Charalambos Alexandrou: Turkey had been trying to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus since 1963

Local 1974Cyprus problemhistoryTop Newsturkish invasion Charalambos Alexandrou: Turkey had been trying to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus since 1963 Invation3 Relevant News Charalambos Alexandrou: Turkey had been trying to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus since 1963 23 August 2026 Search continues for 22 after bulk carrier sinks off India 23 August 2026 Cyprus beach safety under scrutiny after jet ski crash and lifeguard shortages 23 August 2026 Xenia Tourki 23 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Fifty-two years on, Cyprus is still searching for answers about the causes, the mistakes and the omissions that led to the Turkish invasion of 1974. Questions that remain open and keep resurfacing, insistently, in public debate: Could the coup and the invasion have been avoided? Was the seizure of Famagusta part of Turkey’s plans all along? Were there genuinely lost opportunities to resolve the Cyprus problem? And which domestic and international factors shaped the road to disaster? The roots of what happened in the summer of 1974, however, go back much further, to the founding of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960. So says Charalambos Alexandrou, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Cypriot Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in an interview with Phileleftheros. He explains that a rigid, dysfunctional constitution, the absence of political consensus between the two communities, and a flawed system of guarantees together produced an extraordinarily fragile state. Those weaknesses quickly hardened into deep fractures, with the crisis of 1963-64 marking a decisive turning point in the evolution of the Cyprus problem. Alexandrou argues that a chain of political choices, international calculations and military failures created the conditions for the disaster. The coup gave Ankara the pretext it had been waiting for, while the stance taken by the United States, Britain and the junta in Athens effectively left Cyprus to face Turkey’s war machine alone. — What mistakes were made when the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 that prevented the creation of a functional, viable state? The functionality and viability of a state depend mainly on three factors. First, the legal framework governing how it operates, the constitution. Second, political consensus among its citizens, and above all among the institutional representatives of the people. And finally, the security guarantees that protect it. In Cyprus’s case, all three of these essential components were flawed. As for the constitution, legal scholars and constitutional experts of various nationalities, Turkish ones included, have concluded it was rigid, dysfunctional and overly complex, to the point of calling it a unique constitutional experiment. There was a further paradox: the constitution was imposed. In other words, the normal democratic process was never followed, by which the Cypriot people and their representatives, through a Constituent Assembly, would have decided the system of government and the articles of the constitution themselves. These features of the Cypriot constitution were the product of the Zurich-London Agreements, which set the framework for the state’s creation and operation. The Agreements, and by extension the constitution, were driven above all by the priority of building in safeguards for the island’s Turkish minority, and as a result maximised the elements of separation, institutionalised division along ethnic lines, and thereby reinforced the constitution’s rigidity. The Zurich-London Agreements themselves, though, were a product of the period that preceded them. A period marked, particularly in 1958, by Greek-Turkish clashes on the island that opened a chasm of blood between the two communities, while at the same time Athens and Ankara were each trying to sway the international community, the United States, and the colonial power, Britain, in their own favour. The events of 1958 therefore already cast doubt on the political consensus between Greeks and Turks, and even between Greece and Turkey, that would have been essential for such a complex constitution to actually function. The extensive privileges the constitution granted to the island’s Turks were soon weaponised by the Turkish community, as seen in the rejection of the 1961 Income Tax Law. Ankara’s continuous arming of the TMT left no room, even for the most optimistic observer, to expect better days ahead, and it foreshadowed Ankara’s partitionist intentions. Those intentions would be spelled out by none other than the Vice-President of the state himself, Fazil Kucuk, on December 30, 1963, when he declared that “the two communities cannot live together” and that “the constitution is dead.” — As you’ve already said, the guarantor powers also played a negative role. Exactly. The smooth functioning of the Cypriot state was guaranteed by three powers, Greece, Britain and Turkey. Two of those, Greece and Turkey, had competing ambitions on the island, despite the apparent compromise of the Agreements. Turkey, in fact, through its Office of Special Warfare, was quietly developing the “Cyprus