include Greece, especially under the military junta (1967–74), Turkey from 1571 to 1878 and at present, Britain from 1878 to 1960 and onwards, and the United States from 1963 onwards. Russia also played a considerable if lesser role, especially during the time of Archbishop Makarios, who became the first president of the newly created Republic of Cyprus in 1960. Makarios sought to balance the United States and Soviet Union against each other during the Cold War to avoid NATO control over Cyprus, striving at first for a unitary Greek Cypriot state prior to enosis (union) with Greece. The ethnic division is also responsible for the clear failure to develop a single common Cypriot nationality rather than the two (Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot) which developed.

 

But it was not a preventable tragedy that so little transethnic “Cypriot nationalism” developed, for in my view there is no “Cypriot nation”, only two ethnic communities, one Greek and one Turkish.¹ Since the Turkish invasion of 1974, 37 per cent of Cyprus lies on the Turkish-occupied side of the “Green Line” that divides the island, with the balance on the Greek side, even though both are legally part of the Republic of Cyprus. Adamantia Pollis is correct in suggesting that British colonialism bears much responsibility for the lack of a strong Cypriot sense of “nationhood”. Still, I very much doubt that such a dual nationalism could have been avoided, for Cyprus has been the object of foreign manipulation since Neolithic times. As Joseph S. Joseph observes:

 

Despite four centuries of coexistence and physical intermingling, the [two communities] remained separate and distinct ethnic groups divided along linguistic, religious, cultural, and political lines … Communal dualism became the foundation of political structures and practices that prevented the development of a … common patriotism, joint Cypriot consciousness, and unifying political culture supportive of the Cypriot state.²

 

Note that intermarriage—a crucial measure of communal integration—was rare. As Demetrios A. Theophylactou remarks in a tribute to his parents who did marry across the ethnic divide, they were “one of a handful” of couples to do so.³

 

Kyriacos Markides has argued that Cyprus never became a “consociational democracy”⁴ like Switzerland owing to the failure of political will of both elites. He concludes that “nothing short of a ‘cultural revolution’ can establish the internal preconditions [italics added] of a lasting intercommunal peace”.⁵

 

Stanford professor Thomas Ehrlich agrees: the “preconditions” for one nationality just do not exist for they “could only develop if supported by pressures from without”.⁶ The European Union and the United States could help mightily in this regard by pushing hard for immediate Cypriot entry into the European Union, then for a bizonal, bicommunal, federal solution brokered by the United Nations and supported by all participants.

 

Intercommunal division also made difficult the development of a “civil society” in Cyprus, without the essential “third sector” between the government at the top and the people at the bottom.⁷ The nationalist guerrilla movements of EOKA and later EOKA-B (Greek Cypriot) and TMT (Turkish Cypriot) unfortunately also precluded the healthy development of a politically power-sharing society as provided for in the 1959 London–Zurich Accords that set the framework for the Cyprus constitution and independence in 1960. Efforts to develop cross-communal ties were crushed by the terrorist groups on each side, with military officers from Athens and Ankara directing their movements.

Constitutional Gridlock

On 30 November 1963, Archbishop Makarios proposed “Thirteen Points” in an attempt to break out of the brutal constraints of the London–Zurich Accords, which polarised the republic ethnically and led to political deadlock. The accords gave Turkish Cypriots greater representation in the cabinet, House of Representatives, civil service, army and police than their numbers warranted. The vice-presidency was reserved for a Turkish Cypriot and carried the right of veto. Separate elections and separate municipalities were mandated for Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

 

In the words of Joseph S. Joseph, Makarios’s Thirteen Points “mainly addressed constitutional deadlocks”, the most important recommendations being:

 

abolition of the veto right of the president and the vice-president; abolition of the separate majority votes in the parliament; establishment of unified municipalities; unification of the administration of justice; participation of the two communities in the public service in proportion to their population; and abolition of the Greek communal chamber.⁸

 

Makarios’s move to alter the constitution thus entailed the removal of some of the privileges and protections of the Turkish Cypriot minority, which totally rejected the Thirteen Points. Their unveiling led to predictable Turkish Cypriot violence, probably under Ankara’s leadership if not dictation.

