Cyril Radcliffe, from India to Cyprus: partition and British imperial policy

This piece is in response to a small twitter exchange with the eminent historian of India William Dalrymple, which had me pointing out that, at the fag end of British colonial rule in Cyprus, Cyril Radcliffe who had, a decade earlier, devised plans to carve apart India as the sub-continent moved towards independence, was also responsible for being the first to codify British proposals to partition Cyprus in 1956.

On further study, this is not quite right.

In fact, as some in the UK colonial establishment began to seriously consider partitioning Cyprus – parcelling out portions of the island to Turkey and Greece and retaining a chunk for the UK for the purposes of military bases – Radcliffe, who had been appointed Constitutional Commissioner for Cyprus in February 1956, came up with proposals that reflected those in the British ruling elite squeamish about butchering Cyprus.

The background to Radcliffe’s involvement in Cyprus is, of course, the EOKA uprising that broke out in April 1955 and was aimed at ending British rule (which had begun in 1878) and the union of the island with Greece.  

To Greek Cypriot demands for self-determination, Britain responded that some parts of the British empire were too strategically important to ever be allowed this kind of freedom.

Initially, EOKA’s campaign was intended to be limited and put on display how serious Greek Cypriots were about ending British colonial rule; but, as often happens with armed insurgencies, the violence escalated and took on a life of its own.

While the departure of the Greek Cypriots from purely political means to achieve their ends somewhat played into the hands of more hardline British imperialists, who could now treat the Cypriot clamour for an end to colonial rule as a security not a political issue, there was still a British recognition that there needed to be some movement to satisfy Greek Cypriot demands (Greek Cypriots constituted 80% of Cyprus’ population) for greater political involvement in running the island.

This is where Radcliffe enters the story. In February 1956, Radcliffe was tasked by the British government to survey the island’s political landscape and come up with a constitution that would square the circle of maintaining British sovereignty while, at the same time, allow for self-government for Cypriots based on liberal democratic principles.

The first interesting point to emerge from this is that less than a decade after what we now regard as one of the great human catastrophes in history – the partitioning of India – in which Radcliffe is somewhat of a villainous figure, in 1956 his reputation was still high enough in British colonial circles for him to be called on when British rule in Cyprus had run into trouble.

It also suggests that Radcliffe, often portrayed as a man tortured by the consequences of his role in the partitioning India, was not averse to becoming involved in another colonial quagmire where partition was high on the agenda.

As with India, Radcliffe had no previous experience of Cyprus and only nine months elapsed from the time of Radcliffe being appointed as Constitutional Commissioner to the release of his report. He visited Cyprus twice, from July to September 1956, always under armed escort, for four weeks in total, where he spent most of his time conferring with the island’s governor, Field Marshall Sir John Harding, and listening to Turkish demands for partition. Greek Cypriot luminaries on the island refused to meet with Radcliffe, in protest at the treatment of Archbishop Makarios, the undisputed political leader of the Greek Cypriot community, who had been deported by Harding to Seychelles in March 1956.

Radcliffe’s report, submitted to the colonial office in late 1956, began inauspiciously, purporting to be impressed with the educational and cultural accomplishments of the Cypriots but bewildered that this hadn’t resulted in political advancement, seemingly oblivious to the distortions colonial repression and manipulation had on political life on the island.

‘The people of Cyprus, I have reminded myself,’ Radcliffe declared, ‘are an adult people enjoying long cultural traditions and an established education system, fully capable of furnishing qualified administrators, lawyers, doctors and men of business. It is a curiosity of their history that their political development has remained comparatively immature.’

Cyprus had, since 1931, following small-scale anti-colonial riots, been run as a tinpot gubernatorial dictatorship, with the constitution and legislature suspended, political parties banned, censorship, petty restrictions on the expression of anti-colonial feeling, deportations, and so on, and it was Radcliffe’s task to end this sorry state of affairs and, hopefully, earn the loyalty of Cypriots, particularly Greek Cypriots, whose attachment to Greece had perennially posed the biggest threat to the colonial status quo.

The constitution Radcliffe envisaged for Cyprus depended, as Robert Holland says, on ‘the old imperial device of dyarchy’ – in which powers devolved to the local population, in the form of a Legislative Assembly, would be balanced (or, in reality, superseded) by those retained by the colonial authorities, in the person of the Governor of the island, who would also have exclusive powers in matters of defence, foreign affairs and internal security.

Having rejected Greek Cypriot demands for a full-blown democratic constitution and self-determination – which would have inevitably led to Enosis – Radcliffe also spurned Turkish and Turkish Cypriot demands for a federation, which everyone understood, if adopted, would be nothing more than the prelude to the Turks’ ultimate aim, partition.

Even if the Turks regarded partition as a compromise – their original aim in the event of a British withdrawal from Cyprus was the annexation of the entire island – Radcliffe saw no merit or justice in sundering the island and instead proposed widespread safeguards for the island’s Turkish minority within a unitary state.

Holland suggests that Radcliffe’s experience of partitioning Punjab and Bengal in 1947, the horrors that accompanied this, had prompted him to agree with Harding that partitioning Cyprus was a ‘confession of failure’ and ‘a counsel of despair’.

In this regard, Radcliffe said in his report that it would be manifestly unjust and undemocratic that the Turkish minority, comprising 18% of the island’s population, ‘be accorded political representation equal to that of the Greek Cypriot community’.

In Radcliffe’s opinion, acceding to the Turkish demand for a federation was not logical. There was ‘no pattern of territorial separation between the two communities and, apart from other objections, federation of communities which does not involve also federation of territories seems to me a very difficult constitutional form’.

Given the fact that Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities were mixed throughout Cyprus with no discernible geographic separation, it was clear to British colonial administrators, like Radcliffe, that Turkish demands for a federation/partition could only come about as a result of civil war between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, widespread ethnic cleansing and a probable war between Greece and Turkey.

Not only did the British balk at the humanitarian consequences of agreeing to Turkey’s partitionist aspirations, but the subsequent convulsions would not only likely make Britain’s position in Cyprus untenable but would also jeopardise the entire southern flank of NATO – a scenario that prompted the Americans to warn the UK at the time against the ‘forcible vivisection’ of the island.

However, Radcliffe’s good sense in rejecting partition for Cyprus was not reflected among Tory party imperialists and the British defence establishment – smarting now over the Suez humiliation and the prospect of Britain being ejected wholesale from the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean – or those in the colonial administration in Cyprus who resented the EOKA uprising and wanted to punish the Greek Cypriots for it. These three centres of power all came to the conclusion that partition would be preferable to Enosis and that even if they couldn’t envisage Britain doing the dirty work of ethnic cleansing, on which partition was predicated, then at least the threat of partition should be used against the Greek Cypriots to frighten them into accepting continuing British sovereignty of the island. 

Thus, despite Radcliffe resisting Turkish demands for partition, when presenting his report to the House of Commons, colonial secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd insisted that partition of Cyprus was very much on the agenda and, indeed, that Radcliffe’s proposals for self-government could be interpreted as portending a long-term outcome of ‘double self-determination’.

‘As regards the eventual status of the island,’ the colonial secretary said in the House of Commons on 19 December 1956, ‘Her Majesty's Government have already affirmed their recognition of the principle of self-determination. When the international and strategic situation permits, and provided that self-government is working satisfactorily, Her Majesty's Government will be ready to review the question of the application of self-determination.’

He went on: ‘When the time comes for this review, that is, when these conditions have been fulfilled, it will be the purpose of Her Majesty's Government to ensure that any exercise of self-determination should be effected in such a manner that the Turkish Cypriot community, no less than the Greek Cypriot community, shall, in the special circumstances of Cyprus, be offered freedom to decide for themselves their future status. In other words, Her Majesty's Government recognise that the exercise of self-determination in such a mixed population must include partition among the eventual options.’

Whether Lennox-Boyd was cynically using the threat of partition to coerce Greek Cypriots to stop demanding an end to British rule or if the British really had decided at this point that partition of the island was the best way to protect imperial interests is a moot point.

What is not moot is that Britain in 1956 had the opportunity to explicitly tell Turkey that its ambition of partition was unacceptable and would never be considered while Britain had responsibility for the island. Rather than doing this, the British chose instead to appease Turkey, giving it to believe that partition was a viable solution for Cyprus and one that Britain was prepared to consider.

