Abstract
When Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in Cyprus on July 22, 1878, as the first British High Commissioner, he did not realize he would assist in bringing modernity to this languishing Ottoman province. On that crisp summer morning, as the Himalaya sailed into the derelict Larnaca harbor, winds of change signaled things to come. Waiting by the pier, in full regalia, the Bishop of Kitium displayed his Byzantium heritage, cherishing the suppressed aspirations of Cypriot Hellenism. Despite the widespread reservations of Latin Christians, Bishop Kyprianos viewed these latter-day crusaders as European saviors from Ottoman despotism.
“The English want Cyprus, and they will take it as compensation”
—Disraeli, Tancred, Book IV (1847)1
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Notes
Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred or the New Crusade (London: Peter Davies, 1927), 244.
In analogizing Cyprus’s East-West juxtaposition, the quintessential British Cypriotephile Harry Luke, Cyprus—A Portrait and an Appreciation, rev. ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1964), 20–1, graphically described Cyprus’s “conversion” from its “original (Asiatic) orientation” as “a spear of western Christianity poised against the strongholds of militant Islam.”
The only serious exception appeared in December 1922 when, after Kemal Atatürk defeated the Greek army, a Turkish Cypriot delegation went to Ankara lobbying for Cyprus’s return to Turkey. Atatürk did not support this claim. Halil Ibrahim Salih, Cyprus, An Analysis of Cypriot Political Discord (New York: Theo. Gaus Sons, 1968), 38.
See Michael Attalides, Cyprus: Nationalism and International Politics (Edinburgh: Q Press, 1979), 36–46.
Charles Fraser Beckingham, “Islam and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus,” Die Welt des Islam 5, 1–2 (1957): 65–83.
Niyazi Kizilyurek (2006) “The Turkish Cypriots from an Ottoman-Muslims Community to a National Community,” in Britain in Cyprus: Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, 1878–2006, ed. H. Faustmann and N. Peristianis (Mannheim: Bibliopolis, 1994), 315–25.
In comparison to Greek Cypriot nationalism, Turkish Cypriot nationalism has attracted modest scholarly attention. In addition to the above, notable exceptions include, Huseyin M. Ateşin, Kıbıslı “Müslüma” larin “Türk” leşme ve “Laik” leşme Serüveni (1925–1975) [Turkification and Securization Adventure of Cypriot Muslims] (Istanbul: Marifet Yayinlari, 1999).
Altay Nevzat, “Nationalism Amongst the Turks of Cyprus: The First Wave” (PhD diss., University of Oulu, 2005).
Nergis Canefe, “Communal Memory and Turkish Cypriot National History: Missing Links,” in National Identities and National Memories in the Balkans, ed. Maria Todorova (London: Hurst and Company, 2003), 77–102.
Niyazi Kiziliyürek, “The Turkish Cypriot Community and Rethinking of Cyprus,” in Cyprus in the Modern World, ed. Michális S. Michael and Anastasios M. Tamis (Thessaloniki: Vanias, 2005), 228–47.
Ahmet An, Kıbrıs’ta Fırtınalı Yıllar [The Stormy Years in Cyprus] (1942–1962) (Lefkoşa: Galeri Kültür Yayını, 1996); and Kıbrıslı Türklerin Siyasal Tarihi (1930–1960): Basının Aynasında Kıbrıslı Türklerin Unutturulan Siyasal Geçmişi ve Liderlik Kavgaları [The Political History of the Turkish Cypriots (1930–1960): The Forgotten Political History of the Turkish Cypriots and the Struggles for the Leadership in the Mirror of the Press] (Lefkoşa, 2006).
Peter Loizos, “The Progress of Greek Nationalism in Cyprus, 1878–1970,” in Choice and Change: Essays in Honour of Lucy Mair, ed. J. Davis (London: Athlone, 1974), 114.
Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 105. Throughout Bitter Lemons and in his correspondence with Henry Miller in 1953–1956, Durrell considered Cyprus “unGreek,” a “piece of Asia Minor washed out to sea—not Greece” but rather part of the Middle East and the Levant more akin to Turkey, Egypt, and Syria. Following his disheartened departure from Cyprus, Miller consoled Durrell that he “should have no doubt that Cyprus will gain her independence or alliance with Greece,” adding approvingly that “the down-trodden are coming into their own, it’s inevitable. And there won’t be any atom bomb wars either,” George Wickens, ed., Lawrence Durrell [and] Henry Miller: A Private Correspondence (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 294, 300, and 303.
Robert Holland and Diana Markides, The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern Mediterranean 1850–1960 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 187–8.
