weapons in Cyprus to persuade a greater number to vote for an embargo. Had members of Congress been faced with only a single challenge from Ankara, they might have been less likely to oppose the White House.20
3
Making Turkey Pay
Concurrently with the opium crisis came the Cyprus imbroglio. On the morning of Monday, July 15, 1974, Cypriot National Guardsmen, led by their Greek officers, attacked the presidential residence in Nicosia. The objective was to kill the president, Archbishop Makarios III, and establish a new government under Nikos Sampson, a champion of enosis, or union with Greece; Sampson was also a known terrorist who had personally killed Turkish Cypriots. Makarios narrowly escaped and eventually made his way to London. The Sampson government lasted only eight days before local and international criticism—and a Turkish invasion—forced him from office. Glafkos Clerides, a more moderate Greek Cypriot and the speaker of the House of Representatives, became acting head of state. Sampson’s fall triggered a backlash against the military junta in Athens, which had instigated the coup (code-named Aphrodite) in the mistaken belief that a successful takeover of Cyprus would restore its tarnished image at home. Instead, the Nicosia debacle led to collapse of the Regime of the Colonels and restoration of popular rule after seven years of a harsh right-wing dictatorship in the birthplace of democracy. Exiled conservative political leader Constantine Karamanlis (1907–1998) was invited home from exile in Paris to form a government, pending parliamentary elections.
International Responses
Although the coup proved a dismal failure, it set in motion larger events that could not easily be reversed. The Turkish mainland lay only 65 kilometers from the northern shores of Cyprus, whereas Greece was more than 800 kilometers away. The Turkish government kept a careful eye on developments on the nearby island, where approximately 20 percent of the population (180,000) was Turkish. This Turkish minority had established enclaves across the island, where residents lived largely walled off from their Greek Cypriot neighbors.
In cities such as Paphos in the southwestern part of the island, the Turkish community lived behind a wall topped by blue UN watchtowers. The United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus had been established in 1964 during a time of increasing tensions between the Greek and Turkish communities. Turkish Cypriots taxed themselves and maintained their own education system. Young Turkish and Greek Cypriots grew up almost completely separated from each other. Groups of Turkish men and boys ventured into the Greek part of the city only on Fridays to purchase necessities not available on their side, but they did not linger there. The Makarios government in Nicosia had shown little interest in reversing this informal separation between the two communities. In fact, it had contributed to the situation by steadily whittling away at the minority guarantees provided in the 1960 constitution.1
Along with Greece and the United Kingdom, Turkey was a guarantor of the 1960 constitution, which had established an independent Cyprus and provided many safeguards for the rights of the Turkish minority. Thus, when the coup took place and Sampson became head of the post-Makarios government, Turkey’s prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, believed he must act. Furthermore, Ankara determined that as a guarantor power, it had a right to take action to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority.
Flare-ups of intercommunal violence had taken place repeatedly since 1960, most notably in 1964 and again in 1967. The Turkish government came close to launching an invasion in each of those years, but the Americans intervened, including the infamous Johnson letter of 1964. The soldiers remained in their barracks, but the Turks were bitter about the lack of support from Washington.
Ten years later, in the summer of 1974, the Nixon administration was in disarray due to the Watergate scandal, and the president was edging toward resignation. Ankara knew that this time, there would be no Nixon letter. This seemed to be the perfect moment to secure the future of the Turkish Cypriot minority. Both Athens and Washington were in a confused and weakened state, and Greek Cypriot forces could hardly resist a Turkish onslaught.
Hurried talks took place in London from July 16 to 20, but it was clear that Prime Minister Ecevit was in no mood for compromise. On July 20, after Turkish demands had not been met, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus. Having received the coded message “Ayse tatile cikti” (Aisha went on holiday), the Turks seized territory around the port city of Kyrenia, a center for tourism on the northern coast of the island and home to a large number of Turkish Cypriots.2 The army seized the city and its hinterland and a narrow corridor to the inland capital, Nicosia, amounting to less than 5 percent of the island. On July 22 a cease-fire negotiated by Britain and the United States took effect, and talks were scheduled to resume two days later in Geneva under British sponsorship. Both the Greek junta and the Sampson government collapsed on July 23.
The explosion of violence on Cyprus surprised the Americans, whose eyes had been fixed on a brooding President Nixon, who had withdrawn to his retreat in San Clemente, California. During a meeting of the Washington Special Action Group on July 17, chaired by the secretary of state, officials had concluded that the Turks were unlikely to invade. Kissinger could not understand why the Turks were insisting on returning Makarios to power, for he had been their archenemy. In any case, the United States had to make its position known to Turkey as quickly as possible: Washington would support an acting government under Glafkos Clerides for six months, followed by elections. Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, one of Kissinger’s top aides, made a hurried call to the Turkish ambassador to present the American thinking, and then he left for London to explain to Makarios and Ecevit in person the US proposal.3
From the British capital, Sisco proceeded to Athens and Ankara. In the Greek capital, the collapsing junta agreed to a number of compromises to stabilize the situation on Cyprus, including the acceptance of a single Turkish enclave on the island. But these concessions came too late. The proponents of enosis had made a colossal blunder, opening the door for a Turkish invasion in the name of restoring the 1960 constitution. In Ankara, Sisco was waiting outside the meeting room of Turkey’s National Security Council on July 20, while inside, Ecevit was making the decision to invade.4
Subsequent talks in Geneva made little progress. Neither the Greeks nor the Turks would shift their position, and British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan became increasingly frustrated. Kissinger rated Callaghan’s chances of success as very slim. Perhaps Kissinger hoped the feuding parties would eventually turn to him to work out a settlement. Meanwhile, the meetings in Geneva dragged on into August.5
The embassy in Ankara reported general agreement between the military and the Ecevit government on the policy toward Cyprus. Furthermore, most Turks believed they should gain all they could from the current situation. They would not return to the status quo ante. According to one observer, “there was no other issue, domestic or foreign, on which there was such unanimity in Turkey.” Ecevit was a tough negotiator, as he had proved earlier during the opium crisis. As it turned out, he was not the moderate that his former Harvard University professor, Henry Kissinger, might have expected. The Turks made it clear that they wanted two separate communities on Cyprus, each with full autonomy. There could be a central government in Nicosia, but with limited powers. Callaghan wanted negotiations to take place between Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, but the government of Turkey thought that would be a waste of time. Ecevit wanted the guarantor powers—Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—to make the important decisions at Geneva, with the details to be worked out later. Ambassador Macomber was not hopeful.6
Turkey had been building its force on Cyprus since the first invasion, and by August 14, it numbered 40,000. On that day, having exhausted his patience in Geneva, Ecevit gave the order to recommence Operation Attila to gain by force what had eluded Turkey in the negotiations. Facing little opposition, the superior Turkish forces seized almost 40 percent of the island, including the important city of Famagusta in the east and the international airport at Nicosia.