As for the immediate effect on Radcliffe’s constitutional proposals, Lennox-Boyd’s allusion to partition, even if it was only made to tantalise the Turks and scare the Greeks, proved fatal for their prospects.

For Greece and Greek Cypriots, Radcliffe’s diarchy proposals were the same old British colonialist hypocrisy – Time magazine said Radcliffe’s constitution offered Cyprus ‘a façade of self-government carefully designed to preserve what the British in India used to call their paramountcy’ – and conceit, espousing liberal democracy while at the same time insisting that it be severely curtailed to preclude any challenge to British colonialist rule and sovereignty.

Worse than the prospect of continuing British ‘dictatorship’ in Cyprus was the inevitable suspicion felt by the Greek side, after Lennox-Boyd’s performance in the House of Commons, that Britain would use its remodelled administration of Cyprus to gradually steer the island towards partition.

Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots were more amenable to Radcliffe’s report. Even if Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes couldn’t persuade Lennox-Boyd to ditch Radcliffe’s ‘academic exercise’ and go for immediate partition – Menderes told Lennox-Boyd, no doubt referring to the genocide/ethnic cleansing of Greeks from Anatolia and Asia Minor from 1915-23, 'we have done this sort of thing before, and you will see that it is not as bad as all that’ – the Turkish side was reassured that Britain regarded Radcliffe’s constitutional proposals as a potential stepping stone towards dividing Cyprus and thus ‘logical material for negotiation’.

While the British were furious with the Greek side for rejecting Radcliffe’s proposals for self-government – the Foreign Office referred to the Greek government’s reaction to Radcliffe as 'ungracious and ungenerous and very stupid' – what really did for Radcliffe’s attempt to end the violence on Cyprus wasn’t the stubborn attachment of Athens and, more especially, the Greek Cypriots to immediate self-determination and Enosis – but the drivel and machinations of Lennox-Boyd who, in order to appease Turkey and play to the gallery of diehard imperialists in the Tory party, introduced the spectre of partition.

In her book Fettered Independence: Cyprus 1878-1964, Stella Soulioti, a close ally and confidante of Makarios, suggests that – had Harding not made the stupid decision to deport Makarios and Lennox-Boyd hadn’t sought to clumsily blackmail Greek Cypriots with the threat of partition – Radcliffe’s proposals could well have served as a basis to end the conflict in 1956. Makarios, she says, was not inflexible in pursuing self-determination/Enosis and was prepared to contemplate a constitution that provided for self-government.

In fact, Soulioti says that Christopher Woodhouse, the Conservative politician with a long record of political, military and academic connections to Greece, had advised the Greek ambassador to London at the time, Giorgios Seferis, that Athens should accept Radcliffe’s proposals because they would eventually lead to Enosis; Woodhouse adding that he had consulted Radcliffe about this and that Radcliffe had agreed that this was the case even if he ‘could not say so publicly’.

Meanwhile, Nancy Crawshaw, in her book, The Cyprus Revolt, which is hostile to the Greek pursuit of Enosis, lauds the Radcliffe proposals and praises Radcliffe for his ‘outstanding contribution to the search for a compromise’.

Regardless of the merits of Radcliffe’s constitution and who was responsible for its precipitate demise, it was the last time proposals that aimed at a unitary state were put to Greek Cypriots.

After 1956, violence on the island intensified, with an increasingly fanaticised Turkish side now turning to riots, bombs and bullets in pursuit of partition, an aim for which they didn’t just have support and sponsors in Ankara but also from many in London and in the colonial administration in Nicosia.

Thus, while Britain still had legal sovereignty of the island, all post-Radcliffe proposals aimed at ending the conflict took on a greater tendency towards federation and, thus, partition. This process ended with the so-called Zurich-London agreements (1959-60) – negotiated by the UK, Turkey and Greece and from which Cypriots were excluded.

These agreements, which provided for a highly circumscribed independence and precarious bicommunal constitution for Cyprus, quickly began to unravel and by 1963-4 collapsed in a convulsion of violence as Turkish Cypriots withdrew from government and retreated into armed enclaves from where they hoped to create partition on the ground. Again, Britain – which, as a result of the deal that brought independence to Cyprus, had retained two large sovereign military bases on the island and a role as a Guarantor Power dedicated to ensuring ‘ the independence, territorial integrity, and security of Cyprus’ – had a choice: work towards calming the deteriorating situation in Cyprus or exacerbate it by leaning towards partition.

Martin Packard says in his book, Getting it Wrong: Fragments from a Cyprus Diary 1964, that reconciliation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots was possible in 1964 and that Britain was committed to this at first, only for a sudden change in policy to occur, with the same circles that had argued for partition during the EOKA period gaining the upper hand over those in the British establishment opposed to it.

Britain’s increasing acquiescence to partition coincided with greater US involvement on the island. If the Americans had been skeptical of partition in the 1950s and warned the British colonial authorities against it, by 1964 they saw partition as the optimal solution for the island and, unlike the British, were not squeamish about bringing it about.

America's cynicism, British dereliction, Greece’s stupidity and Turkey’s opportunism converged in 1974 when the partition that had first been mooted by the British in 1956 as a bluff to appease the Turks and terrify the Greek Cypriots came to pass as a result of the Athens junta’s botched coup against the Cyprus government (the junta had by now come around to the idea of the partitioning Cyprus and intended to do so on Greek terms) and Turkey’s two-phased invasion of the island.

To end, and to bring us back to where we started, with Cyril Radcliffe, inextricably tied to Britain’s colonial legacy in India and Cyprus, both of which suffered the same calamity – partition, massacre, lost homelands, unresolved bitterness and pain – it’s worth pointing out how, in fact, while India’s dismemberment has been much written about and is a well-known part of the story of the end of empire, the catastrophe in Cyprus is largely ignored.

Christopher Hitchens says such a loss of memory in Cyprus’ case would be unforgivable.

‘It would mean,’ he says, ‘forgetting about the bad and dangerous precedent set by [Turkey’s] invasion; by a larger power suiting itself by altering geography and demography. It would mean overlooking the aspiration of a European people to make a passage from colonial rule to sovereignty in one generation. And it would mean ignoring an example, afforded by Cyprus, of the way in which small countries and peoples are discounted or disregarded by the superpowers (and, on occasion, by liberal commentators).’

Indeed, if we include in the discussion another British-empire-in-retreat partition, that of Palestine in 1948, we can see that  the partition of Cyprus finalised by the Turkish invasion of 1974 bears bitter comparison with the the Nakba as well as the Partition of India.

Thus, the Nakba (1948) saw 700,000 Palestinians out of a population of 1.1m in Mandatory Palestine (i.e. 70 percent of the Palestinians) ethnically cleansed, with the number of Palestinians killed 10,000 (i.e. one percent of the Palestinian population).

Indian partition (1947) resulted in 15m people out of a population of 340m (i.e. 4.4 percent of Indians) being made refugees, with 1-2m killed (i.e. 0.3-0.6 percent of Indians).

As for Cyprus, as a result of the Turkish invasion that brought about the partition of the island, 220,000 Cypriots – (180,000 Greek Cypriots and 40,000 Turkish Cypriots) – were, at the behest of the Turkish army and Turkish Cypriot militias, either expelled, in the Greek Cypriot case, or encouraged to move, in the Turkish Cypriot case, i.e. 33 percent of the population of 642,000. Seven thousand Cypriots were killed during partition – 6000 Greek Cypriots and 1000 Turkish Cypriots, i.e. 1.1 percent of the the island’s population.

British-inspired, Turkish-imposed partition had a devastating effect on Cyprus, equivalent to the Nakba and Indian partition in its human consequences, though Cypriots have had to shout louder to tell the story of the outrage done to their country, their voices drowned out by British colonial and Turkish expansionist narratives that put Cyprus’ fate down to a squabble between primeval and perennial ethnic rivals who needed to be separated from each other for their own good.

