1/18 Very disappointing book. Superficial, naive, uninformed, full of misinterpretation and oversights that ends up excusing British colonialism, Turkish expansionism, Turkish Cypriot fanaticism and largely pins the blame for Cyprus' downfall on Greek Cypriots:
2/18 Britain's expressed desire to deny Cyprus self-determination
because it would mark further British retreat from the Middle East is
taken at face value…
3/18 Since Greece was prepared to satisfy British demands to maintain a
military presence in Cyprus – something Novo doesn't mention – then
we're left asking why did Britain really want to stay in Cyprus?
4/18 The answer is ideological; that Britain couldn't stand the idea
that it was a declining power and that people it regarded as nothing
more than subjects had the audacity not to want to be ruled by them. If
Britain was to leave Cyprus, it wanted to leave on its terms.
5/18 Novo downplays Britain's role in inciting Turkey and the TCs. He
claims Britain was limited in what it could do for GCs because of
reactions it might provoke in Turkey and the TCs. This is rubbish.
Britain could have faced down Turkey and the TCs but chose not to do so.
6/18 Rather, Britain found it more useful to drag Turkey into Cyprus and
indulge the more extreme Turkish Cypriots because Britain wanted to
scare the GCs into maintaining the British presence. Bringing Turkey and
the TCs into the equation was a choice not necessity.
7/18 Britain's supposed sensitivity to Turkish and TC interests was
cynical and hypocritical. In the past, it hadn't prevented the British
from offering Cyprus to Greece and leading GCs to believe that Cyprus
uniting with Greece was the natural evolution of British rule.
8/18 Greek Cypriots were not, therefore, naive or hindered by fanaticism
in wanting Enosis. It was a legitimate and natural demand that Britain
had, previously, been willing to grant. Wariness of Turkish and TC
objections had not swayed Britain's Cyprus policy before.
9/18 While Novo expends a lot of words doubting the legitimacy of the
Enosis demand, he says nothing about the legitimacy or otherwise of the
Turkish Cypriot objections to it, i.e. that it would lead to the
annihilation of the TCs.
10/18 In fact, Turkish Cypriot objections – like the objections of
ex-colonial rumps in South Africa and Ireland (i.e. the whites and
Protestants) – weren't just to Enosis but any form of status for Cyprus
that would leave them being 'ruled by Greeks'.
11/18 The logic of Turkish Cypriot objections was to thwart not only
Enosis but any united, independent Cyprus in which the 80% majority had
effective say in running the island.
12/18 Rather than recognising TC objections to Enosis and independence
for what they are/were – a rallying call for ethnic cleansing – Novo
dresses this up as legitimate concerns for security and identity and
blames GCs for not recognising them as such.
13/18 Eventually, the British decided that if Greek Cypriots wanted
self-determination, then it was only right that Turkish Cypriots should
be allowed the same thing.
14/18 But self-determination for Greek Cypriots, which essentially meant
Enosis, did not mean annihilation of the TCs; whereas
self-determination for the TCs, which essentially meant partition, would
have exactly that outcome for Greek Cypriots.
15/18 Throughout, GCs are blamed for not recognising the 'realities' of
'genuine' Turkish and Turkish Cypriot objections to Enosis and Britain's
determination to maintain its – and the West's – strategic position in
the East Med.
16/18 But Turkey's strategic objections to a Greek-dominated Cyprus are
borne of Turkey's paranoid hyper-nationalism, the perception of Greece
as a threat and Greeks as the eternal enemy. Greeks, in Cyprus and
elsewhere, cannot curtail their freedom to satisfy Turkish delusions.
17/18 While Cyprus – independent or as part of Greece – would never have
threatened the West's strategic position in the East Med.
18/18 At no point does Novo see Cyprus in the context of the end of the
British and Ottoman empires, as an anti-colonial struggle for freedom
and democracy. Uniquely, Cypriots, who'd lived under foreign rule for
800 yrs, should've put aside the desire to decide their own future.
Also, Novo, who declares the Enosis campaign a failure, has a narrow
view of what that campaign meant.
At some level, it did, of course, mean
that Cyprus should be incorporated into the Greek state, that Cypriots
would be Greek citizens and the island would be run from Athens…
However, on another level, Enosis meant GCs would be able, without
interference, to express their Greek identity and defy British colonial
policy that had gone from seeing Cypriots as Greek to the core to
identifying that Greekness as a threat and trying to undermine and deny
it.
Thus, as an assertion of Hellenic identity, in establishing the Republic of Cyprus in which Greeks predominate, and in making the Republic of Cyprus and the Hellenic Republic inseparable if not indistinguishable, Enosis fulfilled its task.
