When the Cyprus question is discussed in Western political discourse, the story almost invariably begins in July 1974. Türkiye’s military intervention is presented as the opening chapter, detached from the events that preceded it.
This selective chronology has shaped international perceptions for decades, but it also obscures the political and humanitarian realities that made the intervention a necessity.
History did not begin in Cyprus in 1974. It began to unravel in 1963.
Following the end of British colonial rule, the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 as a bi-communal partnership founded on the political equality of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and safeguarded by international treaties.
It was not conceived as a majoritarian state but as a constitutional order in which neither community could dominate the other.
Yet for influential segments of the Greek Cypriot leadership committed to ‘Enosis’ – an irredentist campaign to unite Cyprus with Greece – this framework was never regarded as a permanent settlement but as an obstacle to the creation of a unitary Greek state.
Within a few years of independence, efforts to revise the constitutional balance began eroding the foundations of the partnership.
By the time EOKA terror erupted in 1963, the crisis was no longer merely political, it had become a challenge to the very constitutional order on which the Republic of Cyprus had been founded.
Any serious discussion of the Cyprus conflict, therefore, must first answer a more fundamental question: why did the constitutional Republic of Cyprus collapse only three years after its independence? Why were more than one hundred Turkish Cypriot villages attacked?
Why were thousands of Turkish Cypriots forced into isolated enclaves that covered only a small fraction of the island? Why did intercommunal violence continue for more than a decade before Türkiye intervened?
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The answer cannot be understood without examining the ideology that dominated both Greek Cypriot extremists and the junta in Athens: Enosis.
The Akritas Plan, drafted by leading Greek Cypriot figures, envisioned dismantling the constitutional partnership established in 1960, neutralising Turkish Cypriot resistance and paving the way for Enosis.
Soon afterwards, the Bloody Christmas in December 1963 marked the beginning of systematic violence. Turkish Cypriot neighbourhoods and villages came under attack.
According to various reports, hundreds of Turkish Cypriots were killed in the initial clashes and the following years, with estimates of the total number of Turkish Cypriot deaths between 1963 and 1974 ranging from several hundred to over a thousand.
Approximately 103 villages were affected by violence and forced displacement over the following years. Tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots were ultimately confined to enclaves covering only around three percent of the island.
This period is often reduced to a footnote in international discussions. Yet removing the years between 1963 and 1974 from the historical record also removes the context necessary to understand why the crisis reached its climax in July 1974.
Beginning the story in 1974 inevitably transforms cause into consequence.
The ideology of Enosis did not simply threaten Turkish Cypriots. It steadily undermined Cyprus’s constitutional order and radicalised politics on both sides of the Aegean. Even many Greek Cypriots who opposed extremism became victims of the growing radicalism surrounding the Enosis project.
By the early 1970s, Greece was no longer the democratic state often portrayed in contemporary political narratives. Following the Colonels’ Coup of April 1967, the country had become one of Europe’s most repressive military dictatorships.
Political parties were dissolved, constitutional rights suspended, thousands of citizens imprisoned or exiled, torture became widespread and strict censorship silenced the press. Universities, long regarded as centres of political debate, were brought under tight state control.
The suppression of the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 exposed the brutality of the regime to the world. The army’s violent response to student demonstrations became a defining symbol of military rule and further eroded the junta’s domestic legitimacy.
Washington was increasingly uneasy. Although Cold War calculations initially encouraged cooperation with the military government, the US Congress expressed strong and growing criticism over systematic human rights abuses, political repression and the regime’s growing instability became increasingly visible in the US Congress, the American press and official policy discussions.
Declassified diplomatic records reveal a relationship characterised not by unconditional confidence but by mounting frustration over the junta’s behaviour and its inability to stabilise the region.
On July 15, 1974, the Greek military regime, backed by EOKA-B terror group, orchestrated a coup against President Archbishop Makarios III and installed Nikos Sampson, a figure closely associated with the Enosis movement. The objective was unmistakable: to remove the internationally recognised government and complete Cyprus’s union with Greece.
Makarios himself left little doubt about where responsibility lay. Addressing the United Nations Security Council on July 19, 1974, he declared, “The Greek military regime has extended its dictatorship to Cyprus”. He described the events not as an internal matter but as an external invasion that violated Cyprus’s independence and sovereignty.
For Türkiye, the situation carried not only political but also legal implications.
As one of the guarantor powers under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Ankara argued that the collapse of constitutional government and the threat posed to the Turkish Cypriot community required action after diplomatic efforts failed to restore the status quo.
Türkiye’s Cyprus Peace Operation of 1974, therefore, cannot be understood in isolation from the decade that preceded it.
Even one of the principal figures behind the 1974 coup later acknowledged the truth. In 1981, Nikos Sampson stated: “Had Türkiye not intervened, I would not only have proclaimed Enosis, I would have annihilated the Turks of Cyprus.” The plotters had badly miscalculated.