Bibliography
1. Crawshaw, Nancy: The Cyprus Revolt
2. Hitchens, Christopher: Cyprus: Hostage to History
3. Holland, Robert: Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
4. Novo, Andrew: The EOKA Cause
5. Packard, Martin: Getting it Wrong
6. Soulioti, Stella: Cyprus: Fettered Independence
7. Time: Cyprus: Proposed Constitution

Review: Andrew Novo's ‘The EOKA Cause: Nationalism and the Failure of Cypriot Enosis’

 

This is a review, originally posted as a thread on Twitter, of Andrew Novo's ‘The EOKA Cause: Nationalism and the Failure of Cypriot Enosis’.

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.

Cyprus 1955-1959: reflections on the British military response to EOKA

A series of British Army interviews (done in 1980 and meant for internal training purposes) recently released on YouTube tell the story of the so-called Cyprus Emergency 1955-59 from the British military point of view. In the first two episodes, General Sir John Harding and Brigadier Geoffrey Baker are interviewed at length about the British response to the initial phase of the EOKA revolt. Harding was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of the island in October 1955, six months after the insurrection aimed at unifying Cyprus with Greece began, while Baker was appointed as his right-hand man or director of operations in November of the same year.

There are two further programmes in the series, in which the second period of the EOKA revolt is discussed by Sir Hugh Foot, who replaced Harding as governor in 1957; General Kenneth Darling, who took over from Baker as director of operations, maintaining the mission of destroying EOKA and the belief that this could best be done by capturing or killing its leader, Georgios Grivas; and John Prendergast, who became head of Special Branch in Cyprus, having had a similar anti-insurgency role in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising.

All programmes reveal a breathtaking level of stupidity and conceit on behalf of the British establishment. With the exception of Foot, who realised there was no military solution to the Cyprus Emergency, the security chiefs’ focus on ‘the job’ – as Harding, Baker, Darling and Prendergast refer to suppressing the rebellion – betrayed a boorish contempt and ignorance of Cypriots, their rich and complex culture and history, which made it easier to dehumanise the locals and justify the repression used on them. These callous, mendacious, hypocritical men, devoid of conscience, intelligence, self-awareness and self-criticism defined the British empire (and the class of men who governed it) as it came to an ignominious close. Their cruelty and foolishness is not only an indictment of British imperialism in its dotage but, predictably, proved futile and counterproductive in pursuit of their stated security aims in Cyprus.

Thus, not only did repression – torture, exile, beatings, floggings, hangings, collective punishment, curfews, concentration camps, etc – not defeat EOKA, not only did Grivas manage to evade death or capture throughout the emergency, but over time EOKA and Grivas grew in strength, reputation, popularity, professionalism and ambition.

These ridiculous colonial marionettes not only presided over the loss of the British empire but also left a legacy of bitterness in the colonies that were subjected to their methods and in Britain where the wounds of being repudiated by their former subjects have never really healed – particularly among the establishment.

Even 20 years after the conflict, these interviews reveal how humiliated these men were by their experience in Cyprus, how obsessed they were by Grivas, an unremarkable and tarnished Greek army colonel, who became their nemesis and made fools of them. His band of 300 EOKA rebels outwitted the British military, who threw everything they had at neutralising ‘the leader’ and dismantling his guerrilla network and ended up doing neither. Certainly, these British soldiers’ unconcealed enmity tells us why British policy to Cyprus, right up until the present day, has always reeked of resentment towards Cypriots, an ongoing revenge for Cypriot audacity in rejecting British colonial rule and hammering a big nail in the coffin of the British empire.

Another point needs to be made, however, which is that these military dinosaurs and imperialist relics would never have set foot on Cyprus had the Cypriots not gone down the path of violent insurrection, hadn’t been mesmerised by the mythology of Thermopylae, Marathon, Salamis, Alexander the Great, Digenis Akritas, 1821, 1912 and 1940, in which Greek liberty is secured by heroic force of arms and self-sacrifice or as the great exponent of Greek nationalism, Ion Dragoumis, writing in 1903, put it in My Hellenism and the Hellenes:

‘Both Crete and Cyprus want Enosis and both are insistent about it. However, I prefer it the way the Cretans are insistent – with rifles.’

Once the Cypriot leadership had decided to take up guns and bombs in pursuit of Enosis, not only did they give the excuse to the British to turn what was a political problem into one of security, but they also relinquished their ability to command events. Political violence with its martyrs, victims, inexorable logic of revenge and retaliation, attracting to the cause as many psychopaths and gangsters as heroes and idealists, has a propensity to spiral out of control and follow unintended directions that rarely end with political goals fulfilled, while the violence and violent men it lets loose and valorises have a habit of sticking around to bedevil the postbellum state of affairs.

Not only was the Cypriots’ choice of armed rebellion over politics a fatal tactical error, we also have to ask to what extent was it even justified. Was British rule in Cyprus – from 1878 to 1955 – ever so oppressive and brutal to justify a campaign of violence to end it? Objectively, the answer has to be ‘no’; and this ‘no’ becomes even more emphatic when one considers that it should have crossed the minds of the Cypriot political leadership that, by 1955, British rule on the island was unsustainable, the British empire was coming to an end anyway, and that what mattered was negotiating the best conclusion possible to it for the Greeks of Cyprus. Ultimately, Britain was able to use the EOKA violence to bypass the Cypriot leadership in deciding the political future of the island, going above their heads to Athens, which agreed on behalf of the Cypriots the calamitous London-Zurich agreements, the truncated and poisoned form of independence that led to intercommunal violence in the 1960s and the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974.

Seferis, Leigh Fermor and the Cyprus crisis

The above programme is from Greek TV in 1972; it's an episode of This is Your Life involving the British writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, known as much for his books on the Mani and Roumeli as for his exploits in Nazi-occupied Crete, where as an SOE officer he executed with the Cretan resistance the kidnap  of the island’s senior German commander, General Heinrich Kreipe, an incident captured in the 1957 Powell & Pressburger film Ill Met By Moonlight, in which Leigh Fermor is portrayed by Dirk Bogarde.

In the moving and almost surreal TV show, Leigh Fermor is reunited not only with two of the Cretan fighters involved in the kidnap, Manolis Paterakis and Giorgos Tyrakis, but with the unfortunate Kreipe himself!

I've been thinking a bit about Leigh Fermor recently. I’ve never read any of his books on Greece, but he does crop up as part of the Katsimbalis circle, the group of Greek, British and American writers brought together by the literary critic and publisher, Giorgos Katsimbalis, the eponymous Colossus of Maroussi as depicted by Henry Miller.

Katsimbalis was responsible in the 1930s for launching the literary careers of, among others, Giorgos Seferis, Odysseas Elytis and Giorgos Theotokas, though his idol was the poet of the Megali Idea, an Idea Katsimbalis shared, Kostis Palamas. The American and British writers and intellectuals involved in the Katsimbalis circle included Steven Runciman, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, the translator Rex Warner, Osbert Lancaster, Leigh Fermor, Philip Sherrard – all of whom, through their intimacy with Katsimbalis and the Greek poets in his circle, developed a passion for and knowledge of Greece, which they converted into literature that inspired a generation of Britons and Americans sympathetic to Hellenism.

However, this Anglo-Greek circle was ruptured by the Cyprus crisis in the 1950s, which pitted Greek against British nationalism.

Seferis, in particular, was deeply involved in the struggle of Cypriot Hellenism. The poet and diplomat was an ardent admirer of Makarios and strong supporter of Grivas and the armed revolt he led – regarding it as pure and just as the Cretan resistance to Germany Leigh Fermor participated in – and as such Seferis cut off all contact with Britons he knew during this period.

I’ve not been able to find any explicit details regarding Leigh Fermor and Cyprus – whether he supported Greek demands or British imperialism – but he was one of the Britons Seferis broke with; although, unlike with Durrell – who not only moved to Cyprus during the EOKA revolt, but was also recruited into the colonial administration’s Information Office (Seferis refers to Durrell as assuming the role of a gauleiter) from where he argued for the virtues of continuing British rule in Cyprus and, indeed, that the Cypriots were not Greeks and their demands for Enosis illegitimate – relations with Leigh Fermor were later resumed.

Nevertheless, the bitterness of the rupture was sincere, particularly on the side of the Greeks, who felt their British friends, who they had embraced, trusted and guided, were little more than parasites and hypocrites.

