Cyprus: An End or a Beginning

“Now it’s hopeless,” said a veteran U.S. diplomat in Cyprus recently. .’Three times we held back the Turks, but I don’t know if we can keep Turkey from coming in any longer.” The words were prophetic, for last week the long expected Turkish intervention had begun. It was not the full-scale naval landing that some had feared; this still could come, but for now Turkey was sending its jet fighters across the narrow straits to blast limited Greek Cypriot targets.

The first attackers, using bombs, rockets and machine guns, killed 33 and injured 230, according to the government. Next day, Turkey sent 64 planes to hit the Cyprus coast.

Falling Villages. Cyprus had been at Hash point for weeks, as Greeks and Turks pumped in men and arms to bolster both factions on the island. Archbishop Makarios’ Greek Cypriot regime, emboldened by its new strength, had cut off the water supply to the Turkish quarter in Ktima, went so far as to break the telephone connection between Nicosia and Ankara. Then one day, at the very center of Nicosia, on the Green Line along Paphos Street, the Turkish Cypriots decided to move their sandbagged post a few yards toward the Greek Cypriot positions. The Greeks retaliated by setting up a new outpost of their own. Suddenly both sides began shooting; when it ended, one Greek Cypriot was dead and two were wounded.

In no mood to swallow a defeat at the hands of the Turks, Greek Cypriot forces many miles away on the northwest coast were already poised to attack the little ten-mile-long Turkish strip of coastal villages around Man-soura (TIME, July 24). The news from Nicosia may have had nothing to do with it, but within hours the Greek Cypriots were hammering away with bazookas, mortars and machine guns. One after another, Mansoura, Alevga and Ayios Theodores fell to Makarios’ men. Desperately, the Turkish Cypriots fell back to nearby Kokkina.

The United Nations commander, India’s General Kodendera Thimayya, complained to Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios that his U.N. peacekeeping force was hamstrung by Greek Cypriot restrictions. Typically, Makarios was polite and evasive. The U.N. contingents had no intention of standing in the middle of a shooting war: indeed, their governments had threatened to fly the men home.

Beached Boat. In Ankara, Premier Ismet Inonu warned that Turkish patience was at an end. Out of the blue Mediterranean sky dropped flights of U.S.-built jet fighters. At first, the planes swooped low on “reconnaissance” sorties that were clearly intended as a threat to the Greek Cypriots. When the Greeks did not withdraw, the Turkish pilots poured rocket fire into the Greek positions around Kokkina. Three more jets blasted the Kyrenian mountain range as Greek Cypriot antiaircraft batteries filled the air with flak bursts. At the coastal town of Xeros. Turkish jets riddled a Greek Cypriot patrol boat, and the crew ran it ashore. Swedish U.N. troops tried to arrange a truce at Kokkina to remove women and children. When the combatants refused, the Swedes entered the village in armored cars and evacuated the refugees. Troops at a U.N. outpost, caught between two fires, had to be rescued by helicopter.

After a three-hour Cabinet meeting, the Turkish government issued a five-point communique: 1) Greek Cypriot military activities will be subject to reconnaissance flights by the Turkish air force, 2) the Turkish armed forces are being held in a state of alert, 3) on the Aegean seacoast and on the Turkish-Greek frontier in Thrace, the Turks are prepared to meet all attacks, 4) Turkey is providing its NATO allies with all necessary information about its military activities, and 5) measures are being taken to put the entire country, including the civilian population, in a state of readiness.

Military Muscle. The Turks were fighting mad, and troops and ships were ready at the seaport of Iskenderun to spearhead an invasion of Cyprus. But the Greek Cypriots, stiffened by thousands of reinforcements from the mainland, were cockily convinced of victory.

Even as their planes were swooping over the northern coast, Turkish delegates at the United Nations were arguing for a Security Council condemnation of the Greek actions in Cyprus. No less loudly, the Greek Cypriots demanded an end to the Turkish attacks, and at an emergency Security Council meeting, the U.S. and Britain proposed a resolution seeking an immediate ceasefire.

There could be no doubt that the man largely responsible for the deterioration was Archbishop Makarios, who had rejected reasonable U.S. proposals for settlement and boasted that “we will accept no compromise solution, no swapping of islands, no federation in Cyprus, no Turkish Cypriot ‘cantonments.’ ‘ In short, he demanded that the Turkish Cypriots lay down their arms and accede to majority rule by the Greek Cypriots. One Cypriot newspaper voiced the Greek mood by stating, “There must be an end to the drama.” The only question, at week’s end, was how bloody the end was to be.