CYPRUS – THE MYTH OF UNITY

metrics

July 19, 2024

CYPRUS-THE MYTH OF UNITY

Readers mail….
From Cem Hudaverdi, Australia….

Saturday, 20^th July 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of Türkiye’s intervention in Cyprus.

Ever since the intervention by Turkiye on the 20th of July 1974 Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration, Greeks around the world, and their followers and supporters have been spreading the lie that Turkiye invaded Cyprus on that date and that Turkiye is continuing to occupy Northern Cyprus. They claim Cyprus was a united, stable, and democratic republic, they claim the two ethnic communities were coexisting in peace and tranquility, and that the place was an exemplar of national unity, compromise, and cooperation. This is fantasy and myth which may perhaps describe Cyprus in an alternate universe, a fictional universe.

The proponents of that argument willfully dismiss or ignore the historical fact. Their argument lacks a legal basis, it lacks historical accuracy and it lacks moral authority.

There is no question that when Turkish troops landed on the island of Cyprus on 20th July 1974 they were fulfilling their obligations under the Treaty of Guarantee – from an international law point of view, the Greek argument that Turkey invaded Cyprus is misrepresentation and deception in the extreme.

Words are important, there is an ocean separating the word “Invasion” from “intervention”.

The Republic of Cyprus was created in 1960 with conditions which were negotiated and agreed by Britain, Greece, Turkey, and the two main ethnic groups on the Island, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Make no mistake, it was not a happy and harmonious process. Civil and inter communal strife mainly instigated by Greek Cypriots and initially directed towards the British, forced the matter and thus was born a Republic, incorporating two ethnicities, with constitutionally enshrined power sharing arrangements, conditions, and guarantees attached in Treaties.

The “Right of Intervention”

The language of the Treaty of Guarantee was not the “right of invasion”, it was the “right of intervention”. Turkey had such a right and she was entitled under the circumstances to exercise it. Those circumstances are known, and are well documented in textbooks in all libraries throughout the world. They were documented minute by minute by news services throughout the world at the time. The circumstances were that the Greek military Junta in Athens engineered a coup on the island on 15 July, 1974, with the aim of annexing Cyprus to Greece, this was prohibited by the constitution and by international agreement.

Enosis (union of Cyprus with Greece) guided and dictated the policies of Greek leaders in the 20th Century to their eventual failure and downfall. Their downfall resulted from the folly of their brutality and military adventurism directed towards the Turkish Cypriot people. Perhaps they gambled Turkey would not or could not act, that she would be restrained by the Western Powers, that she would not risk so much for such a small community. That preconception proved disastrously wrong.

From a historical point of view it must be pointed out that even before Turkey intervened , the Republic of Cyprus was in fact and in law non-existent. That Republic was destroyed in 1963 by the very people who today are telling the world that it exists, the Greeks. Turkey did not intervene in the Republic of Cyprus , she intervened in the bloody civil war on the island of Cyprus, she did not invade a country she intervened in a situation where there was no country. Turkish troops are not occupying Cyprus, they are stationed in northern Cyprus under an international agreement. If you applied the same standards as the Greeks apply elsewhere you would have to say that America is occupying Western Europe because it has bases there, or that America is occupying Australia because it has bases here, or even that Britain is occupying Cyprus because it has two huge bases on the island.

Some people in Australia and around the world labour under the mistaken impression that today the word “Cyprus” refers to the Republic of Cyprus, it does not, it refers to the island of Cyprus. They use the word Cypriot as though there is a Cypriot nation, there is not, there are two national communities on the island, just as there are two states, and the peoples of these two states have been acknowledged by the U.N. as political equals, sovereign equals.

We have another basis to our position, a moral basis. When Turkey intervened it was to save the Turkish Cypriots from the threat of extinction, it was to free us from oppression, and it was to give us lasting peace. As Martin Luther King famously paraphrased, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. Turkish Cypriots faced their existential threats in the 1950s 60s and 70s.