On 18 April, 1955 – two weeks after EOKA began its armed struggle to unite Cyprus to Greece – Katismbalis, the Venizelist and veteran of the Macedonian campaign, the attempt to liberate Ionia and the Albanian epos, wrote to Seferis:

»Είμαι μπαρουτιασμένος με τους φίλους μας τους Άγγλους… Είναι όλοι τους πούστηδες και καθίκια (και δεν εξαιρώ κανέναν εκτός από το Ρεξ και τον Όσπμερτ – ίσως).»

The Angels of Cyprus, by Nikos Kazantzakis

'Remember that the British fought in Cyprus, and seemingly had everything in their favor. It is an island half the size of New Jersey. The Royal Navy, which can be trusted to do its job, sealed off the island from the outside. There were 40,000 British troops on Cyprus under Field Marshal Sir John Harding, and his opponent, Colonel George Grivas, had 300 Greeks in the EOKA. The ratio between regular troops and guerrillas was 110-to-1 in favor of the British! After five years the British preferred to come to terms with the rebels.' (Bernard B. Fall)

EOKA (Εθνική Οργάνωσις Κυπρίων Αγωνιστών, National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters), under the leadership of Giorgos Grivas-Digenis, began its struggle to liberate Cyprus from British colonial rule and unite the island with Greece with a series of bomb attacks targeting government installations on 1 April 1955. Cypriots had been agitating for liberation and union with Greece since the Greek Enlightenment and the campaign came to a head after the Second World War, with anachronistic colonial empires collapsing and subject peoples winning their right to self-determination. The British responded to Cypriots' peaceful agitation for enosis with repression and in July 1954, the British government declared that Cyprus was too important to Britain's strategic interests and would 'never' be allowed self-determination. It is in this context of British cynicism and duplicity that EOKA was formed and in which Nikos Kazantzakis wrote in Nea Estia on 25 September, 1955, the following attack on Britain's Cyprus policy.

The Angels of Cyprus (The fate and honour of an empire)
These very days, a great people are crossing the Bridge of Trika. [The site of a heroic battle in the Greek War of Independence]. It is not only Cyprus' fate that is being judged. It is not the fate of Cyprus alone that is at stake. For the just rock is sure to devour the unjust mountain. What is at stake, what is being judged at the present moment is the fate and honour of a whole empire! The nation that had risen with such national pride and moral exaltation, as one man, to save the honour of the world in those critical hours of the war, is now undergoing one of the fatal apocalyptic trials that will reveal whether its value is genuine or counterfeit.

And at a still deeper, broader level, the fate and honour of the entire Western world is being judged. Always until now, it has boasted that it was fighting for the justice and freedom of other nations. But now we will see whether that world is worthy of using these sacred words, whether the soul of any honourable man at the present time can have confidence in world leaders such as these…

In a major island, 400,000 spirits are raising a hue and cry, demanding their liberty. And the thrice-noble nation where liberty and light were born is raising a hue and cry along with them. From the four corners of the earth (and even from English throats) voices of anger and protest are exploding. By now it is no longer possible for violence and injustice to stifle a whole people in secret, without protest. Apparently, this world we thought had gone rotten, still has spirits that dare to rear their head against hypocrisy, injustice, arrogance.

It is a critical moment. The moral salvation of the whole world depends on the answer given to the Cyprus question. And on this moral salvation, the political, social, cultural salvation of the world has always depended. Cyprus is no longer a detail now, a mere island at the extreme tip of the Mediterranean. It is becoming the fate-marked centre, where the moral value of contemporary man is at stake.

How is the British Empire facing this tragic moment where its own value is on trial? Alas! With means unworthy of a great nation; with unmanly silence at first; and then with deceit, sycophantism, violence. Shame has hidden its face, far off from the disgraced quarters of the Foreign Office.

The genuine people, though, are not despairing. They know that in this dishonourable, inconsistent world, certain fundamental principles still live and reign, daughters of man, whom he has created with his own sweat, blood, tears. And these are the immortal ones. Most of them were born in Greece: freedom, human dignity, the thirst for justice.

Great mysterious forces are multiplying and bearing fruit even while they are being pursued. Hear the words of an age-old myth: An angel came down to earth, and the ruler of the world was enraged on seeing it. And he lunged at it with his sword and split it in two. And at once the angel became two. And again, the ruler of the world lunged at them and split these two angels in two. And the two angels became four, and the four eight, and the eight sixteen, and soon the earth was filled with angels.

Who was this angel? The angel of freedom? Cyprus will soon be full of angels. And the ruler of the world will be crushed, disgraced in Tartarus, his sword shattered.

There is some mystic law in this world (for if there were not, this world would have been destroyed thousands of years ago), a harsh, inviolable law: in the beginning, evil always triumphs, and in the end it is always vanquished. Apparently, for man to buy this privilege, much effort, much sweat, many tears are imperative. And freedom is the most expensive good that can be bought. It is never given for nothing, either by human beings or by the gods. It goes from land to land, where it is summoned, from heart to heart, unsleeping, unsubduable, uncompromising. At the moment we can watch it traversing the soil of Cyprus with steady momentum. And soon its limbs will be spattered with blood. For this is the way freedom always forges its path.

For us this is a good moment to forget our passions and petty cares; for each man of us with his own God-given gifts to follow the path of freedom throughout the land of Cyprus. And we must share her grief, her upsurge, her danger, insofar as we are capable, and surely later on (for this is the law, we said) her great joy as well.

I myself represent nothing. I am not anything. Only a clear conscience. But a clear conscience weighs more in the scale of God and time than an empire. And now that Cyprus has been saved from the waves and is crying out, all clear consciences – from all the quarters of the world; wherever they may be – can hear this cry and see the injustice and cast the stone (the curse) against the ruler of the world, the wrongdoer. The ruler laughs and acts in a cynical manner. He has the power on his side, soldiers, fleets, lethal birds of the air, vast wealth and traitors – and great hubris. He laughs and acts in a cynical manner, but one day (such has always been the omnipotence of man when wronged) – one day, Clear Conscience will hurl this stone at it and it will hang around the neck of the empire and sink it. The great empires have always sunk.

Several years I went back to Cyprus, enchanted by her Greek light and pleasant air. An old man emerged from a peasant home near Famagusta. We picked up a conversation. He was discussing (what else?) the union, and his eyes flashed. And suddenly a broad smile flooded his sunburned face. He put his hand over his heart, and he said, slowly as though confiding some great secret to me:

'The foundation stones of England are shaking! They are shaking, because the human heart has stirred.'

Yes, the human heart has stirred, O great Empire!

Political Activities of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, 1945-1958 (Full Text)

Following requests, I’m making available in one post and, also, as a PDF (view it and download it here), the recent series I ran on the political activities of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots in the last years of British colonial rule in Cyprus. The post comprises chapter three of Stella Soulioti’s Fettered Independence: Cyprus, 1878-1964; a chapter that describes how Turkey and nationalists from the Turkish minority on Cyprus settled on a plan to partition Cyprus and pursued this through a campaign of violence aimed at stirring up of ethnic conflict on the island, facilitating the physical and psychological separation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. This evidence is intended to directly refute the Turkish narrative on Cyprus, which has, unfortunately, gained currency, that the Turkish invasion of Cyprus was designed to protect the beleaguered Turkish Cypriot community from Greek depredations. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus was the culmination of two decades of Turkish aggression and violence on Cyprus, consistently aimed at one thing and one thing alone: the partitioning of Cyprus.

Political Activities of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, 1945-1958
Turkish Cypriot Organizations and Involvement of Turkey
The first Turkish Cypriot organization was formed in 1943 under the name the Cyprus Turkish Minority Association (KATAK), which was joined by Dr Fazil Kutchuk, the Turkish Cypriot leader who later became vice-president of the Republic of Cyprus. The activities of the association were rather insignificant, and in 1945 Kutchuk withdrew from it and established the Cyprus Turkish National Party. This gradually superseded KATAK, which was finally dissolved in 1949.

