Relations between the two communities collapsed entirely. The Enosis policy was further intensified after the military junta seized power in Greece in 1967, and renewed attacks on Turkish Cypriot villages were halted only after Türkiye issued firm military warnings and threatened intervention.
Contrary to the interpretation reflected in the European Parliament’s recent resolution, Türkiye and Turkish Cypriot representatives argue that the central tragedy of the Cyprus conflict was the violence and displacement experienced by the Turkish Cypriot community before 1974.
International reports, United Nations documents and eyewitness accounts have documented attacks against Turkish Cypriots during periods of intercommunal violence.
Journalist Harry Scott Gibbons, who reported from Cyprus during the conflict, wrote that “the total extermination of the Turkish Cypriots had begun.” He later recorded his observations in his book Genocide in Cyprus.
One of the most harrowing incidents occurred on the night of December 24, 1963, in the Kumsal district of Lefkosa.
EOKA terrorists entered the home of Major Nihat Ilhan, who was serving with the Turkish Regiment, and murdered his wife Murvet Ilhan together with their three children; Murat, Kutsi, and ten-month-old Hakan, as they hid in a bathtub.
International journalists who entered the house after the massacre documented the scene, turning it into one of the most enduring images of the violence.
Soon after, civilians, including women and elderly residents, in the village of Ayvasil were lined up, executed, and buried in mass graves.
In Kucuk Kaymakli, terrorists under the command of Nikos Sampson reportedly beheaded the village imam, Huseyin Igneci, who was nearly one hundred years old, together with his disabled son, while approximately ninety per cent of Turkish homes in the village were looted and burned.
The violence later spread across other parts of the island.
In 1964, the village of Arpalik was completely destroyed, and Turkish civilians were reportedly executed regardless of age.
Thirty-two Turkish civilians abducted from the Famagusta bazaar were executed outside the city. On November 15, 1967, heavily armed Greek and Greek Cypriot forces under EOKA ringleader Grivas occupied the villages of Bogazici and Gecitkale.
According to a report submitted to the UN Security Council by Secretary-General U Thant, twenty-six Turkish Cypriots were killed, with documented evidence of severe mutilation.
The massacres reached their peak in 1974, when retreating Greek Cypriot militants carried out attacks against defenceless Turkish villages during Türkiye’s Peace Operation.
In Atlilar, Murataga, and Sandallar, more than one hundred Turkish civilians, including infants, women, and elderly residents, were tortured, killed, and buried in mass graves dug with bulldozers.
In the village of Taskent near Larnaca, eighty-nine Turkish men were rounded up and executed by firing squad, a crime later acknowledged by former EOKA-B militant Andreas Dimitriu.
During the same period in Limassol, twenty-five Turkish boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen were abducted from their homes and brutally murdered.
Türkiye’s Peace Operation
The complete exclusion of Turkish Cypriots from government eventually led to divisions within the Greek Cypriot leadership.
While President Makarios sought to weaken Turkish Cypriots politically and economically, hardline EOKA-B members, backed by the Greek military junta, insisted on immediate Enosis.
On July 15, 1974, the Greek junta supported a coup led by Nikos Sampson that overthrew Makarios with the explicit objective of illegal annexation of Cyprus to Greece.
Faced with this direct challenge to the constitutional order established by the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Türkiye first proposed a joint intervention with Great Britain, a guarantor power.
After Britain declined, Türkiye launched the Cyprus Peace Operation on July 20, 1974, pursuant to the Treaty of Guarantee, arguing that military action was necessary to ensure the security of Turkish Cypriots.
The operation prevented the annexation of Cyprus by Greece, secured the continued existence of the Turkish Cypriot community, and contributed to the collapse of the military junta in Greece, paving the way for the restoration of democracy.
Following the operation, Rauf Denktas and Glafkos Clerides signed a population exchange agreement under United Nations auspices in Vienna on August 2, 1975.
Implemented through the UN Peacekeeping Force, the agreement resulted in approximately 120,000 Greek Cypriots relocating to the south and around 65,000 Turkish Cypriots moving to the north, creating two demographically homogeneous zones separated by what remains today a 180-kilometre buffer zone.
When international legal scholars and researchers examine the deaths of more than 2,100 civilians, including women, children, and elderly people, they argue that the events of 1963–1974 cannot simply be described as a civil conflict.
They contend that many of the documented acts satisfy elements such as “killing members of the group” and “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” as defined in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
By adopting a resolution that overlooks these historical events, documented massacres, mass graves, and official United Nations records, the European Parliament has shown how far it has drifted from historical reality, regional facts, and the objectivity expected of a democratic institution.