Recovery Plan,” which it had drawn up as early as 1958. Britain, meanwhile, having been humiliatingly forced out of the island as a result of the pressure created by the internationalisation of the Cyprus problem and the EOKA struggle, and being unable to manage crises across the wider Middle East effectively, was primarily concerned with the smooth operation of its Bases and far less with the long-term survival of the Cypriot state. — How significant was the 1963-64 crisis for what followed? That’s a crucial question, because in my view the 1963-64 crisis marked a genuine turning point in the evolution of the Cyprus problem. It exposed the intentions of all the parties involved and created new realities. The way Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots reacted revealed the long-standing planning behind the “Cyprus Recovery Plan.” The seizure of strategically vital points on Cypriot territory, such as St Hilarion and Aspri Moutti tou Pentadaktylou, which controlled the Nicosia-Kyrenia road, the attempt to seize the Nicosia suburbs of Trachonas and Omorfita, and the deliberate creation of Turkish Cypriot enclaves, into which the island’s Turkish Cypriots were forced to relocate by their own leadership, could not have happened without extensive prior preparation. That preparation was placed beyond doubt by the documents found in the office of the Minister of Agriculture, Fazil Plumer. At the same time, the withdrawal of Turkish Cypriots from ministries, parliament and the civil service was an attempt to shift the crisis onto an institutional and constitutional level, with the ultimate aim of dissolving the Republic of Cyprus and turning it into a bicommunal federation. Furthermore, Turkey’s military involvement in the crisis, with aircraft overflights in December 1963 and the devastating bombing of the Tylliria region in August 1964, revealed exactly how Turkey approached the Cyprus problem. — Was there an organised plan on the Greek Cypriot side? The inability to respond swiftly to Turkish plans, or to neutralise them, exposed the absence of any organised plan on the Greek Cypriot side in 1963. To this day, Turkish propaganda presents the “Akritas Plan” as a plan by Greek Cypriots to exterminate the island’s Turkish Cypriots. From what we know from the historical research, and from how the situation actually unfolded, if such a large-scale, thoroughly organised plan had genuinely existed, the Turkish Cypriots in 1963-64 would not only have failed to seize strategic points across Cypriot territory. Once concentrated in the enclaves, they would have been easy targets for extermination by these supposedly well-organised Greek Cypriots. The “Akritas Plan” was, for the most part, a defensive plan that remained largely theoretical. We know that the Greek Cypriot villages of the Pentadaktylos range, the mountain peaks themselves, and the Nicosia suburbs, stayed free thanks to the actions of the police, the resistance of their own residents, and the improvised formation of armed groups by former EOKA fighters, led by figures such as Polykarpos Yiorkatzis, Nikos Sampson, Vassos Lyssarides and others, with scant, outdated weapons and even fewer rounds of ammunition. The overflights by Greek fighter jets over Cyprus in August 1964 were an indication of Athens’s intentions, but they came far too late. The most substantial intervention Athens actually made in the Cyprus crisis, though, was the 1964 decision to send the Greek Division to the island, which, together with the decision to create the National Guard, gave the island a real shield against Turkish designs. The final reason 1963-64 marks such an important turning point for the Cyprus problem, with consequences that reach right up to today, is that UN Security Council Resolution 186 of 1964 provided the Republic of Cyprus with protection, and effectively blocked Turkey’s manoeuvring. — Was the Acheson Plan a decisive moment in the chain of events that led to 1974? The Acheson Plan is often at the centre of discussions as a “lost opportunity,” coloured heavily by anti-Makarios sentiment. It’s widely held to have been an opportunity for Enosis, union with Greece, that Greece accepted but which Archbishop Makarios torpedoed. First, we have to acknowledge that judging by today’s standards, given the 52 years of Turkish occupation of 37% of Cypriot territory, some would say the plan would have been a good solution to the Cyprus problem. But that’s not really the discussion we should be having. The real question is whether, back in 1964, it would have been an acceptable solution, and that discussion touches on a fundamental principle of the study of history: that historical facts must be judged and interpreted within their own historical context. At that time, there was no Turkish military presence on the island beyond the 650 men of TURDYK and the armed TMT. Under the Acheson Plan, Turkey would have established a military base in the Karpasia region. At that time there were no refugees, except for the so-called “Turkish-afflicted,” those forced to leave their homes because of the creation of exclusively Turkish areas in the towns and the formation of the Turkish Cypriot enclaves. To create that Turkish base under the Acheson Plan, residents of 23 villages in Karpasia would have had to be relocated, and around 