The Turkish Cypriots overcame the problems thrown at them!

They overcame hatred and persecution, attempts at blockade and encirclement, and the fire and fury of a supposed partner community that feigned cooperation and reasonableness to the world but pursued policies designed to dispossess, disempower, and attempt to ethnically cleanse its co partner in the newly created Republic. This was an experiment gone wrong. With the knowledge of everything that has transpired in the world in the last 50 years, no one should labour under the delusion that Turkish Cypriots would ever broach an argument for a return to those arrangements.

The Greeks and their supporters should understand this, we have no intention of ever giving up, we have no intention of remaining silent, and we have no intention of allowing them to win. Winning to them necessitated usurping the levers of power, encirclement, blockade, constant attack and committing crimes against humanity culminating in attempts at ethnic cleansing.

The sacrifices we are making and are prepared to make in the future in order that the truth be known, that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus be recognised, and that the liberty, sovereign equality and independence of the Turkish Cypriot people be preserved, are small sacrifices compared to the blood of those who died in the struggle to save and protect our people. We honour and commemorate the memory of the Gazis, the Mehmetciks, the Mucahits. The very act and acknowledgement of this by Turkish Cypriots is anathema to Greek Cypriots. And we should now hold hands and forget? No one can, will or should forget. This is the other great ploy at work, it is the attempt to erase history.

Let the Greeks scream invasion all they like, it is smoke and mirrors. It is propaganda worthy of Goebbels. It only makes Turkish Cypriots more determined that justice will be done.

I would say this. If intervening under an international agreement is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion. If ending 11 years of oppression at the hands of the Greeks is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion

If putting an end to their grand design “enosis” is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion. If preventing the slaughter of innocent Turkish Cypriots is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion. If bringing an end to civil war is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion. If bringing peace, which has lasted for 50 years, to an island that was in the grips of anarchy, is called an invasion, let them call it an invasion

The Turkish Cypriot people will happily celebrate such an invasion until the end of time.

Parachutists with Turkish flag

Turkish soldier with a child

The Greek side constantly bemoan the presence of the Turkish army on the Island. That army and the sacrifices of its servicemen and the strength and valour of its arms brought and kept peace on that troubled island for the past 50 years. We can dispense with the fantasy and farce that there will ever be brotherly reunification and harmony on the island in a rebooted single state/ republic. That could only happen as I said earlier, in an alternative universe.

Maybe someone could input all that has happened in the 20th Century on the Island into a Computer simulation and input all the relevant parameters of that period, the ethnicities, religions, culture, language, ideologies, experiences, stakeholder positions, and global and regional actors and environments and press the play button. What would be the outcome. Ask someone like Professor John Mearsheimer or any other Historian of note.

Were Winston Churchill alive today he could anticipate and predict the outcome just as he foresaw the coming of WWII. He was a great writer and historian just as he was a legendary leader and Statesman, and much more besides. He was equipped for the task because he was keenly aware and widely versed in the history of the many peoples of the world. So we should put aside all pretence and doubt, the Republic of Cyprus died long ago. It can no longer be resuscitated or resurrected, or experimented with as was done in the late 1950s when it was carelessly conceived and recklessly destroyed by Greek Cypriot attempts at usurpation not long there after.

The people of the Island are safe and secure and content in living apart. There are borders.

There is democracy. There is peace. The Turkish army brought that peace, it paid for peace with blood and treasure and keeps the peace still with its vigilant defence of the lives, homes and sovereignty of its kin. There is continuing intransigence on the Greek Cypriot side, which conflates its absurd propagandistic version of the events on that troubled Island with fact. The game is up. There is only one outcome which guarantees stability, peace and coexistence on the Island.

That outcome should now be pursued with all vigour and determination by Turkiye and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. No more debates, no more conferences, no more meetings in the capitals of Western Europe, no more negotiations, missions or plans under UN auspices. The TRNC should now fully dedicate itself to the task of recognition and take its place in the family of nations.