John Thomson, Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878 (London: Sampson Low, 1879). As Mike Hajimichael, “Revisiting Thomson—The Colonial Eye and Cyprus,” in Faustmann/Peristianis, Britain in Cyprus, 61–78, astutely notes, Thomson’s work formed the template for how modern British society and polity “received and perceived” Cyprus, casting a “colonial eye” that was to dominate all subsequent British depiction of this newly acquired territory. It reenforced and articulated in a newly piercing medium of photos, with accompanied commentary, to a wider audience the confused combination of Philhellenism and colonialist/imperialist real politic.
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), xiii.
Four leading exemplars of Cypriot orientalism were Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1937), George Hill, Harry Luke, and John Reddaway. Heavily influence by Storrs, Hill in the fourth volume of his nominal work, A History of Cyprus: The Ottoman Province, the British Colony 1571–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972 [1952]), sets the intellectual framework for Cypriot orientalism. Whilst not disputing the “Greekness of Cypriots,” Hill contends that the (modern) “Greek idea of nationality” is different from that which is “understood by the Anglo-Saxons” or for that matter by the “ancient Greeks,” in the sense that Greek irredentism dictates that all Greek territories come under the same sovereignty (489–90). Contextualizing Greek Cypriot nationalism in its Cold War demeanor, Luke views its “frenzied” manifestation caused by communist propaganda, blaming early British latitude for not countering the socialization of Greekness through the teaching of English.
Finally, Reddaway, Burdened with Cyprus: The British Connection (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 1–5—who, like Luke and Storrs, served in colonial Cyprus—presents a fatalistic detachment of Britain’s role in subsequent events, and, like Luke, projects British complacency as a reluctant umpire between Greek and Turkish nationalist contestation.
W. Hepworth Dixon, British Cyprus (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879).
Samuel White Baker, Cyprus, As I Saw It in 1879 (London: Macmillan, 1879), 405.
Esmé Scott-Stevenson, Our Home in Cyprus (London: Chapman and Hall, 1880).
Kyriacos C. Markides, “Social Change and the Rise and Decline of a Social Movement: The Case of Cyprus,” American Ethnologist 1, 2 (1974): 309–30.
Colonial Office, Report on Cyprus for the Year 1952 (London: HMSO, 1953), 33, 52–3.
Colonial Office, Colonial Reports: Cyprus 1953 (London: HMSO, 1954), 15.
This lends credence to Rebecca Bryant’s, Imagining the Modern— The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 24, and “Signatures and ‘Simple Ones’: Constituting a Public in Cyprus, circa 1900,” in Faustmann/Peristianis, Britain in Cyprus, 79–81, claim that modernization, ushered during the first decades of British rule, served as a “precondition” for the transformation of parochial Cypriot public space by fusing Greek and Turkish nationalisms.
Writing half a century prior, Irene B. Taeuber, “Cyprus: The Demography of a Strategy Island,” Population Index 21, 1 (1955): 4–20, contested that Cyprus’s modernization occurred after 1946 due to British economic and social reforms.
Kyriacos C. Markides, The Rise and Fall of the Cyprus Republic (New Haven: Yale UP, 1977), 18–9, profiling is correlated by the fact that according to the 1946 census, 55 percent of young men in towns were villagers.
See D’Andrade (D. A.) Percival, “Some Features of a Peasant Population in the Middle East—Drawn from the Results of the Census of Cyprus,” Population Studies 3, 2 (1949): 202–4.
Anita M. Walker, “Enosis in Cyprus: Dhali, a Case Study,” The Middle East Journal 38, 3 (1984): 477–8.
John G. Peristiany, “Introduction to a Cyprus Highland Village,” in Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology: Mediterranean Rural Communities and Social Change, ed. J. G. Peristiany (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 79–80.
For a full description of the 1931 events, see Storrs, Orientations, 585–602, and G. S. Georghallides, Cyprus and the Governorship of Sir Ronald Storrs: The Causes of the 1931 Crisis (London: Cyprus Research Centre, 1986).
These early stances have been typified as “collaborationist,” “adaptationist,” and “absolute unionist,” Costas P. Kyrris, History of Cyprus (Nicosia: Nicocles, 1985), 302. They later manifested into three broader trends: nationalist-autonomist-enosist (associated with the Left), nationalists-enosist (attached to the moderate Right), and pure nationalists (linked to the militant enosists), G. S. Georghallides, Cyprus and… Storrs.
Nancy Crawshaw, The Cyprus Revolt: An Account of the Struggle for Union with Greece (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978), 22.
John Macdonald Kinneir, Journey Through Asia Minor, Armenia and Koordistan in the Years of 1813 and 1814 (London, 1818), 185.
Harold Temperley, “Disraeli and Cyprus,” The English Historical Review 15, 182 (1931): 274–9.
“Letter to Queen Victoria, 5 May 1878,” in W. F. Monypenny and G. E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1929), 1163.