4.5% of Cypriot territory handed over to the Turks. At that time, Greece held military superiority on the island, with the gradual deployment of the Greek Division from Greece, the establishment of ASDAK under the command of Georgios Grivas-Digenis, and the construction of coastal defence works around Cyprus’s shores. At that time, the Turkish Cypriots were confined to scattered enclaves across the island, and it was widely believed to be only a matter of time before they returned to the structures of a unified state, which, incidentally, is exactly what Ismet Inonu had advised Fazil Kucuk to do. On top of that, Greek Cypriots had seen the United States prevent a looming Turkish invasion, through the letter sent by US President Lyndon Johnson to Turkish Prime Minister Ismet Inonu in June 1964. — So opportunities were lost? The union of Cyprus with Greece had already taken place de facto, and it was only a matter of time before it would happen de jure too, as even Rauf Denktas himself had admitted. Of course, it was understood that these favourable circumstances would not last forever, which meant the governments in Greece and Cyprus needed to seize them to achieve their national goals. That period was, in my view, the window of opportunity the Greek side had to achieve Enosis unilaterally. To close the discussion on the Acheson Plan, it’s worth mentioning two facts. First, that the plan, even in its most favourable version for the Greek side, was rejected by Turkey, so there was no realistic prospect of it ever being implemented, even if Archbishop Makarios had accepted it. Second, that the Acheson Plan, and the whole logic of ceding Cypriot territory to Turkey, was itself rejected by Georgios Grivas-Digenis, then head of ASDAK, who called the cession “unacceptable and immoral.” The coup and the invasion were not the inevitable result of historical determinism — With everything we now know 52 years on, could the coup and the invasion of 1974 have been avoided? Rather than get drawn into hypothetical scenarios, I’d prefer to turn the question around and discuss the actual facts that led to the coup and the invasion. Let me say from the outset: the coup and the invasion were not the inevitable result of historical determinism. Countless unpredictable factors combined to create the conditions for the events of July 15 and July 20. Covering even the most basic parameters of those events thoroughly would take far more time than we have here. In brief, then, the causes of the coup can be traced to mutual suspicion between Athens and Nicosia, which worsened after the April 1967 coup and the establishment of the junta in Greece. That suspicion rested on two issues. The first was the question of “precedence,” or what was sometimes called the “National Centre,” the fundamental question of who would have the final say on a solution to the Cyprus problem: Athens, as the national centre shaping the fate of all Hellenism, or the government in Nicosia, as the legally elected government of the state that would be directly affected. The second issue that fuelled suspicion between Athens and Nicosia was the “military question,” namely, who would control the Greek forces stationed on the island (the National Guard, ELDYK, and the Greek Division until early 1968). Control of the armed forces was of critical importance, because it directly concerned the security of the state, and by extension its very survival. It’s in this context that the Republic of Cyprus’s purchase of Czechoslovak weapons in 1966 and 1972 provoked such a storm of reaction. And let’s not forget: Makarios’s letter to Gizikis on July 2, 1974, widely seen as the trigger for the coup, was precisely about this military question. Within this framework, Archbishop Makarios’s handling of the Cyprus problem, his insistence on working through UN processes, his refusal to align with Athens on a solution within a NATO framework, and the purchase of Czechoslovak weapons, gradually began generating intense hostility towards him, feeding the myth of the “Castro of the Mediterranean.” This culminated in the dramatic assassination attempt against him in March 1970. The founding of EOKA B in September 1971 was a symptom of that crisis. But the organisation’s illegal activity inevitably deepened anti-Makarios sentiment, and helped pave the way for the coup. It’s also in this context that Dimitrios Ioannidis, the “invisible dictator,” organised and carried out the coup, under pressure from Turkish claims in the Aegean, believing that removing or assassinating Archbishop Makarios would do a favour to the United States, the transatlantic backer propping up the isolated junta, and that in return the US would grant the junta regime more time to survive. The coup, then, could have been avoided if either Athens or Nicosia had submitted to the other’s will, in short, if there had been agreement on a single, unified national strategy, the way there was in Turkey on the Cyprus problem, which is precisely what enabled Turkey, over the long run, to come so close to achieving its objectives. — Does the same apply to the Turkish invasion? When it comes to the invasion itself, the picture is more straightforward. Turkey’s goal of controlling the island through territorial and demographic partition had been openly declared. After its