CYPRUS: Trying to Make Peace

The bitter battle over Cyprus between Turks and Greeks extended last week beyond the island to United Nations conference halls in Geneva and New York City. In each arena, military and political, Turkey was emerging as the decisive victor. On the island, the invading Turks continued to pour men and equipment into their corridor between Kyrenia and Nicosia. By week’s end the Turkish force was estimated at 30,000 men backed by 300 tanks. In political talks in Geneva, the Turkish government delayed attempts to scale down its Cyprus force and took advantage of the situation by broadening its Kyrenian beachhead in open defiance of a ceasefire agreement.

In spite of the death and debris that has badly crippled Cyprus (see box) and caused at least a thousand victims on either side, small Greek forces continued to hold out against overwhelming Turkish power. Skirmishes raged round the Kyrenia area as ill-equipped Greeks defended such small Greek Cypriot villages as Karavas, Lapithos and Agridhaki. High on Mount Kyparissovouno, nine miles west of Kyrenia, mortar shells ignited massive forest fires.

When they were not breaking the ceasefire, some Turkish troops systematically looted shops and homes in Kyrenia, a former Greek Cypriot enclave and the most important town Cypriot Turks have occupied since troubles began on the island. Residents of Kyrenia fled to refugee centers in tourist hotels that were protected by U.N. soldiers. Said Andreas Karioulou, 52, a noted diver whose discoveries off the island include a 2,200-year-old Greek galley: “It is hard to see your property go up in ashes. But I was born here, and I have no intention of leaving. The Turks should not keep us under guard forever.”

Favoring Turkey. The Turks refused to obey peacekeeping orders from blue-helmeted U.N. troops. They made U.N. soldiers leave Turkish enclaves and forbade them to bring food to Greek refugees in Kyrenia, permitting the International Red Cross to handle the job instead. Snapped one Turkish official last week: “The U.N. has been openly favorable to the Greeks from the beginning, and it has got to stop.”

Such antagonism was not a hopeful sign for the second round of talks due to open in Geneva this week to find a peaceful solution for the island. Last week the three guarantors of peace under the 1960 treaty of independence —Britain, Greece and Turkey—completed the first round during six days of lengthy discussions at the U.N.’s Palais des Nations. They agreed to a basic declaration that largely favored Turkey by allowing it to keep its troops in Cyprus and also reiterated a cease-fire plan worked out at the U.N. The mood of the participants, who in the second round will include Greek and Turkish Cypriots, indicated, however, that peace keeping would be difficult all round.

Glafcos Clerides, who has been acting as temporary President of Cyprus following the coup against Archbishop Makarios and the downfall of Coup Leader Nikos Sampson (TIME, Aug. 5) hopefully said that the Geneva talks could be “the start of a new era.” But Clerides also complained that “the Turks have imposed the conditions. They are in a position of strength, and they are taking advantage of it.”

Turkish Cypriot representatives bound for Geneva were equally belligerent. The Turkish community on the is land is already making plans to enlarge Kyrenia’s port. In addition, a new ferry service linking Kyrenia and the Turkish mainland nearly 50 miles away will soon start. The Turkish Cypriots, who are outnumbered almost 5 to 1 by Greek Cypriots on the island of 659,000 people, apparently do not intend to relinquish any of the salient that has been won for them by the Turkish army. Said Rauf Denktas., leader of the 119,000 Turks on Cyprus: “We want Kyrenia to come back to normal, but it will be different now; we will be the master.” Denktas. hinted that federation of the Turkish sector of the island to Turkey it self might be his eventual goal.

Such declarations got strident support from Ankara. Premier Btilent Ecevit, Turkey’s new hero for his decision to send troops to Cyprus (see following story), noted that “many things have irrevocably changed.” In Athens the new democratic government of Constantine Caramanlis had little choice but to accept the changes. “Mistakes have to be paid for,” said Caramanlis in a reference to the former junta’s rash decision to overthrow Makarios. Greek Foreign Minister George Mavros explained that “we did not go to Geneva for diplomatic glory. We went there to prevent a deterioration of the situation.”

One danger of the heated-up situation on Cyprus was that it could involve the superpowers more directly, something that both Washington and Moscow have so far avoided. Soviet U.N. Delegate Yakov Malik at one point last week brusquely vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution on the crisis. The motion called for beefing up the Cyprus peace-keeping force to 5,000 men and allowing U.N. troops to begin mapping cease-fire lines and laying out buffer zones between Greeks and Turks. Malik hinted that the Soviets are increasingly unhappy with the exclusive Western involvement in solving the Cyprus crisis. After making his point, Malik let the motion pass the next day.

The Soviet complaint was aimed mainly at Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took a long-distance but key part in the Geneva negotiations, exerting America’s growing influence on the Eastern Mediterranean. Kissinger was on the telephone frequently with British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan as well as with Premier Ecevit in Ankara, who studied international affairs under Kissinger at Harvard in 1957. Kissinger suggested the compromise that kept last week’s Geneva talks from failing. When the Turks objected to the eventual communiqué’s calling for immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from the island, he proposed it read “timely and phased reduction of forces.” The Turks accepted the wording, since it gave them more time to keep their troops on Cyprus, and the Greeks went along. In addition, the Turks were allowed to keep land their army had taken after the original ceasefire a week earlier.

Though talk of full-scale war between Turkey and Greece has been muted, the situation remains so volatile that swift success in the peace-keeping negotiations this week is considered urgent by all participants. Yet the problems are so complex and the hatred between Greeks and Turks so deep that no quick solution is in sight.