 

In their national narrative, Greek and Greek Cypriot analysts generally downplay the Thirteen Points as an illegal violation of the London–Zurich Accords. Thus, Philippos K. Savvides claims the Thirteen Points “sought merely to amend constitutional provisions that had become detrimental to the normal functioning of the Cypriot government”, even while partly correctly arguing that “the disproportional rights provided to the Turkish minority impaired the orderly functioning of the state, thus leading to the collapse of the first Cypriot Republic”.⁹ Savvides does not mention the “ghettoisation” of the Turkish Cypriots in enclaves after 1964, nor the fact that the British supported but the Greek prime minister and friend of NATO, Constantine Karamanlis, opposed the Thirteen Points. For their part, Turkish Cypriots, in line with their national narrative, fail to note that Ankara to a large extent compelled them to regroup in the 3 per cent of Cyprus which constituted the “ghettoes”. Thus, Ankara exacerbated real, pre-existing Turkish Cypriot fears of Greek Cypriot terrorists. Greek Cypriots tend to downplay this fear since it violates their national narrative.

 

The London–Zurich Accords could have led to a truly “consociational”, power-sharing society, but only if reformers from both communities had been able to transcend their exclusivist national narratives and persuade their communities to do likewise. Makarios was not able to do so, neither was Ankara nor Athens. Reformers working to bridge the ethnic gap were easily silenced by EOKA and TMT and the later EOKA-B.

 

In addition to ethnic division, there was the religious/political division among Greek Cypriots. Ioannis D. Stefanides notes that under Makarios II, Archbishop Makarios’s predecessor as head of the Cyprus Church, “the role of the Church as the Ethnarchy of the Greek Cypriot community was completely transformed into a factional, political one.” The Church excommunicated leftists and launched an economic boycott of their businesses. Eventually, “the division of Greek Cypriot society reached absurd proportions—not only the trade unions but also coffee shops, cinemas and even football clubs came to be divided along party lines.”¹⁰ Separation of church (mosque) and state is not yet fully developed on Cyprus.

The Cold War

The Cold War, which dominated the Cyprus problem, began in 1947 as a “loose bipolar” model. Two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, largely controlled world diplomacy. A subset of “non-aligned” states flourished, to the mutual dismay of Washington and Moscow, each of which constantly tried to create Kaplan’s “tight bipolar model”.¹¹ Anomalously, the Soviet Union was only a superpower in military terms, since it was economically weak; only its defence sector was world class. Also, it was confronted by overwhelming economic competition from advanced First World countries united in opposition to it.

 

Unfortunately for Greece and Cyprus this fundamental fact was not clearly understood by most American leaders, many of whom seemed obsessed by an unrealistic phobia of the omnipotent “Evil Empire”. Evil it surely was, but weak it also was. The coercive economy of the Soviet Union was an ineffective use of its peoples’ vast resources, hard work and scientific genius. Moreover, its armed forces system lacked air- and sea-lift, confining its offensive capability to contiguous areas, while it never had a “blue-water” navy. In my view, Washington’s obsession with the Soviet Union was responsible for a good deal of the Cyprus tragedy. The irony is that both the obsession and the tragedy were unnecessary from either a geopolitical or moral point of view. The Soviet threat could have been contained by largely economic and more nuanced military means at far less cost to all involved, including Cyprus.

 

Cyprus was, nevertheless, a “non-aligned” state much to the impotent fury of Washington. Indeed, Makarios was often referred to as “the Castro of the Mediterranean”, even though he allowed American U-2 spy-planes to fly from British bases in Cyprus and permitted vital British and US electronic monitoring stations to operate throughout the island. Moreover, the Cypriot communist party, Akel, upon which he depended for maintaining his position, was Euro-communist and relatively independent of Moscow. But to many US leaders, all communist parties were alike, just as all communists were alike. A nuanced understanding of the Soviet threat was absent. Rational diplomats, such as George Kennan, the originator of “containment”, complained that Washington overmilitarised the Cold War. But to John Foster Dulles, America’s “misguided missile” as Adlai Stevenson termed him, the Cold War was a Manichaean struggle. One wonders at the subconscious motivations of both superpowers which explain this mirror image, each seeing the other as an evil, aggressive adversary. Without it, the Cyprus tragedy might have been avoided, as might the Vietnam and Soviet–Afghan wars, for in foreign policy, perception is often more important than reality since “nothing is but thinking makes it so”.

