The Road to 1974: The Invasion and Occupation of Cyprus

A tragedy of predominantly Greek errors led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus 51 years ago today. It could have been averted

An ITN television report filed in July 1974

Turkey had threatened to invade Cyprus since 1956, telling the island’s British colonial masters that if they gave up its administration it should revert to them, not the Greeks.

The Turkish logic was that the Ottoman Empire had ceded Cyprus to Britain in 1878 in return for protection from Russia, and that British departure should automatically mean its reversion to Turkey.

At the time, the Greeks did not take the threat of invasion seriously, because Turkey lacked the ships to move the manpower and machinery necessary for a landing, and lacked an air force with which to support it.

By December 1963, when Turkey renewed its threat following the breakdown of inter-communal relations between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots, the situation was very different.

Turkey had the means, and deployed them. The Turkish navy dispatched an expeditionary force for the first time, which the administration of US president Lyndon Johnson turned back. During intercommunal clashes in 1964, the Turkish air force became directly involved in hostilities on Cyprus for the first time, overflying the island, bombing Greek positions in Polis Chrysochous and sinking a Greek-Cypriot coast-guard cutter.

It was the appreciation of this change in Turkey’s dynamic ability that led Greek prime minister George Papandreou to station some 8,000 Greek troops on Cyprus that year, and the Cypriot government to place coastal defences on the north shore.

Turkish prime minister Ismet Inonu was querying the US State Department whether his government could expect “benevolence and neutrality” if Turkey intervened militarily.^[1] Meanwhile in Athens, the newly elected Papandreou was warning US embassy officials that “it is insane to consider war between Greece and Turkey; however… if [the] Turks ‘open [the] door to [the] insane asylum, then he would have to accompany Inonu inside’.”^[2] The threat of invasion was not only credible, it was actively being explored and warned against.