Turkey and the British Empire never forgave Cyprus for escaping their colonial brutality.
WWI wrecked the Ottoman Empire. Its successor state, Turkey, has been under the delusion that fomenting a zealous Islam can recreate its former power. WWII forced the diminution and abolition of the British Empire, now a weak and small version of its former self remains, known as the United Kingdom.
Cyprus passed from the Ottoman to the British Empire in late nineteenth century.
The British sowed the seeds for the ceaseless conflicts between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. In a declassified 10 November 1956 document, “A Memorandum on Possible Schemes of Partition,” the British colonial officials proposed Cyprus be divided into a Greek and a Turkish zone with population exchange to make each zone independent of each other. This meant the British would continue to rule the two zones of Greeks and Turks on the island.
However, the Cypriot Greeks won their war against the British administrators and occupiers of their country. In 1960, Cyprus became the independent Republic of Cyprus. This political change intensified the antagonism of the Cypriot Turks and Turkey towards the Greeks and the Republic of Cyprus.
The almost inevitable clash between Turkey and the Republic of Cyprus came in two invasions Turkey launched against Cyprus: 20 July 1974 and 14 August 1974. The effects were catastrophic for the island. On August 3, 1974, Glafcos Clerides, president of Cyprus, telegraphed Richard Nixon, president of the United States. He said this about the Turkish atrocities of the first invasion:
“I wish to bring to your knowledge that the invading Turkish army – as you must already be aware – has shown absolute disregard to the 1949 Geneva conventions and to the fundamental human rights. Besides the indiscriminate bombing, shelling and shooting of unarmed civilians and of such internationally protected institutions of infirmaries, hospitals, schools, and even Red Cross Center of Cyprus, the Turkish army has inflicted unprecedented harassment on the civilian population of the area it has occupied in northern Cyprus. The Turkish army after occupying the Greek inhabited area in and around the city of Kyrenia have systematically looted and plundered the properties of the inhabitants, have arrested all the men, molested women, children and elderly people and indulged in repeated rapes, arsons, cold blooded murders of civilians and forced expulsion of the inhabitants from their homes. Around 20,000 civilians have already been forced by the Turkish army to leave their homes situated in northern Cyprus….
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“I appeal to you in the hope that you will exert the maximum of your influence on the Turkish government to stop immediately all actions violating the relevant Security Council resolutions in Cyprus, the fundamental human rights and international humanitarian principles.”
It’s doubtful Nixon ever read this desperate appeal. He faced impeachment. Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974. However, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, cared less about Cyprus. In fact, on 14 August 1974, the first day of the second Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Kissinger spoke on the phone to his British colleague, James Callaghan, Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, and agreed the US and the UK would do nothing to stop the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Callaghan said: “the Turks have got a good cause [for their attack on Cyprus]. In my view this can now only be resolved by the creation of a zone. A zone in which they will have autonomy within a federal republic…it is Greece who will need massaging because the Turks are too jingoistic, indeed too close to Hitler for my liking.”
Callaghan was only perceptible in his mentioning of Hitler, and not merely because the Turks were astonishingly violent and they reminded him of the German Nazi leader.
Callaghan expressed the British colonial view of zoning the natives, separating them, locking them up in concentration camps-like zones to be oppressed, indeed annihilated eventually. And since in the case of Cyprus, Turkey had the guns and the Turks reminded him of Hitler and his similar tactics on minorities or undesirables, the annihilation in Cyprus would be done by the Turks. The Greeks would be given a choice of becoming Moslems or be annihilated.
Despite this infrastructure of centuries of antagonisms between Turks and Greeks, the relatively recent bloody invasions of Cyprus by Turkey, and the almost certain prospect of zoning the Cypriots into unacceptable and racist ghettos, the president of the Republic of Cyprus, Nikos Anastasiades, agreed to the zoning solution.
Starting tomorrow, 28 June 2017, Turkey, Greece, the UN and the two leaders of the Cypriots, Greek and Turkish, but not the president of the Republic of Cyprus, will start a secret conference in Geneva. The chilling precedence for this secret conclave in Geneva deciding the disappearance of the Republic of Cyprus comes from the Munich Conference of 29 September 1938 that gave Hitler Czechoslovakia to do as he saw fit.
Hitler wiped out Czechoslovakia to benefit Germans. Similarly, Turkey is planning to do the same thing to the Greeks of Cyprus. And the almost unbelievable thing is that plenty of Cypriot Greeks and the political leaders of Greece have swallowed the propaganda of Turkey, UK and the United Nations that putting the Greeks of Cyprus into a zone is just fine. The fact this decision is being taken behind the backs of the Greeks and the world, that Turkey is an open book of hatred for Greeks, remains unnoticed. Death foretold in civilized silence.
The Greeks of Cyprus need to denounce their president and rush to elect an alternative administration for the defense of their lives and their Republic. All Greeks from all over the world should join them. EU and America should support democracy in Cyprus, proscribing the Munich paradigm at the heart of the Geneva conference.
Turkey should be ordered to remove its troops from Cyprus.