 

The current world system is unstable, with Cyprus and Greek–Turkish relations a dangerous part of that instability. With the demise of the Soviet Union, we now live in a unipolar world in transition. A series of concentric “levels” may be posited, of which the largest is the outer or world level now occupied solely by the United States. The next or regional level is occupied by regional actors such as the three guarantor powers of the 1960 Cyprus constitution: Britain, Greece and Turkey. Finally, Cyprus is part of the third or local level and vibrates to tones emanating from the world and regional levels. Greek analyst Alexis Alexandris has noted several Greek–Turkish points of friction that involve the three levels and have a reverberating effect on Cyprus. They include the delimitation of the Aegean continental shelf, the extension of Greek territorial limits according to the UN Law of the Sea, the Greek–Turkish dispute over Aegean airspace, the military status of Aegean islands, the Turkish Aegean Fourth Army, Greek–Turkish NATO command structures, and Turkey’s desire to enter the European Union. Alexandris observes that “although it cannot be included in the Greek–Turkish bilateral issues”, Cyprus continues to burden Greek and Turkish foreign policy agendas. He concludes that Cyprus is “both the cause and victim of a recrudescence of a Greek–Turkish antagonism”.¹²

Britain’s Role

Although Britain exacerbated intercommunal discord in Cyprus for reasons of state, this policy succeeded only because of pre-existing ethnic and religious/political divisions. Ironically, the Cyprus tragedy might have been avoided had the British given more weight to realistic political concerns and less to unrealistic security needs in the eastern Mediterranean. But the British “national narrative” precluded accepting only regional power-status for Britain. Moreover, Britain’s Cyprus policy had been inconsistent, reflecting shifting views of the British national interest. In 1954, Colonial Secretary Henry Hopkinson ruled out Cypriot independence forever, yet earlier London had twice offered Cyprus to Greece (and was twice refused by Athens).¹³ No wonder many Greek Cypriots felt enosis was possible if they forced the issue. The 1960 constitution was a “second best” solution. It provided for an imperfect “guaranteed independence” without partition, and allowed Britain to retain sovereign military bases on Cyprus. It also provided many smaller British zones for electronic surveillance of the Soviet Union and Middle East, artillery practice and parachute training. Finally, London hoped for an end to Greek Cypriot armed resistance against British rule, a “consummation devoutly to be wished” but never realised. London would have to reify the “Turkish threat” to offset Greek and Greek Cypriot hopes for enosis.

The European Union

It is ironic that as America’s power declined relatively, Europe’s increased absolutely. Both phenomena are due partly to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the break-up of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia into competing multinational nation-states, each dominated by a single ethnic elite. The European Union, which vastly increased its power, now projects that power into the eastern Mediterranean.

 

The European Union gradually developed from a strictly Coal and Steel Community into a vast customs union, and later embarked upon monetary union (EMU). In 1994, the European Union established the European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) to create a European military fighting force. That Washington greatly assisted this process of European military, political and economic integration is difficult to reconcile with the frequent description of the United States as a “hegemonic power”. The Bush administration and EU leaders are aware that Turkey’s taksim (partition) of Cyprus has not resolved the geopolitical danger of a Greek‑Turkish war over the island. Thus, both the United States and European Union support the London–Zurich Accords, which established not partition, but a “guaranteed independence” for Cyprus.¹⁴ The United States also accepted (if grudgingly) the failure of its own NATO-based initiatives such as the Acheson and Ball plans, whose goal was “a permanent peaceful solution of the Cyprus problem within a Western setting securing Western strategic interests”.¹⁵

US Culpability

The United States was not without guilt in creating the Cyprus tragedy. It has been alleged¹⁶ that in June 1974, just prior to the Greek-backed coup in Cyprus that prompted the Turkish invasion of the island, US ambassador to Greece, Henry J. Tasca, apparently failed to pass on to Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannides, head of the Greek junta, the official position of the US government: that Washington opposed any military adventure in Cyprus. Such an adventure would (and did) gravely injure US policy in the eastern Mediterranean by creating a crisis between two US NATO allies, Greece and Turkey. Tasca explained his reluctance to deal with Ioannides by saying that the latter was only a “cop”, in that his sole official standing was as head of the military police. But that hardly relieved Tasca from the responsibility of liaising with Ioannides, since diplomats may not choose the leaders of countries to which they are accredited.

