The UN and the Internationalization of the Cyprus Conflict, 1949–58

Abstract

The involvement of the UN in the Cyprus dispute in the 1950s was the result of a lengthy conflict between the Greek Cypriots and Great Britain over the future of the island, which escalated after the Second World War. While the Greek Cypriots sought union with Greece (enosis) and managed in the 1950s to mobilize their mother country in this direction, Britain was not willing to give up Cyprus for strategic reasons. Being politically weak and in conflict with strong opponents, Greece and the Greek Cypriots opted for the internationalization of the conflict to overcome the deadlock reached soon after the Second World War. They chose the newly founded UN Organisation as the forum and the world community as their ally to pressure Britain for concessions. Faced with the Greek demands, the Turkish Cypriot minority on the island and soon Turkey itselfs became allies of Great Britain in its effort to preserve the colonial status quo. The first part of this chapter describes the developments between 1949, when the Greek Cypriots decided to approach the UN, and 1954, when Greece formally appealed to the international organization for the first time. In the five years between this first appeal and the apparent the conflict in the agreements of Zurich and London in 1959, the conflicting parties approached the UN four more times.