Although the general objective of these organizations was to oppose enosis and support the continuation of British colonial rule, it should not be overlooked that in January 1947 KATAK issued a statement advocating that if Britain were to leave Cyprus, the island should go back to Turkey, ‘its previous suzerain and nearest neighbour’. However, when a Committee on Turkish Cypriot Affairs was set up by [colonial governor of Cyprus] Lord Winster to inquire into the grievances of the Turkish Cypriots, the chairman declared at its opening meeting on 24 June 1948 that it was the ardent desire of the Turks on the island to live and prosper under British rule, which they wished to see perpetuated. Significantly, the young generation was represented on the committee by Rauf Denktash, who was later to become the forceful leader of the Turkish Cypriot community.

It was in 1948, after the collapse of the Consultative Assembly, that the Turkish Cypriots first appealed to Turkey for support. This approach met with a positive response, particularly among university students and the press. In November 1948, President Inonu assured a Turkish Cypriot delegation that Turkey was not indifferent to the future of Cyprus. Before the end of that year, a large anti-Greek rally staged by the Turkish community took place in Nicosia. This heralded the beginning of Turkish Cypriot orientation toward Turkey.

It is indicative of the trend of events that in 1955 the name of the Cyprus Turkish National Party was changed to the Cyprus-is-Turkish Party. This party was in fact organized with the help of an emissary from Turkey, Hikmet Bil. At the same time, a sister party was formed in Turkey itself, which Kutchuk is quoted as saying ‘would soon have half a million members, all ready to back up their brothers in Cyprus’ – and that all was done with the approval of the Turkish government. Hikmet Bil was president of the Cyprus-is-Turkish Association in Turkey, while Adnan Menderes, the prime minister, was its patron.

In the summer of 1955, the Turks also formed an underground organization, Volkan, which was later reorganized and renamed the TMT (Turk Mukavemet Teshkilati, Turkish Resistance Organization). Many members of Volkan and TMT were Turkish Cypriot auxiliary policemen. It has since become known that the organizer of TMT was Rauf Denktash. In an article in the Turkish newspaper Belge, Denktash later related that in 1958 he visited Ankara with Kutchuk and had a meeting with foreign minister Zorlu to discuss the better organization of TMT on an island-wide basis. On a subsequent visit to Ankara, he met Cevdet Sunay, who was to take a personal interest in TMT in his various capacities, as deputy chief of staff, chief of staff and later president of Turkey. ‘They gave us their most distinguished experts in order to organise the TMT in the best possible manner,’ Denktash said.

It is a fact worth special attention that, unlike EOKA [which was entirely rooted in the Greek Cypriot community], TMT was not a wholly Turkish Cypriot movement but overtly involved Turks from Turkey, and that it operated both in Cyprus and Turkey. This was formally recognized by the decision of the Turkish Cypriot Legislative Assembly, taken on 7 February 1975, to grant ‘Turkish Cypriot citizenship’ to ‘persons who served in the Turkish Resistance Organization, TMT, since 1958, in Cyprus and in Turkey’.

British Attitude Towards Turkish Activities
British policy was to encourage the underground activities of the Turks and to rally Turkish Cypriot support in opposition to EOKA. It is eloquent of this policy that, while EOKA was banned a week after the appearance of [its] first leaflet and mere membership of EOKA was decreed a crime, no action was taken against Volkan or TMT, nor did the government voice any objection to the meddling of Hikmet Bil, a foreign national, in the affairs of a British colony. Worse still, Turkish Cypriots were employed extensively in the British security forces against EOKA. These consisted of a Mobile Reserve, composed exclusively of Cypriot Turks, and an Auxiliary Police and Special Constabulary which, in their overwhelming majority, were made up of Turkish Cypriots (1,700 out of 1,770), in addition to the large numbers serving in the regular police force. It has been noted that ‘as guards and escorts they [the Turks] were irreplaceable,’ and that ‘the co-operation of the Turkish community was vital to the struggle against EOKA’. It was only a matter of time before an incident would occur involving a Turkish Cypriot serving with the security forces, thereby activating riots against the Greek Cypriots.

Turkish Political Objective of Partition Formulated
By 1957 the Turks had formulated their political objective clearly: the partition of Cyprus, which they set out to achieve by:

    •    establishing a separate identity for the Turkish Cypriots;
    •    demonstrating that coexistence between the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots was impossible, and that they must therefore be physically separated; and
    •    creating territorial division between the two communities which were interspersed throughout the island.

The above goals have persisted as the cornerstone of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot policy over the years.

The arm used to apply the policy was [the terrorist group] TMT, under the slogan ‘Partition or Death.’ The partition line was set at the 35th Parallel, dividing Cyprus roughly in half. Posters, showing the island partitioned, with the superimposed figure of a Turkish soldier, were displayed everywhere.

A booklet entitled The Cyprus Question – A Permanent Solution, issued in October 1957 by [Fazil] Kutchuk, then chairman of the Cyprus-is-Turkish Party, spells out the Turkish policy in unequivocal terms. The cover of the booklet shows Cyprus partitioned in half. The following excerpts are revealing:

Equal rights is what we want and equal rights mean nothing but partition.

Turkey has, in fairness and magnanimity, consented to Partition for the sake of permanent peace in the area. Thus, the two countries [Greece and Turkey] which are friendly frontier-neighbours will extend their frontiers across Cyprus and the Communist foothold in the island will thus be prevented and the Turkish foothold will safeguard the breathing space for Turkey and her allies in the event of war.

Such partitioning will not involve the compulsory exchange of populations. Each man will be able to live in his own place feeling assured that his country is next door to protect his rights and interests. Two responsible governments will keep the extremists in their group under constant control.

Turkey has, in fairness and in complete recognition of her duty to maintain peace in the area and good relations with her neighbours, decided to abandon her claim to the whole of Cyprus and accepted the solution of partition as a fair basis for settlement.

She [Greece] has got no case on Cyprus and… unless she consents to partition Turkey will have the right to move into the island the moment Britain withdraws.

By the end of December 1956, Turkey, being aware that Britain had begun to consider partition as a possible solution, demanded partition at every opportunity. Kutchuk, who visited Ankara (2 April-10 May 1957) to consult with the Turkish government, said in a press statement on 3 April 1957 that enmity between the two communities in Cyprus had reached such a pitch that they could not possibly coexist under the same regime, and the only acceptable solution, therefore, was partition. On 3 February 1958, on his return to Nicosia from another visit to Ankara, Kutchuk said that taksim [partition] was ‘One thousand percent certain’, and that ‘if our own force in Cyprus proves inadequate, our fatherland is ready to come to our aid’.

On 8 June 1958, the Turkish foreign ministry issued a statement that the Turkish government had come to a ‘full and mature decision to bring about the partition of Cyprus’ as the only means of ensuring Turkey’s own security. On the same day, there was a big demonstration in Istanbul in support of taksim, with speeches against Greece and Britain and the burning of an effigy of Archbishop Makarios. The speakers included Kutchuk, who stressed the impossibility of Greek and Turkish Cypriots living together and claimed the question was no longer one for the Turkish Cypriots but ‘for 26 million Turks’. Kutchuk kept up the pressure for partition, along the 35th parallel.

Consistency of Turkish Policy of Partition
The Turkish pursuit of partition remained constant  through all the subsequent phases of the recent history of Cyprus. As Hayrettin Erkmen, a member of the Turkish cabinet at the time of the Zurich Agreements [1959] and foreign minister after the invasion of Cyprus in 1974, has revealed: ‘Turkey’s posture on Cyprus might appear to be variable, but actually it adheres to a specific line.’ And he goes on to explain that when the thesis that Cyprus should be returned to Turkey failed, the idea of taksim [partition] was upheld: ‘and later we came upon the formula of a Cyprus Republic which was a kind of taksim’. This objective was paramount in Turkish minds during the Zurich negotiations.

The consistency of Turkish policy is demonstrated by the fact that, following the intercommunal conflict in December 1963, Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots formally proposed to UN mediator Galo Plaza in 1964 the partition of Cyprus along the line indicated in 1957, together with a suggestion for an exchange of populations. That this line is practically identical with that where the Turkish Army finally halted in the second phase of the invasion of Cyprus in August 1974 is eloquent proof of this consistency.

In fact, between the first and second phase of the invasion, on 12 August 1974, during the conference in Geneva between the three guarantor powers, Britain, Greece and Turkey, and representatives of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, the Turkish delegation tabled a proposal demanding as a zone of Turkish control this same line. Moreover, in conformity with its 1964 proposals to the UN mediator, Turkey expelled from their homes and properties in the area occupied by it virtually all Greek Cypriots (about 180,000) and proceeded to compel all Turkish Cypriots to move to the occupied areas, while transporting from Turkey thousands of settlers.