 

Tragically, it is widely believed by many Greeks and Turks and by some foreign students of eastern Mediterranean affairs that Washington financed EOKA-B despite its killing of patriotic but dissenting Greek Cypriots. If the United States helped finance the Turkish Cypriot TMT, which certainly followed similar practices towards its dissenting majority, then Washington must bear an additional burden of shame.

 

President Nixon’s policy in the eastern Mediterranean was surely counterproductive in victimising Cyprus and Greece. He sent Vice-President Spiro Agnew to visit the junta leadership in Athens, thereby according the dictatorship a degree of approval and legitimacy. Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, clearly “tilted” towards Ankara in the grim “July Days” of 1974 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The Nixon administration did nothing to prevent the totally illegal and continued occupation of northern Cyprus (37 per cent of the island) by Turkish troops as well as the importation of up to forty thousand Anatolian settlers, which illegally changed the demography of the area. Turkey’s acts are in clear violation of customary international law and treaty obligations freely accepted by Ankara, i.e., the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, under which Turkey surrendered all its rights over Cyprus and the island became a British colony, and Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee of the London–Zurich package. Article IV required any of Cyprus’s three guarantor powers (Greece, Turkey and Britain), after consultation in the case of unilateral intervention, to re-establish the situation on the island ante-bellum. That is, each guarantor power “reserved the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing a state of affairs created by the present treaty”. This clearly Turkey did not do. Rather, in August 1974, it began a further advance from occupying about 3 per cent of Cyprus to some 37 per cent after its own recalcitrance led to the failure of the Geneva meeting of the three guarantor powers.

 

Moreover, Kissinger’s Realpolitik backfired as both of America’s allies, Greece and Turkey, responded angrily to his “tilts”—first towards the Athens junta, then towards Ankara. Nor did he really follow Bismarkian Realpolitik, for the “Iron Chancellor” was careful never unnecessarily to offend weaker powers. Kissinger, by contrast, seemed oblivious to both Greek and Turkish national feelings. After Congress instituted a boycott on US arms sales to Turkey, Ankara closed down US bases in Turkey. America’s good friend, the wise though conservative Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis, withdrew Greece from the military arm of NATO.

 

Kissinger’s statecraft, though brilliantly successful in the Middle East and in East–West relations, was unsuccessful in Europe and an unnecessary failure in the eastern Mediterranean, offending both America’s key allies there and helping create the Cyprus catastrophe. Fortunately, US policy on Cyprus has changed. Washington has recently made behind-the-scenes efforts to push the Turkish side towards talks on resolving the Cyprus quandary.¹⁷ The US problem was and is rather a mild case of “chronic neo-isolationism”: a reluctance to become involved deeply in foreign entanglements.

 

The US ambassador to Cyprus, Donald Bandler, has announced that US Cyprus Presidential Emissary Alfred Moses and State Department Co-ordinator for Cyprus Thomas Weston will work for a settlement. The new Bush administration has made it clear that it agrees with the vision of ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as outlined in remarks to the press in June 1997: “What we seek is the reunification of Cyprus. We believe that the division of the island is unacceptable ... We continue to support the establishment of a bizonal, bicommunal federation. We will do everything we can to bring the process forward.”

Greece

There is a tendency among Greeks to analyze Greek–American relations (or international politics in general) in a sentimental fashion. Terms such as “we have been betrayed by our friends” or “we have been sold out” have been employed frequently by political elites as well as by the Greek media. But international politics, despite protestations to the contrary, is not being played in a field of law and morality but in an arena of shrewdness and power.¹⁸

 

We who recall Greece after the Civil War are astounded at her remarkable development into a rapidly maturing civil society, together with her efforts to participate fully in European monetary union and ESDI. Greece would provide Cyprus with an “elder brother” upon Nicosia’s entry into the European Union. Entry remains Nicosia’s major foreign policy goal, and I believe it would give a fillip towards reuniting the island. A link-up with NATO via the Western European Union, an EU defence alliance to which Greece already belongs, would clearly provide an additional spur to Cyprus’s reunification and increase Nicosia’s international importance.

