The Road to 1974: Partition begins on Cyprus

In 1963 Greek-Cypriots sought smoother government that removed minority safeguards; Turkish-Cypriots responded with administrative partition

Archbishop Makarios (L) and John F Kennedy got along very well when they met in Washington in June 1962. Makarios admitted to Kennedy that if he’d known Kennedy would be president, he would have held out for a better deal than he got in Zurich.

 On 16 August 1960, Cyprus became an independent nation. It was endowed with a constitution that offered its Turkish-Cypriot minority (19 percent of the population) extensive advantages at the behest of Turkey. It was sheathed in treaties of alliance with NATO allies Britain, Greece and Turkey, lest the flirtation of its Nonaligned president, Archbishop Makarios III, should become a consummated relationship with Moscow. An unpublished memorandum signed by Greece and Turkey bound the allies to eventually support Cyprus’ entry into NATO and to outlaw communist activity and communist parties on Cyprus.^[1]

Makarios resented these constraints to Cypriot freedom. Externally, he did not trust NATO, an alliance in which Turkey held outsized influence in the east Mediterranean and which Greece had no way of counter-balancing. NATO had also been mobilised to counter Cyprus’ appeals for self-determination at the UN.

Internally, he was bound to separate parliamentary majorities for Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots on matters of taxation, local government and electoral law. Turkish-Cypriots were offered a three-tenths representation in the cabinet and parliament, and a four-tenths representation in the security forces. Above all, Makarios resented the veto of the Turkish-Cypriot vice-president, equal to his own, over any cabinet and parliamentary decision. The system put in place was clearly designed to encourage co-operative governance and avoid a tyranny of the majority, but three years later Makarios denounced “an aristocracy of the minority”^[2].