manoeuvres failed during the 1963-64 crisis, invasion was the only route left for Ankara to achieve its aims. But for Turkey to actually launch military action against Cyprus, three conditions had to be met: a pretext, US approval, and the avoidance of a Greek-Turkish war. The coup gave Turkey its pretext, presented by the Turkish side as a breakdown of legal order on the island, which Turkey was entitled to restore under the provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee. During contacts held by Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in London, it became clear that the British government had no intention of stopping the Turks. The United States, through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was primarily concerned with avoiding a Greek-Turkish conflict, and far less concerned with preventing a Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was monitoring the situation but was not willing to intervene to stop Turkey, since doing so would have meant supporting the Sampson “government” that had overthrown Archbishop Makarios, while also ruling out the Soviets’ ideal scenario: a Greek-Turkish war that would destabilise NATO’s south-eastern flank. One final factor that made Turkey’s invasion easier to carry out was the junta’s reluctance to send the air and naval forces to Cyprus that the Cyprus Defence Plan called for, to reinforce the National Guard. In practical terms, this meant two things: first, that the National Guard was left to face the Turkish army alone, with a predetermined outcome. Second, that Athens had no wish to go to war over Cyprus. This second point mattered just as much as the first, because the only thing that could have forced the United States to intervene decisively to stop the Turks was direct Greek military involvement in the war. So you can see that preventing the coup and the invasion would have required the right conditions to have been in place well before July 15 and July 20. Who would have stopped the Turks before Famagusta? — What happened that made the Turks move on to the second phase? Was the seizure of Famagusta part of Ankara’s original plans? We often talk about the Turkish invasion as though it were a single, continuous event, even though the circumstances on July 20, when the first phase of the invasion began, were quite different from those on August 14, when the second phase began. On July 20, the junta’s coup in Cyprus had already taken place, and Greece was diplomatically isolated on the international stage. By July 24, democracy had been restored in Greece, and Konstantinos Karamanlis was now the one trying to manage the situation. On July 22, the first ceasefire had been declared, and Turkey had already seized roughly 7% of the island. After July 22, the logic of Cyprus’s defence was no longer “the fight on the beaches and for the beaches,” as it had been on July 20, by then, the Turkish army was already on Cypriot soil and was continuing to reinforce itself unchecked. What’s worth focusing on, to understand how Turkey thought and acted between the two phases of the 1974 invasion, is the negotiations held in Geneva, which took place in two rounds, July 25 to 30, and August 8 to 13. Even between those two rounds, there are differences that reflect how the situation on the ground was evolving. In the first round of talks, the three guarantor powers negotiated through their foreign ministers, Georgios Mavros, James Callaghan, Turan Gunes, under UN Security Council Resolution 353 of July 20. The talks concluded with a joint declaration. In the second round of talks, representatives of the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktas, took part alongside the foreign ministers of the guarantor powers. — What would you say was the key difference between the two rounds of talks? The essential difference between the first and second rounds of talks was that maps were submitted by the Turkish side, and they’re worth dwelling on. For communications reasons, Turkey didn’t submit both maps itself. One was submitted by Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Gunes, and the other by the representative of the island’s Turkish Cypriots, Denktas. Both maps ceded around 34% of the Republic of Cyprus’s territory to the Turkish Cypriots. The Gunes map proposed creating six cantons across the whole of Cyprus, while the Denktas map partitioned the island along a line from Limnitis to the old town of Famagusta. Both maps, according to the Turkish proposals, aimed at creating a federal state: bizonal, under the Denktas map, and multi-regional, under the Gunes map. — What, in essence, do the Geneva talks tell us? First, as Polys Polyviou writes in his book, that Turkey held all the cards. It was the strong party in the negotiations, because it had already landed troops on the island and had achieved the operation’s first objective: joining up its bridgehead with the Turkish Cypriot enclave in Nicosia. It was the strong party because, even after the ceasefire, it kept seizing more territory. Even while the first round of Geneva talks was under way, Turkey was violating the “ceasefire.” On July 26, Turkish forces seized Syskipos and Agios Ermolaos, and on July 30 they entered Bellapais. Even after the Geneva declaration, which marked the end of the first round of negotiations, the