Turkish Cypriot Violence in Pursuit of Partition
[From] 1956 on, the Turkish leadership instituted a vigorous campaign under the slogan ‘from Turk to Turk’, advocating the boycott of Greek goods and services and forbidding cooperation with Greek Cypriots at all levels, including participation in mixed trade unions. Those who deviated were denounced as traitors and punished: two Turkish Cypriot members of a trade union were shot dead by [the terrorist group] TMT in 1958 for collaborating with their Greek Cypriot coworkers…

To bring about the physical separation of the two communities and to impose territorial division, the Turkish Cypriots, at the instigation and with the encouragement of Turkey, embarked, beginning in January 1956, on organized rioting initially aimed at the destruction of Greek Cypriot property. The object was to foster enmity between the two communities, thereby proving [Turkish Cypriot leader Fazil] Kutchuk’s premise that coexistence had become impossible, making partition the only acceptable solution.

As was inevitable in view of the large number of Turks actively participating with the British security forces against EOKA, the day came when, on 11 January 1956, a Turkish Cypriot police sergeant who had given evidence in trials of EOKA members was killed by EOKA. The Turkish Cypriots immediately retaliated by attacks against Greek Cypriot property in Nicosia and Paphos accompanied by threats against Greek lives. These were followed by further attacks on 23 and 24 April, after the killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman who had chased EOKA fighters. On 25 May, after the death of a Turkish Cypriot policeman who again had chased an EOKA fighter who had turned and shot him, extensive rioting broke out in Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos, with indiscriminate arson of Greek properties. In Nicosia the Turks burst into the Greek quarter of the city and burned down an oxygen factory, battering its old caretaker to death. The Turkish mob, ‘including a score of auxiliary and special constables’, became so menacing that the British authorities set up a barricade across the old city of Nicosia (the ‘Mason-Dixon Line’, a precursor to the ‘Green Line’ drawn in December 1963). By June 1956 Turkish rioting extended to Famagusta and flared up once again in Nicosia, with massive destruction of Greek property, in January and February 1957.

The Turkish leadership had no scruples about creating pretexts for reprisals. Soon after Sir Hugh Foot’s arrival in Cyprus [as the new colonial governor], clashes occurred on 7 and 9 December 1957 between the security forces and Greek secondary schoolchildren demonstrating on the occasion of the UN General Assembly debate on Cyprus, in the course of which a Turkish policeman was wounded accidentally. A fabricated rumor that he had been killed, and killed by Greeks, formed the signal for Turkish  mobs to throw themselves into the Greek quarter of Nicosia with such ferocity that the Mason-Dixon Line had to be reestablished. Nor was calculated misrepresentation of the facts considered improper: at the United Nations on 9 December 1957, Turkey did not hesitate to accuse Greeks of killing three Turks in Paphos a week earlier, whereas they had been killed by fellow Turks who had been arrested.

What is noteworthy is that, despite the repeated, organized and violent rioting and destruction of their property by the Turks, the Greeks, although outnumbering the Turks by four to one, did not counter-attack or retaliate in any way. No Turkish property was threatened or damaged. In fact, on 3 February 1957, the Greek members of the Nicosia Municipal Council appealed to the Greek population to avoid at all costs any friction with the Turkish community.

The most violent riots were yet to come. On 21 January 1958, Turkish Cypriots demonstrated in Nicosia and Famagusta against what they regarded as the pro-Greek policy of the new governor, Sir Hugh Foot. More demonstrations, the most violent ever known in Cyprus, took place in Nicosia on 27 January 1958. These were organized to coincide with the discussion of the Foot Plan in Ankara between British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd, accompanied by Sir Hugh Foot, and the Turkish government. During the disturbances, thousands of Turks hurled stones and bottles at British troops, overturned and set fire to military vehicles and police cars, and erected barricades in the Turkish quarter of Nicosia, prominently displaying Turkish flags. After several attempts by British troops to break up the demonstrations, a curfew was imposed in the Turkish quarter, ending nine hours of violent rioting marked by many bitter hand-to-hand struggles between Turkish Cypriots and the security forces. Despite the curfew, further riots broke out the following day with renewed attacks on British forces. Order was finally restored on 29 January 1958. ‘The Turks were, as usual, making their stand clear by actions as well as by words,’ was Sir Hugh’s comment on the riots.

In March 1958, after almost a year of continuous truce, EOKA renewed its offensive by an intensive sabotage campaign against military installations. On 21 April 1958, however, it declared a ceasefire pending the outcome of a policy statement by the British government, whereas the Turkish Cypriots, fearing that the new British plan would exclude partition, stepped up their preparations in close cooperation with the Turkish government. In February 1958 a meeting was held in Greece between British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd and Greek foreign minister Evangelos Averoff, attended also by the governor of Cyprus, Sir Hugh Foot, and the head of the Cyprus Desk in the Greek Foreign Ministry, Dimitri S. Bitsios. Foot stated that the Turkish Cypriots were now armed and were receiving instructions ‘from somewhere in Turkey’, in the hope that EOKA’s truce would end, providing them with an excuse to embark on their own armed activity against the Greek Cypriots.

The next, and by far most alarming, bout of Turkish Cypriot violence erupted on 7 June 1958, shortly before what came to be known as the Macmillan Plan was announced in the British parliament. Sir Hugh records:

The Turks didn’t even wait for the Plan to be announced. On the night of the 7th June I was woken in the middle of the night to see the whole of Nicosia aflame.

He [Zorlu, the Turkish foreign minister] had, I have no doubt, known of and perhaps himself given the order for the Turkish riots and the attempt to burn down Nicosia.

During that one night of rioting in Nicosia and Larnaca, four Greek Cypriots were killed by Turkish mobs and scores more were injured. Greek properties in the old city of Nicosia were sacked, while shops, a cigarette factory, a timber yard and a Greek sports club were burnt down. The Mason-Dixon Line had to be erected again. In Larnaca, crowds of Turks invaded the Greek quarter and a number of buildings were wrecked. Further serious riots occurred on 10-12 June in Nicosia, Limassol and Famagusta, in which four more Greek Cypriots were killed and many injured. In Nicosia, where bands of Turkish youths engaged in large-scale arson, several Greek shops were burnt to the ground and the ancient church of Saint Lucas was gutted, while in Limassol and Famagusta many people were injured.

Denktash Reveals Turkish Cypriots Planted a Bomb to Provoke the Anti-Greek Riots of June 1958
The incident which provoked the riots on 7 June was the explosion of a small bomb outside the Turkish Information Office (part of the Turkish consulate) in Nicosia, alleged to have been thrown from a passing car. Even at the time it was suspected that the Turks had planted the bomb to provoke the riots.

The Nicosia correspondent of the Times commented:

The incident which began the trouble is shrouded in mystery… Whether the bomb was actually thrown by a Greek as the Turks allege, is a matter of raging controversy and the authorities have so far committed themselves to no pronouncement. Certainly, what immediately followed bore all the signs of a planned and concerted action by gangs of Turkish youths…

The mystery has now been cleared up by the Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, who has made the shocking revelation that the bomb was planted by ‘a friend’ of his. This statement was made during an interview in Cyprus: Britain’s Grim Legacy in the 1984 Granada Television Documentary series End of Empire (see clip here). The pertinent passage is worth quoting in full:

Narrator: [British colonial governor Sir Hugh] Foot’s friendly gestures to the Greeks only convinced the Turkish Cypriots their protectors had abandoned them. Tension mounted. On the night of the 7th June 1958 the tension suddenly snapped. Cyprus has never recovered from that night.

Denktash: There was an explosion at the Information Bureau of the Turkish Consulate. A crowd had already gathered there, a crowd of Turkish Cypriot youths, and they all almost immediately decided that Greeks had done it and they were swearing vengeance against the Greeks and so on.

Narrator: The explosion started a night of rioting in Nicosia. The Turkish Cypriots burned and looted Greek shops and homes. Soon EOKA counter-attacked and the violence spread around the island. Greek and Turkish families who had always lived as neighbours now moved with all their possessions into separate areas. Partition was fast becoming a reality.

