Cyprus

CYPRUS

the largest island in the eastern mediterranean.

The Cyprus Republic was established as a sovereign independent state in 1960. It is a presidential republic in which the president is elected by popular vote to a five-year term and the legislature consists of the unicameral House of Representatives. Covering 3,700 square miles (9,251 sq km), Cyprus lies south of the Turkish mainland and east of Syria. Prior to 1960, Britain ruled Cyprus, after having annexed it from the Ottoman Empire in 1878.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey invaded and occupied the northern part of the island. Turkey's troops control this territory, which makes up about a third of the island. The Turkish occupation of 1974 caused 200,000 Greek Cypriots to move southward and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots to relocate to the occupied territories. In 1983, a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was established, but has not been recognized by any country besides Turkey.

Population and Major Cities

The last census to survey the entire island, in 1973, recorded a population of 631,788, of whom about 80 percent were Greek-speaking Orthodox, 18 percent Turkish-speaking Muslims, and the remaining 2 percent Maronites and Armenians. A 1986 census found the population in nonoccupied Cyprus to be 677,200, whereas that in the north was estimated to be about 160,000 (not including about 65,000 people from mainland Turkey who had settled in northern Cyprus). An official estimate for the population of the entire island in 1991 came to 708,000.

The capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, was divided by a "green line" that separated the northern occupied part from the rest of the city and effectively closed the city's international airport. The other major cities are Larnaca (where the international airport was relocated), Limassol, and Paphos; in occupied Cyprus, the largest towns are Kerynia, virtually deserted since the invasion in 1974, and Famagusta. With the exception of Nicosia, all the major towns are seaports. Two mountain ranges on the island run east to west, one in the north and the higher Troödos range in the south.

Economy

After Cyprus gained independence in 1960, its economy changed dramatically. Within the next three decades, the formerly agrarian character of the island was transformed as domestic manufacturing and international trade were developed vigorously, in the process raising the per capita income from $350 in 1960 to $7,500 in 1986. The development of tourism was also a significant factor in this period.

The millet system, which operated in Cyprus during the period of Ottoman rule (1570–1878), allowed the Greek Orthodox church of Cyprus to play an important role in the affairs of the majority Greek-speaking population of the island. The leader of the church, Archbishop Kyprianos, and a group of notables who supported the Greek war of independence (1821) were executed by the authorities. The Tanzimat reforms of 1839 and especially the Hatt-i Hümayun reforms introduced in Cyprus in 1856 improved living conditions for the Greek Orthodox inhabitants and enhanced their commercial and educational opportunities.

British Rule

Cyprus was awarded to Britain at the Berlin Congress (1878), and Britain took over its administration. The island, however, remained formally part of the Ottoman Empire until 1914, when it was annexed by Britain as a consequence of the Ottoman Empire's siding with the Central Powers in World War I. British rule brought a greater degree of self-government for the population and a Western-based judicial system but also much higher taxation, imposed to finance the compensation Britain had undertaken to pay the Ottomans after 1878.

The disaffection of the local Greek Orthodox population with British rule served to encourage sentiment in favor of union with Greece. During an uprising in support of enosis (union with Greece) in Nicosia (1931), the British Government House was burned down. The authorities retaliated by suspending the island's legislative council. The proenosis movement grew again in the late 1940s after the referendum—organized by the all-party Ethnar-chic Council under the new Greek Orthodox Archbishop Makarios III—that decided overwhelmingly in favor of union with Greece.

The Greek Cypriots took their case to the United Nations (UN) and Archbishop Makarios traveled to the United States to publicize the movement, but the UN assembly declined to take up the issue and more anti-British demonstrations occurred on Cyprus. On 1 April 1955 attacks on British installations signaled a new phase in the island's anticolonial struggle. The campaign was led by the Ethniki Organosis Kipriakou Agonos (EOKA; National Organization of Cypriot Fighters), a Greek Cypriot guerrilla organization headed by Georgios Theodoros Grivas, a colonel of the Greek army who used the nom de guerre Dighenis. In retaliation, Britain exiled Archbishop Makarios and his close collaborators to the Seychelles (1956). While diplomatic initiatives began to resolve the Cyprus crisis at the UN and in London (1957), the minority group of Turkish Cypriots on the island, fearing the consequences of enosis, declared themselves to be for either a federation or partition.