R. Hamilton Lang, Cyprus: Its History, its Present Resources, and Future Prospects (London: Macmillan, 1878), 197–8.
Great Britain, “Cabinet Meeting (Financial Situation; Proposed Cession to Greece of Cyprus without Cabinet Consent; Need for Smaller War Council),” CAB 37/136/26, October 21, 1915.
Percy Arnold, Cyprus Challenge—a Colonial Island and its Aspirations: Reminiscences of a Former Editor of the “Cyprus Post” (London: Hogarth Press, 1956), 118.
Cyrus Leo (C. L.) Sulzberger, “Greeks Preparing Territorial Claims,” New York Times, August 8, 1946.
See C. L. Sulzberger, “U.S. Goals Outlined for East Europe,” New York Times, January 1, 1945.
James Reston, “Salonika Free Port, U.S. Aims in Policy to Freeze Borders,” New York Times, March 22, 1946.
Mallony Browne, “Britain Plans Her Global Defense,” New York Times, August 11, 1946.
Department of State, “Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East,” PPS/14 (Policy Planning Staff Paper that emanated from conversations between the U.S. Department of State and the British Foreign Office with their military advisers), Top Secret, November 11, 1947.
Christopher Montague Woodhouse, “Cyprus: the British Point of View,” in Cyprus in Transition 1960–1985, ed. J. T. A. Koumoulides (London: Trigraph, 1986), 86.
Thomas Ehrlich, Cyprus 1958–1967: International Crises and the Role of Law (Oxford UP, 1974), 7.
H. D. Purcell, Cyprus (London: Ernest Benn, 1969), 227.
Collin Cross, The Fall of the British Empire 1918–1968 (London: Paladin, 1970), 125.
Great Britain, “Paper on Middle East Defence,” FO 371/121370, V1197/22/G, December 26, 1956.
Anthony Eden, Full Circle (London: Cassell, 1960), 396.
E. H. Wyndham, “The European Scene,” Brassey’s Annual: The Armed Forces Year-Book, 1956, 67th ed. (London: William Clowes, 1957), 11.
Foreign Office, “Minutes” by J. H. A. Watson, FO 371/127757, V1075/39, July 3, 1957.
Robert Saundby, “Defence in the Nuclear Age,” Brassey’s Annual: The Armed Forces Tear-Book 1957, 68th ed. (London: William Clowes, 1958), 29.
C. L. Sulzberger, “Cyprus: US Pressure on GB to Improve Air Bases,” New York Times, June 6, 1952, 6.
In light of these strategic considerations, Britain redefined Cyprus’s military purpose. A 1957 White Paper argued that: “Britain has undertaken in the Baghdad Pact to cooperate with the other signatory States for security and defence, and for the prevention of Communist encroachment and infiltration. In the event of an emergency, British forces in the Middle East area would be made available to support the Alliance. These would include bomber squadrons based in Cyprus capable of delivering nuclear weapons.” Ministry of Defence, Defence: Outline of Future Policy, Cmnd. 124 (London: HMSO, 1957), para. 27.
“The text of the British proposals for Cyprus put to the Three Power Conference in London on 6th September 1955,” Colonial Office, Cyprus Report for the Year 1955 (London: HMSO, 1956): 89–91.
Nikos Kranidiotis, Oi Diapragmatefseis Makariou-Harding [the Makarios-Harding Negotiations] (1955–1956) (Athens: Olkos, 1987), 17.
Nikos Kranidiotis, Diskola Hronia [difficult years] (Athens: Estia, 1981), 174. “Dighenis” is apseudonym Grivas adopted when he led EOKA during 1955–1959. Dighenis Akritas is a legendary medieval Greek hero who defended the boundaries of the Byzantium empire against Arab incursions during the twelfth century.
Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm: 1956–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1971), 224.
Lord Harding of Petherton, “The Cyprus Problem in Relation to the Middle East,” International Affairs 34, 3 (1958): 296.
John W. Burton considered the abandonment of enosis and taksim as the communities’ compatibilization of interests. John Burton, Deviance Terrorism and War: The Process of Solving Unsolved Social and Political Problems (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979), 108.
Adamantia Pollis, “Intergroup Conflict and British Colonial Policy: The Case of Cyprus,” Comparative Politics 5, 4 (1973): 599.
John W. Burton, Conflict and Communication: The Use of Controlled Communication in International Relations (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 34.
Vamık D. Volkan, “Trauma, Identity and Search for a Solution in Cyprus,” Insight Turkey 10, 3 (2008): 95–110.
Edward Weintal and Charles Bartlett, Facing the Brink: An Intimate Study in Crisis Diplomacy (New York: Charles Scribner, 1967), in particular see chapter 2, “Aux Armes, Citoyens!,” 16–36.