 

It is doubtful that the summum bonum clearly sought by many Greek analysts—recreation of a “democratic unitary” Cypriot state—is possible today. Too much blood has been shed, too much history has intervened. But a federal solution embracing a bicommunal and bizonal state incorporating both the Turkish Cypriots’ elastic “confederation” and the Greek Cypriots’ “Three Freedoms” (democracy cum sovereignty) is possible in my view. Federation also offers the possibility of future evolution into a democratic unitary state when mutual trust has developed and mutual fear subsided. But a new form of “consociation” will have to be developed, with powerful guarantees for the Turkish Cypriot minority and full security for the Greek Cypriot majority.

 

Moreover, the Greek side must take some responsibility for the role of EOKA leader, General George Grivas, whose share in the unfolding of the Cyprus tragedy is hardly emphasised in Greek national narratives or Greek Cypriot subtexts. Rarely is he given responsibility for contributing to the pathological fear of Greek Cypriots observable among Turkish Cypriots in the North.

 

Any catalogue of Greek policy failures must also include junta leader Ioannides’s fatal error of judgment in precipitating the Turkish invasion of Cyprus by trying to overthrow the elected leader of the Cypriot people, Archbishop Makarios. The junta’s inability to realise the implications of Turkey’s propinquity to Cyprus is a bit mind-boggling but contributed greatly to the ultimate division of the island. Also its selection of Nicos “Turk Killer” Sampson to head the coupist regime in Cyprus displayed a rather primitive understanding of Cypriot, regional and world geopolitical reality.

Turkey

A strong ESDI would clearly have profound effects on the strategic shape of the eastern Mediterranean, including Greek–Turkish relations and the Aegean and Cyprus disputes. For the European Union, the price would include Turkey’s entry as a full member; for Turkey it would clearly require two painful major changes:

 

1. Resolution of the Cyprus and Aegean disputes with Greece. This would oblige Turkey to follow Greece’s example begun by Andreas Papandreou and almost completed by current prime minister, Costas Simitis: good relations with one’s European and Balkan neighbours.

 

2. A drastic reform of domestic policies to meet EU entry conditions on economics, politics, and on human rights for all citizens of Turkey, including Kurds and Greeks.

 

Would Turkey be prepared to carry out such painful, difficult changes? It may have little choice, despite the opposition of the powerful Turkish military. For the alternative is to be marginalised as a permanent Third World power. This would probably mean a tragic descent into a secular military dictatorship such as Iraq’s. Or—even worse from the Kemalist elite’s point of view—into another Iran, under the heel of Muslim extremists such as Necmettin Erbakan. On Turkish views of the international legal status of Cyprus, careful study suggests they are simply untenable. This is why Athens demands that the issues be submitted to the International Court of Justice, while Ankara insists they be considered only in bilateral talks. Turkey knows it would lose, while Greece knows it would win.

 

The end of the Cold War has changed everything. The policy of Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou of principled rapprochement with Ankara has met with a positive response from his Turkish counterpart, Ismail Cem. The views of both foreign ministers are hopeful precisely because they share a common appreciation of “neo-realist”, mutual national self-interest. Yet Turkish leaders must still be persuaded that their current “Hispaniola formula” for Cyprus is both dangerous and counterproductive, adding little to any side’s security. In fact, it facilitates an eventual disastrous Greek–Turkish war. If the European Union and United States move together, Turkey will either join in or be marginalised. For Turkey needs Europe, and Europe needs a reformed Turkey.

The Future

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall …
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

—Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”

 

The failure of past US and British policy on Cyprus is now clearly recognised by both Washington and London. The problem is, “what is to be done” now? The only real solution is for a package agreement on the Aegean and Cyprus between Athens and Ankara similar in scope and daring to that signed by Paris and Bonn in the 1950s, or the Balkan Pact agreed upon by Greek premier Eleftherios Venizelos and Turkish president Kemal Ataturk in the 1930s when Venizelos actually recommended Ataturk for the Nobel Peace Prize. We must not delay for lack of courage to begin anew.

