Articles - Cyprus & the Cyprus Problem

Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean. It is situated at the North-Eastern end of the East Mediterranean basin, North of Egypt, West of Syria and South of Turkey. The Greek mainland is some 800km to the west and the nearest Greek islands are Rhodes and Carpathos 380km to the west.

The Republic of Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1960. The population of the island consists of ~78% Greek-Cypriots, ~18% Turkish-Cypriots and ~4% Armenian, Maronite and Latin-Cypriots. Turkish and Greek Cypriots lived together on the island for almost five centuries. They were dispersed all over the island and members of one community worked in the business of the other.

Map of Cyprus showing area inaccessible due to Turkish Invasion.However, in 1974 the junta, which then ruled Greece, staged an abortive coup against president Makarios and on July 20th Turkey launched an invasion. As an explanation to this act, Turkey offered the restoration of the constitutional structure of the Republic of Cyprus that they claimed had been damaged by the coup d' etat, and the protection of the 18% Turkish-Cypriot minority on the island. The international community strongly condemned the military invasion and completely rejected Turkey's explanations. In Resolution 353 that was adopted on the day of the invasion, the United Nations (UN) Security Council:

"equally concerned about the necessity to restore the constitutional structure of the Republic of Cyprus " calls upon all States to "respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus" and demands "an immediate end to foreign military intervention in the Republic of Cyprus"

Turkey not only ignored the international community but launched a second offensive in August, 1974 and managed to seize more than one third of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus. Moreover the Turkish army in order to "protect" the Turkish-Cypriot minority on the island, employed deliberate means of terror and indiscriminate cruelty against the Greek-Cypriots. The goal was the ethnic-cleansing, 17 years before the term was even coined, of the occupied Northern part of the island. When one reads the report, adopted on July 10, 1976, after months of investigation by the European Commission of Human Rights, one understands why thousands of Greek Cypriots fled their homes at the approach of the Turkish army. The Commission accepted that there were "very strong indications" of killings "committed on a substantial scale." The atrocities of the Turkish army included wholesale and repeated rapes of women of all ages, systematic torture, savage and humiliating treatment of hundreds of people, including children, women and pensioners during their detention by the Turkish forces, as well as looting and robbery on an extensive scale, by Turkish troops and Turkish Cypriots. Thousands of Greek-Cypriots lost their lives, 1619 are still missing (BILL H. R. 2826 on missing persons since the Turkish invasion in Cyprus), 200,000 Cypriots fled their homes leaving behind their belongings.