According to his biographer, before Acheson left for Geneva, “the State Department had concluded that the continuation of an independent state in Cyprus was a threat to American interests,” Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years 1953–1971 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992), 215. For Acheson’s account of the talks, see Dean Acheson, “Cyprus: Anatomy of the Problem,” Chicago Bar Record 46, 8 (1965): 349–56.
George W. Ball, The Past has Another Pattern: Memoirs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 357.
Tad Szulc, “Acheson Warns of Peril in Cyprus,” New York Times, September 5, 1964, 4.
Report of the United Nations Mediator on Cyprus to the Secretary-General [September 28, 1964–March 26, 1965], S/6253, 19–28.
Fred Charles Iklé, How Nations Negotiate (London: Harper and Row, 1964), 2–3.
Glafcos Clerides, Cyprus: My Deposition, vol. 2 (Nicosia, Alithia, 1989), 265.
Polyvios G. Polyviou, Cyprus in Search of a Constitution: Constitutional Negotiations and Proposals 1960–1975 (Nicosia: Chr. Nicolaou and Sons, 1976), 116.
Zaim M. Necatigil, The Cyprus Question and the Turkish Position in International Law (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990), 67.
Rauf R. Denktash, “The Problem of Cyprus,” Review of International Affairs 22, 544 (1972): 10.
Report by the Secretary-General on the United Nations Operation in Cyprus, S/10401, November 30, 1971, para. 79.
EOKA-B preceded another enosist clandestine organization Ethniko Metopo [National Front], which in 1970 failed in its assassination attempt on Makarios. Greek officers loyal to Ioannidis and Makarios’s former Minister for the Interior, Polycarpos Georgadjis, were implicated. In October 1973, EOKA-B also launched an assassination attempt on Makarios whereupon a series of coup plans were uncovered. See Spiros Papageorgiou, Makarios dia Piros kai Sidirou [Makarios through fire and steel] (Athens: Ladias, 1976).
Nikos Kranidiotis, Anohiroti Politia [unfortified state], vol. 2 (Athens: Estia, 1985).
Michael El. Dekleris, Kipriako 1972–1974: I Teleftaia Efkairia [Cyprus Problem 1972–1974: The Last Opportunity] (Athens: Estia, 1981), 141.
For Turkish perceptions of Makarios’s “enosis paradox,” see Cyprus Turkish Information Office, “The Question of Cyprus: Can Makarios Abadon Enosis?” (Nicosia, 1971).
Articulating a more sophisticated Turkish understanding, Kemal H. Karpat, “War on Cyprus: The Tragedy of Enosis,” in Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Transition, ed. K. H. Karpat (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 192–3, explains Makarios deviation from enosis in terms of class interest, AKEL’s influence, and the allure of independence.
Until its official adoption by the Turkish leadership, federalism was muted as a potential legal-constitutional model. In a critique of Cyprus’s central constitutional tenet as a failure in communalism, Catherine D. Papastathopoulos, “Constitutionalism and Communalism: The Case of Cyprus,” The University of ‘Toronto Law Journal 16, 1 (1965): 144, concludes by pondering whether federalism would have been a more appropriate model for the young Republic.
Kemal H. Karpat, “Solution in Cyprus: Federation,” in The Cyprus Dilemma: Options for Peace (New York: Institute for Mediterranean Affairs, 1967), 51.
Christopher Hitchens, Cyprus (London: Quartet Books, 1984), 164–5.
Vamık D. Volkan, Cyprus—War and Adaptation: A Psychoanalytic History of Two Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1979), 111–9.
Alan Watkins, “A Modest Success for Jim,” New Statesman 2262 (July 26, 1974), 102.
A. M. Rendel, “Cyprus Agreement Finally Settled without Call for Turkish Withdrawal,” The Times, July 31, 1974, 1.
Mario Modiano, “Athens and Ankara May Start Talks Next Week,” The Times, August 1, 1974, 4.
Clerides confirms that after sounding out Callaghan about the possibility of U.S.-British intervention in case of a further Turkish offensive, he propositioned the Soviets, through their Ambassador Sergei Astavin, that he was willing to give them a military base in exchange for Soviet intervention. Astavin replied to Clerides just before he left for Geneva that the Soviet Union was prepared to intervene only in conjunction with the United States. Glafkos Clerides, I Katathesi Mou [my deposition], vol. 4, (Nicosia: Alithia, 1991), 42 and 76.
This statement was issued at the August 13, 1974 Department of State press briefing, see Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), 229–31.
John Saar, “The Turks Push Ahead in Cyprus Drive,” Washington Post, August 15, 1974, 1.
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© 2009 Michális Stavrou Michael
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Michael, M.S. (2009). Identifying the Sources of the Conflict. In: Resolving the Cyprus Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230103382_2
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