Denktash: Later on, a friend of mine, whose name will still be kept a secret, was to confess to me that that he had put this little bomb in that doorway in order to create an atmosphere of tension so that people would know that the Turkish Cypriots mattered.

Narrator: The fighting raged for three months. More than a hundred were killed.

1. Geunyeli Massacre
The violence reached its climax on 12 June, when thirty-five unarmed Greek Cypriot villagers, including a boy of fourteen, were attacked by Turkish Cypriots in a field near the Turkish Cypriot village of Geunyeli. Eight of them were murdered and mutilated, while another five were seriously wounded. The following are extracts from the findings of the commission of inquiry, appointed by the governor of Cyprus to investigate the incident:

For some days prior to the 12th June, in fact from the 7th June, intercommunal feeling was running very high in the island and there had been many instances of attacks by Turks, particularly in Nicosia, upon members of the Greek community and upon Greek property.

He [Lieut. Baring, Cornet, Royal Horse Guards, one of the first to arrive on the scene] came upon the body of a man he took to be dead – ‘He was cut everywhere and you could not find a piece of flesh that was not.’

It is a fact that this party of thirty-five unarmed Greeks walked into an ambush laid by Turks who had concealed themselves and went into the attack when the [Turkish] motor-cyclists started shooting. As a result four Greeks died on the spot and four died later in hospital; five were severely wounded but survived. The attack was of a most savage nature and the injuries inflicted indicate an extraordinary blood lust.

There is every indication that it was not a haphazard affair, but was arranged in anticipation of these Greeks passing along by where the killers were concealed.

2. Ousting of Greek Cypriots from Omorphita and Other Areas and Movement of Turkish Cypriots to the Northern Part of the Island
For two months the Turkish Cypriot attacks continued: several Greek Cypriots and some Turkish Cypriots were killed and Greek Cypriot properties ransacked or destroyed. Such was the terror instilled in the Greek Cypriot community by the savagery of Turkish aggression that in one week alone six hundred Greek Cypriot families fled from their homes in the old sector of Nicosia, preferring to live in conditions of squalor. Empty houses were immediately seized by Turkish squatters.

During the summer of 1958, Turkish Cypriots drove out seven hundred Greek Cypriots from 170 houses in Omorphita, a mixed suburb of Nicosia, and Turkish flags were placed on them. This was the first instance in which the Turkish policy of separating the two communities and creating territorial division was applied in practice and it became a symbol of the ‘Turkish takeover movement going on all over the island’. As Omorphita was contiguous to the Turkish quarter of Nicosia, Turkish Cypriots from villages in other parts of the island were encouraged to move into the unoccupied houses of the Greek Cypriots, thus expanding the sector of the capital inhabited exclusively by Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita incident was described as follows [by Nancy Crawshaw in The Cyprus Revolt]:

On 30 June serious clashes broke out between Greeks and Turks at Omorphita, a new suburb on the outskirts of Nicosia. Troops quelled the initial outbreak. But the suburb, with its neighbour Kaimakli, continued to be the centre of intermittent communal friction for many weeks. The sight of a Turkish youth brandishing a knife over the garden wall was sufficient to set off a new wave of panic. Early in July Greek householders were still leaving Omorphita in considerable numbers by lorry. The Turks, convinced that military help from Turkey was imminent and partition a certainty, became very bold. Many of them moved into Greek houses and hoisted the Turkish flag. Troops at the time blamed the authorities for their delay in authorising the curfew. The security forces were now faced with the problem of a head-on clash with the Turks in the attempt to evict them or the virtual toleration of the illegal seizure of Greek houses. The removal of the flags led to fresh incidents and in the circumstances troops were ordered to leave them.

Some Factors Underlying the Turkish Cypriot Acts of Violence
The Turkish Cypriot attacks on the Greek Cypriots in 1956-1958 were the first instance of violence between the two communities. In view of the preceding long history of peaceful coexistence, this cannot but pose questions as to the factors underlying these actions.

It may be too simplistic to ascribe them solely to the pursuit of the objective of partition on the instigation of political leaders. The possibility that other elements, such as the following, played a part must not be overlooked: (1) the lower standard of living of the Turkish Cypriots; (2) the sense of segregation fostered by the fact that they were congregated in separate quarters in the various towns, which also made forays easier; and (3) the fear that enosis might soon become more than an unattainable Greek dream, creating uncertainty and anxiety as to their future.

The above factors may indeed have contributed to the events of that period. However, the intensity of the Turkish Cypriot assaults, their careful preparation and the statements and admissions of their leaders negate the possibility that the attacks were spontaneous eruptions of indignation at the sporadic, isolated killing by EOKA of a Turkish Cypriot serving with the British security forces.

The inevitable conclusion is that these attacks would not have occurred without incitement and direction from Turkey, to mark the initiation by Ankara of a more aggressive policy on the Cyprus Question. Moreover, the patterns adopted were those used during the anti-Greek pogroms in Istanbul and Izmir in September 1955. It is unfortunate that Ankara’s endorsement of violence and the supply of arms to the Turkish Cypriots did not  cease on the conclusion of the Zurich-London agreements in February 1959 but continued after the signing of those agreements, until the achievement of the final goal by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Lasting effects of Turkish Cypriot Violence Against the Greek Cypriots in 1956-58
The events of 1956-1958 left far deeper and more lasting scars than could have been anticipated. So much distorted publicity has been given by the Turks in later years to the events of 1963-1964, and so much more successful propaganda made out of them, that public opinion has been blinded to the fact that intercommunal strife in Cyprus was initiated as early as 1956 by the Turks themselves, not by Greeks, and that in 1963-1964 the Turks were not – as they have tried to convince the world – merely passive victims of Greek Cypriot violence, but protagonists in the continued pursuit of the Turkish  objective of partition.

In assessing the psychological climate within the Greek Cypriot community in 1963-64, the following factors (emanating from the events of 1956-58 coupled with the divisive and unworkable elements of the 1960 constitution) must be taken into account:

    •    the enduring fear struck in the hearts of the Greek Cypriots by the 1956-1958 Turkish attacks;
    •    the feeling of helplessness and humiliation caused by the fact that one-fifth of the population had succeeded in terrorizing four-fifths;
    •    the loss of life, destruction of property and ousting of hundreds of Greek Cypriots from their homes in Nicosia; and
    •    the realization that the Turkish Cypriots had emerged from the Zurich-London agreements with a manifestly unjust and disproportionate share, which they were quick to exploit to their even greater advantage.

It is important as a matter of historical truth that these facts be remembered.

Political activities of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, 1945-1958. Part Five: Denktash admits Turks initiated intercommunal violence

Here is part five in the series I’m posting from Stella Soulioti’s Fettered Independence: Cyprus, 1878-1964. In this excerpt, Soulioti describes the admission in 1984 by Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash that Turkish Cypriots were responsible for a false flag incident in 1958 – the planting of a bomb outside a Turkish consulate building in Nicosia – that triggered a wave of anti-Greek violence across the island and irreparably damaged intercommunal relations. Denktash’s admission was made on UK TV’s Cyprus: Britain’s Grim Legacy, and the relevant clip from the programme is above.

Read parts one, two, three and four in the series.

On Rauf Denktash and Turkish political consciousness, go here.

Denktash reveals that Turkish Cypriots planted a bomb to provoke the anti-Greek riots of June 1958
The incident which provoked the riots on 7 June was the explosion of a small bomb outside the Turkish Information Office (part of the Turkish consulate) in Nicosia, alleged to have been thrown from a passing car. Even at the time it was suspected that the Turks had planted the bomb to provoke the riots.

The Nicosia correspondent of the Times commented:

The incident which began the trouble is shrouded in mystery… Whether the bomb was actually thrown by a Greek as the Turks allege, is a matter of raging controversy and the authorities have so far committed themselves to no pronouncement. Certainly, what immediately followed bore all the signs of a planned and concerted action by gangs of Turkish youths…

The mystery has now been cleared by the Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, who has made the shocking revelation that the bomb was planted by ‘a friend’ of his. This statement was made during an interview in Cyprus: Britain’s Grim Legacy in the 1984 Granada Television Documentary series End of Empire. The pertinent passage is worth quoting in full:

Narrator: [British colonial governor Sir Hugh] Foot’s friendly gestures to the Greeks only convinced the Turkish Cypriots their protectors had abandoned them. Tension mounted. On the night of the 7th June 1958 the tension suddenly snapped. Cyprus has never recovered from that night.

