Though only eight at the time, Graeme Stanford vividly recalls his experience during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974. His father was serving with the RAF at the British Sovereign Base (BSB) of Dhekelia. He and his family were living in the port town of Famagusta, some 20 miles to the northeast of the BSB. One day, as they were sitting on the veranda, a Turkish jet ‘streaked past followed by a huge explosion’. Stanford’s father took the risk of driving through a contested area in order to arrange his family’s rescue. Meanwhile, Stanford and his mother holed themselves up in a bedroom with ‘a bed propped against the window’. Fearing the worst for the Greek Cypriot mother and daughter living downstairs, Mrs Stanford led them into her own apartment at the risk of being shot at. Eventually, a British army convoy arrived and took the Stanfords to safety. Their Greek Cypriot neighbours, however, had to fend for themselves. To the day he had his recollections recorded for the BBC in 2008, Stanford still wondered about the fate of his landlady, her child and her husband who was serving with the Cypriot defence forces.
On 22 July 1974 a US-brokered armistice ended the first phase of the invasion. However distressing, the experience of Stanford and of thousands of British and other foreign civilians fleeing Cyprus that July scarcely compares with the human loss and uprooting that traumatised hundreds of thousands of Cypriots. The second phase of the Turkish invasion, on 14-16 August, completed the occupation of 36 per cent of the island, including Famagusta. As a result, between 160,000 and 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees fled to the south and abroad, while nearly 50,000 Turkish Cypriots subsequently moved to the north. Today, the abandoned multi-storey hotels along a stretch of sandy beaches in the ghost town of Varosha in Famagusta (together with empty residences, shops, bars, restaurants and even a car showroom still displaying the latest 1974 Toyota models) still stand as an eerie reminder of that summer – a symbol of the unsettled fate of Cyprus itself.
The origins of the island’s drama can be traced to the last quarter of the 19th century. The peaceful transfer of Cyprus from Ottoman rule to the British colonial administration marked its passage to modernity. A far-reaching outcome was the transformation of the island’s two main religious groups (Greek-Orthodox and Muslim) into fully fledged national communities, Greek and Turkish respectively, with mutually exclusive political aspirations: union with Greece (Enosis) and restitution to Turkey or partition. Significantly, the Church of Cyprus retained its dual role as spiritual and political leader of the Greek community, despite the rise of a powerful communist party, AKEL (the Progressive Party of Working People), from 1941 onwards.
Relations between the two communities were severely tested as Greek Cypriot nationalists commenced their struggle against British colonialism in the 1950s. A diplomatic campaign mounted by Greece at the United Nations was coupled with guerrilla warfare on the island. If the aim was to bring the British to the negotiating table, these tactics backfired: Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots made common front with Britain against Enosis. What was worse, the use of violence created victims on both sides of the ethnic divide. Eventually, in late 1958, Athens and Ankara felt the time was right for compromise. They struck a deal in Zurich providing for Cypriot independence at the exclusion of both Enosis and partition. They were then joined by Britain and the leaders of the two Cypriot communities in signing a treaty, which, among other things, provided for the retention of two base areas under British sovereignty.
The new state was based on a permanent and delicate power-sharing deal between the Greek majority and the Turkish minority, which was granted political equality. Within three years of independence, this unlikely partnership had fallen apart. An attempt by the first president of the Republic of Cyprus (and former leader of the Enosis movement), Archbishop Makarios, to cut down on what he considered the excessive privileges of the Turkish minority, triggered a crisis that escalated into inter-communal violence. British troops from the BSBs stepped in to enforce a ‘Green Line’ of separation in Nicosia and elsewhere. Outnumbered, thousands of Turkish Cypriots fled into fortified enclaves which then came under Greek Cypriot attack. Turkey threatened invasion and its airforce bombed Greek positions. A Greek-Turkish war in the summer of 1964 was averted thanks to the forceful intervention of Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, which left both warring parties disgruntled with US policy.
There followed a series of failed attempts at an understanding between Athens and Ankara to replace Cypriot independence with what could be sold to the Greeks as Enosis and to the Turks as partition. When violence once again erupted in Cyprus, in November 1967, Turkey threatened war, forcing the newly installed Greek military regime to withdraw its excess troops and agree to a new approach: for the next few years, direct talks between the two communities appeared to offer hope for a peaceful breakthrough. Yet, whenever a deal seemed within reach, President Makarios dragged his feet, expecting more concessions from the embattled Turkish Cypriots. It was a grave miscalculation. By early 1974 the military junta in Athens, under its new leader Dimitrios Ioannidis, was planning to remove Makarios, seize control of the island and then negotiate with Ankara from a position of strength. The plan hinged on the erroneous assumption that the US would hold the Turks back – as they had done in 1964 and 1967.
Ioannidis moved to overthrow Makarios on 15 July 1974 after the Cypriot president asked for the removal of Greek officers serving in Cyprus who had been implicated in subversive activities with local ultra-nationalists. Despite orders to kill him, Makarios managed to escape and, via the BSB of Akrotiri, fled Cyprus. On 19 July he addressed the UN Security Council in New York, asking for help to ‘end the invasion’ by the Greek junta and restore ‘the independence of Cyprus’ and the freedoms of its people.
These developments were a godsend for Ankara, which had always favoured partition. By the time Makarios was pleading his case in New York, a Turkish flotilla of landing craft and escort ships was already heading for the northern shores of Cyprus. Its departure was duly reported by the BBC and British newspapers that evening. Within hours the military operation, code-named ‘Attila’, witnessed by eight-year-old Graeme Stanford, began.
Fifty years on, the legacy of the invasion persists. Cyprus remains divided and heavily militarised. The Greek Cypriots in the south control what is the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, a prosperous member of the European Union. The Turkish Cypriots in the north live in a breakaway entity, under the watchful eye of Turkey, possibly outnumbered by settlers from Anatolia and lacking international recognition. The reunification of the two sides which have learned to live apart for so long seems as remote as ever.
Ioannis D. Stefanidis is Professor of Diplomatic History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.