Turks kept advancing. One of the terms of that declaration, which Turkey itself had signed at the end of the first round of talks on July 30, was that the areas controlled by the opposing forces at the moment of signing should not be expanded. That was July 30. By August 6, the Turks had seized Lapithos and Karavas. The one factor that could have forced Turkey to make concessions, or to limit its maximalist demands, was the United States. But Henry Kissinger had flatly refused to become actively involved in the situation. In my view, and in the view of scholars of the period, the two most significant outcomes of the Geneva conference were these. First, that the Greek side, by refusing to accept the plans submitted by the Turks, denied them legitimacy, and denied legitimacy to the facts on the ground created by the first phase of the Turkish invasion. Second, that the Republic of Cyprus, wounded by the invasion, survived as an international entity, at the expense of Turkey’s proposed federal solution. And if we want to draw a line to the present day, it’s on the basis of these two facts, the refusal to legitimise the invasion’s facts on the ground at Geneva, and the survival of the Republic of Cyprus, that we continue, to this day, our struggle for Cyprus’s liberation. — And of course, no one knows what would have happened if Cyprus had accepted Turkey’s demands at Geneva. One could argue that if we had accepted Turkey’s demands at Geneva, the second phase of the Turkish invasion would never have happened. We would have been spared the dead and the missing. Perhaps. Perhaps not. There would still have been refugees, though, since populations would have had to be moved to implement the Turkish plans. Although we’re now talking hypothetical history, I do want to dwell on something important about negotiations: reciprocity and trust. At Geneva, the negotiations weren’t conducted in good faith. As I mentioned, the Turks had the upper hand. They could do whatever they wanted. They had signed the Geneva declaration at the end of the first round of talks, and immediately violated it by seizing Lapithos and Karavas. The only party that could have guaranteed the implementation of such a solution, and the safety of Cypriots, was the Turkish army itself. You can imagine the circumstances under which such a “solution” would actually have been carried out. So the question was never simply whether to accept Turkey’s demands in order to end the war. Because the war wouldn’t have ended. The real question was how to salvage the last, and only, negotiating asset the Greek side had left: the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, with its legal standing, the very state Turkey had been trying to dismantle since 1963. This is precisely why we owe it to those who sacrificed themselves, and to those who stood their ground and fought in 1974, to honour them. Because with their sacrifice, they saved the Republic of Cyprus. — I want to come back to the fact that Famagusta doesn’t seem to have been part of Turkey’s plans. On the question of Famagusta, Varosha, the new town, specifically, it’s true that it wasn’t in the plans the Turks submitted at Geneva. Nor were other areas south of the old Nicosia-Famagusta road and south of the Nicosia-Morphou road, which nonetheless ended up being seized by the Turkish army. What do I mean by that? The issue isn’t whether Varosha was one of Turkey’s objectives. The issue is who was going to stop the Turks before they reached Famagusta. The National Guard did not have the capability to stop the Turkish army. The mission Athens had given the National Guard was one of fighting retreat, maintaining contact with the enemy. The Karamanlis government’s reluctance to reinforce the National Guard and ELDYK, who were fighting on the ground, and to become actively involved in the war, created deeply demoralising conditions for Cyprus’s defence. There’s often talk of the hypothetical scenario in which Varosha might have been saved, if the National Guard units retreating from the eastern front had regrouped in Varosha and formed a second line of defence there. Varosha might have been saved. It might not have been. My own view is that on August 14, Famagusta was being defended by the line at Mia Milea. Once that defensive line broke, the Turks simply took as much territory as they could. So the question isn’t whether Famagusta was part of the plan. The question is whether the National Guard had the capability to defend it, and whether post-junta Athens had the political will and the military capacity to support the fighting Greek Cypriots of Cyprus by holding back Turkey’s ambitions. Unfortunately, based on the facts, it appears the answer to both of those questions was no. Invation2 Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Search continues for 22 after bulk carrier sinks off India Cyprus beach safety under scrutiny after jet ski crash and lifeguard shortages Police arrest seven in overnight Cyprus crackdown, check more than 1,100 people Cyprus temperatures reach 39C as mountain rain possible from Monday Potamos tis Militsas: a taste of the Cypriot countryside in Kambi Stou Rousia: three locations serving traditional Cypriot cuisine Mostly clear Sunday, highs of 39 degrees inland Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.