Denktash: There was an explosion at the Information Bureau of the Turkish Consulate. A crowd had already gathered there, a crowd of Turkish Cypriot youths, and they all almost immediately decided that Greeks had done it and they were swearing vengeance against the Greeks and so on.

Narrator: The explosion started a night of rioting in Nicosia. The Turkish Cypriots burned and looted Greek shops and homes. Soon EOKA counter-attacked and the violence spread around the island. Greek and Turkish families who had always lived as neighbours now moved with all their possessions into separate areas. Partition was fast becoming a reality.

Denktash: Later on, a friend of mine, whose name will still be kept a secret, was to confess to me that that he had put this little bomb in that doorway in order to create an atmosphere of tension so that people would know that the Turkish Cypriots mattered.

Narrator: The fighting raged for three months. More than a hundred were killed.

(Part Six to follow).

Read the entire series in one post here.

Political Activities of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, 1945-58. Part Four: Turkish Cypriot violence in pursuit of partition

In previous posts in this series based on Stella Soulioti’s Fettered Independence: Cyprus, 1878-1964, we’ve established that Turkey’s Cyprus policy envisaged partition of the island, in pursuit of which it was necessary to demonstrate that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and had to be separated into two distinct geographical and political units – this despite the fact that Greek Cypriots amounted to 80 percent of the Cypriot population and dominated in all areas of the island. In pursuit of partition, violence was used by Turkish nationalists on the island to crush dissent within the Turkish Cypriot community; to stir up enmity between Greek and Turkish Cypriots; and to create the conditions for the separation of the island’s two communities.


Read parts one, two and three in the series. 

On Rauf Denktash and Turkish political consciousness, go here.

Turkish Cypriot violence in pursuit of partition
[From] 1956 on, the Turkish leadership instituted a vigorous campaign under the slogan ‘from Turk to Turk’, advocating the boycott of Greek goods and services and forbidding cooperation with Greek Cypriots at all levels, including participation in mixed trade unions. Those who deviated were denounced as traitors and punished: two Turkish Cypriot members of a trade union were shot dead by [the terrorist group] TMT in 1958 for collaborating with their Greek Cypriot coworkers…

To bring about the physical separation of the two communities and to impose territorial division, the Turkish Cypriots, at the instigation and with the encouragement of Turkey, embarked, beginning in January 1956, on organized rioting initially aimed at the destruction of Greek Cypriot property. The object was to foster enmity between the two communities, thereby proving [Turkish Cypriot leader Fazil] Kutchuk’s premise that coexistence had become impossible, making partition the only acceptable solution.

As was inevitable in view of the large number of Turks actively participating with the British security forces against EOKA, the day came when, on 11 January 1956, a Turkish Cypriot police sergeant who had given evidence in trials of EOKA members was killed by EOKA. The Turkish Cypriots immediately retaliated by attacks against Greek Cypriot property in Nicosia and Paphos accompanied by threats against Greek lives. These were followed by further attacks on 23 and 24 April, after the killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman who had chased EOKA fighters. On 25 May, after the death of a Turkish Cypriot policeman who again had chased an EOKA fighter who had turned and shot him, extensive rioting broke out in Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos, with indiscriminate arson of Greek properties. In Nicosia the Turks burst into the Greek quarter of the city and burned down an oxygen factory, battering its old caretaker to death. The Turkish mob, ‘including a score of auxiliary and special constables’, became so menacing that the British authorities set up a barricade across the old city of Nicosia (the ‘Mason-Dixon Line’, a precursor to the ‘Green Line’ drawn in December 1963). By June 1956 Turkish rioting extended to Famagusta and flared up once again in Nicosia, with massive destruction of Greek property, in January and February 1957.

The Turkish leadership had no scruples about creating pretexts for reprisals. Soon after Sir Hugh Foot’s arrival in Cyprus [as the new colonial governor], clashes occurred on 7 and 9 December 1957 between the security forces and Greek secondary schoolchildren demonstrating on the occasion of the UN General Assembly debate on Cyprus, in the course of which a Turkish policeman was wounded accidentally. A fabricated rumor that he had been killed, and killed by Greeks, formed the signal for Turkish  mobs to throw themselves into the Greek quarter of Nicosia with such ferocity that the Mason-Dixon Line had to be reestablished. Nor was calculated misrepresentation of the facts considered improper: at the United Nations on 9 December 1957, Turkey did not hesitate to accuse Greeks of killing three Turks in Paphos a week earlier, whereas they had been killed by fellow Turks who had been arrested.

What is noteworthy is that, despite the repeated, organized and violent rioting and destruction of their property by the Turks, the Greeks, although outnumbering the Turks by four to one, did not counter-attack or retaliate in any way. No Turkish property was threatened or damaged. In fact, on 3 February 1957, the Greek members of the Nicosia Municipal Council appealed to the Greek population to avoid at all costs any friction with the Turkish community.

The most violent riots were yet to come. On 21 January 1958, Turkish Cypriots demonstrated in Nicosia and Famagusta against what they regarded as the pro-Greek policy of the new governor, Sir Hugh Foot. More demonstrations, the most violent ever known in Cyprus, took place in Nicosia on 27 January 1958. These were organized to coincide with the discussion of the Foot Plan in Ankara between British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd, accompanied by Sir Hugh Foot, and the Turkish government. During the disturbances, thousands of Turks hurled stones and bottles at British troops, overturned and set fire to military vehicles and police cars, and erected barricades in the Turkish quarter of Nicosia, prominently displaying Turkish flags. After several attempts by British troops to break up the demonstrations, a curfew was imposed in the Turkish quarter, ending nine hours of violent rioting marked by many bitter hand-to-hand struggles between Turkish Cypriots and the security forces. Despite the curfew, further riots broke out the following day with renewed attacks on British forces. Order was finally restored on 29 January 1958. ‘The Turks were, as usual, making their stand clear by actions as well as by words,’ was Sir Hugh’s comment on the riots.

In March 1958, after almost a year of continuous truce, EOKA renewed its offensive by an intensive sabotage campaign against military installations. On 21 April 1958, however, it declared a ceasefire pending the outcome of a policy statement by the British government, whereas the Turkish Cypriots, fearing that the new British plan would exclude partition, stepped up their preparations in close cooperation with the Turkish government. In February 1958 a meeting was held in Greece between British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd and Greek foreign minister Evangelos Averoff, attended also by the governor of Cyprus, Sir Hugh Foot, and the head of the Cyprus Desk in the Greek Foreign Ministry, Dimitri S. Bitsios. Foot stated that the Turkish Cypriots were now armed and were receiving instructions ‘from somewhere in Turkey’, in the hope that EOKA’s truce would end, providing them with an excuse to embark on their own armed activity against the Greek Cypriots.

The next, and by far most alarming, bout of Turkish Cypriot violence erupted on 7 June 1958, shortly before what came to be known as the Macmillan Plan was announced in the British parliament. Sir Hugh records:

The Turks didn’t even wait for the Plan to be announced. On the night of the 7th June I was woken in the middle of the night to see the whole of Nicosia aflame.

He [Zorlu, the Turkish foreign minister] had, I have no doubt, known of and perhaps himself given the order for the Turkish riots and the attempt to burn down Nicosia.

During that one night of rioting in Nicosia and Larnaca, four Greek Cypriots were killed by Turkish mobs and scores more were injured. Greek properties in the old city of Nicosia were sacked, while shops, a cigarette factory, a timber yard and a Greek sports club were burnt down. The Mason-Dixon Line had to be erected again. In Larnaca, crowds of Turks invaded the Greek quarter and a number of buildings were wrecked. Further serious riots occurred on 10-12 June in Nicosia, Limassol and Famagusta, in which four more Greek Cypriots were killed and many injured. In Nicosia, where bands of Turkish youths engaged in large-scale arson, several Greek shops were burnt to the ground and the ancient church of Saint Lucas was gutted, while in Limassol and Famagusta many people were injured.

(Part five to follow).

Read the entire series in one post here.