 

Endnotes

1. For a contrary view, holding that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots could have formed a common political culture but for British interference, see Adamantia Pollis, “International Factors and the Failure of Political Integration in Cyprus”, in Small States and Segmented Societies: National Political Integration in a Global Environment, ed. S. G. Newman (New York: Praeger, 1976), pp. 44–83; see also Pollis, “Intergroup Conflict and British Colonial Policy: The Case of Cyprus”, Comparative Politics 5 (July 1973), pp. 576–99.

 

2. Joseph S. Joseph, Cyprus: Ethnic Conflict and International Concern (New York: Lang, 1985), pp. 241–2.

 

3. Demetrios A. Theophylactou, Security, Identity and Nation-Building: Cyprus and the European Union in Comparative Perspective (Aldershot: Avebury, 1995), p. i.

 

4. “Consociationalism involves the systematic sharing of political power among the different groups, giving each group control over its own life ... [It] allows each group to veto collective policies that it believes will affect it adversely, and it provides for proportionate sharing of national offices and resources” (Gabriel A. Almond et al., eds., European Politics Today [New York: Longman, 1999], p. 21).

 

5. Kyriacos C. Markides, The Rise and Fall of the Cyprus Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 21–3, 186.

 

6. Thomas Ehrlich, “Cyprus, the ‘Warlike Isle’: Origins and Elements of the Current Crisis”, Stanford Law Review 18, no. 5 (1965), p. 1089.

 

7. I stress that the Greek Cypriot–controlled South of the island (the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus) now does have a growing “civil society”, with a vigorous chapter of Amnesty International and a powerful citizens’ environmental movement. Both the Republic of Cyprus and the occupied North also have strong, largely independent trade unions, though the unions in the North are often constrained by the 35,000–40,000 mainland Turkish troops occupying the territory of the pseudo-independent “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”, or TRNC.

 

8. Joseph S. Joseph, Cyprus: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: From Independence to the Threshold of the European Union (London: Macmillan, 1997), p. 28.

 

9. Philippos K. Savvides, “US Foreign Policy toward Cyprus: Is the ‘Theory of Continuity’ Still Relevant?”, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 24, no. 1 (1998), p. 39.

 

10. Ioannis D. Stefanides, Isle of Discord: Nationalism, Imperialism and the Making of the Cyprus Problem (London: Hurst and Company, 1999), p. 231.

 

11. Morton A. Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York: John Wiley, 1962).

 

12. Alexis Alexandris, “Greek–Turkish Relations: A View from Athens” (paper presented at a conference on US foreign policy and the future of Greek–Turkish relations, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C., 12 June 2024).

 

13. One such offer was made at the 1912–13 London Balkan conference in return for a British base at Argostoli or Cephallonia; the offer was renewed in 1915 in exchange for Greek aid to Serbia, a British ally in the First World War. See Farid Mirbagheri, Cyprus and International Peacekeeping (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 23.

 

14. Though bitterly critical of British and US policy towards Cyprus, Brendan O’Malley and Ian Craig argue that British minutes suggest US pressure compelled the Turks to agree to the London–Zurich Accords for “the Americans looked on guaranteed independence as the ultimate solution” (The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion [London: I. B. Tauris, 1999], pp. 74–5).

 

15. Joseph, Cyprus: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics, p. 62.

 

16. By Christopher Hitchens, for example. See his Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 79–80.

 

17. See Lale Sariibrahimoglu, “Cyprus Minister Gurel Bypassed on Cyprus”, Turkish Daily News, 25 July 2001. The article alleges that Washington, through the International Monetary Fund, put pressure on Ankara to get Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to re-enter intercommunal talks on a Cyprus solution. Denktash has so far refused to do so until the Republic of Cyprus recognises his TRNC as a sovereign state—a condition that would violate US policy, UN resolutions on Cyprus, and the republic’s Treaty of Guarantee. To date, the TRNC is recognised only by Turkey.

 

18. Theodore Couloumbis, Foreign Interference in Greek Politics (New York: Pella, 1976), p. 140.