Independence and Internal Conflict

Diplomatic negotiations between the British, Greek, and Turkish governments led to the Zurich Agreement between Greece and Turkey and the London Agreement between Britain, Greece, Turkey, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaderships. The series


of arrangements brought about the establishment of an independent state, the Cyprus Republic, whose sovereignty was to be guaranteed by Britain, Greece, and Turkey. Small garrisons of Greek and Turkish forces were to be stationed on Cyprus, and the rights of the Turkish Cypriot minority were enshrined in the constitution, which provided for the office of a Turkish Cypriot vice president of the republic with extensive veto powers. In December 1959, Makarios was elected president and Fazil Kuçuk vice president. Elections for the legislative assembly were held in 1960, and in August of the same year the last British governor, Sir Hugh Foote, announced the end of British rule on the island (Britain retained two military bases under its sovereignty), thereby paving the way for the formal proclamation of the Cyprus Republic.

After a breakdown in Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot relations led to intercommunal fighting in 1963, the areas populated by Turkish Cypriots were separated administratively by a so-called green line. When the situation continued to be tense in 1964, the Greek Cypriots began fearing a military invasion from mainland Turkey. Through a series of negotiations held under the aegis of the UN, diplomats sought a more practical resolution of the intercommunal conflict. Their proposals ranged from a reaffirmation of the original constitutional structure to either union with Greece or division of the island, but none of these measures was acceptable to both sides. The arrival of a UN peacekeeping force (1964), however, helped to reestablish peace. By remaining committed to preserving the Cyprus Republic, Makarios incurred the opposition of the Greek Cypriot nationalists and their leader, Colonel Grivas. Aided by the Greek dictatorship established in 1967, Grivas, working through an organization named EOKA-B, led a renewed struggle for enosis from 1971 till his death in 1974.

Growing conflict between Makarios and the Greek dictatorship culminated in the latter's support of Makarios's overthrow and the imposition of a dictatorship headed by Greek Cypriot nationalist Nikos Sampson (July 1974). Makarios survived an assassination attempt and left the island. Claiming to be exercising its rights as a guarantor of the sovereignty of Cyprus, Turkey launched a military invasion and eventually placed the northern third of the island under its control. The Greek dictatorship and the Sampson regime collapsed, and Glafkos Clerides was made acting president, pending the return of Makarios in December 1974.

After 1974, the two sides undertook numerous negotiations and held many meetings under the auspices of the UN, whose General Assembly called for the withdrawal of the Turkish occupying forces and the return of all the refugees to their homes. Several plans designed to resolve the crisis were submitted and although the Greek Cypriots agreed to a number of successive concessions, no overall arrangement has been acceptable to both sides.

Makarios died in 1977. His successor, Spyros Kyprianou, was president until 1988. As the candidate of the Democratic Party, he then lost the presidential elections to George Vasileiou, who was supported by, among others, the large Communist Party (AKEL). Vasileiou's tenure ended in 1993, when Glafkos Clerides won the presidential elections. In the meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash had declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1983. He was elected president of TRNC in 1985 and reelected in 1990.

see also berlin, congress and treaty of; denktash, rauf; grivas, georgios theodoros; millet system; tanzimat.

Bibliography

Attalides, Michael A. Cyprus, Nationalism and International Politics. New York: St. Martin's, 1979.

Ioannides, Christos P., ed. Cyprus: Domestic Dynamics, External Constraints. New Rochelle, NY: Melissa Media, 1992.

Necatigil, Zaim M. The Cyprus Question and the Turkish Position in International Law, 2d edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Alexander Kitroeff