CYPRUS: Big Troubles over a Small Island

The time was 6:07 a.m. and the summer sun was just beginning to spread over the deep purple mountains and brown fields of Cyprus when the first airplanes appeared. They were propeller-driven C-130s and C-47s, and Cypriots hearing the hum of many motors realized instantly that the planes were not carrying the usual hordes of summer tourists. As each flight approached the plain between the capital city of Nicosia and the Kyrenia Range, which shields the capital from the sea, a stick of Turkish paratroopers jumped into the cloudless sky. Floating into the welcoming Turkish sector of the city, they were gathered into waiting cars, ambulances and even a bread truck and driven to fighting stations. One paratrooper, a 29-year-old Turk named Sami, smiled broadly as he unbuckled his gear and slipped out of his brown chute. “This makes me tremendously happy,” he said, apparently having been well coached by his officers. “We are just here to look after the welfare of the Turkish community.”

Borrowed Cassock. By midmorning the paratroopers had been reinforced by a naval armada. Protective Turkish destroyers hovered off Kyrenia harbor on the northern coast, and infantrymen were helicoptered ashore and frogmen swam in. Soon battles raged throughout the island, particularly around Nicosia and its vital airport.

For the 520,000 Greek and 119,000 Turkish Cypriots living on the long-embattled island, the World War II-type invasion was an incredible climax of a scarcely credible week. Within the space of five days, His Beatitude Archbishop Makarios III was driven into exile by a right-wing coup spearheaded by 650 regular Greek officers on the island to train the more than 10,000-man national guard. A notorious terrorist, Nikos Giorgiades Sampson, 39, was picked as the new President. Makarios flew off to New York City in a borrowed cassock to plead for help before the United Nations Security Council, but before the U.N. could act or the major powers could intervene, the Turks invaded.

The crisis quickly threatened to spread beyond Cyprus’ craggy shores.

The Greeks and Turks, ancient enemies,* rushed troops to their 90-mile mutual border along the Evros River and ordered general mobilization, raising the threat of mainland fighting to counterpoint the skirmishes on Cyprus.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied that a superpower confrontation was likely. But Moscow once more alerted airborne divisions in a show of strength, and both the Soviet Mediterranean fleet and the U.S. Sixth Fleet dispatched combat vessels toward the island. Kissinger insisted that the U.S. and Russia were not heading toward a clash, explaining that the ship movements are normal precautions when war breaks out in the area.

Nonetheless the danger of a major war between Greece and Turkey was so acute that diplomats everywhere pitched in to stop the shooting on Cyprus. The Security Council approved unanimously—after the Soviet Union withdrew its earlier opposition—a resolution calling for a cease-fire and negotiations. Turkey flatly refused to obey.

NATO, since both Greece and Turkey are members, ineffectually attempted to mediate. Britain, which along with Greece and Turkey is a guarantor of Cyprus’ sovereignty under the 1960 Zurich treaty that granted it independence, also interceded with both sides.

Waffled Position. The U.S. sent Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Joseph J. Sisco skyhopping through the danger zone between Athens and Ankara to work out a solution. His chances of success were slim, however, because the U.S. had appeared to waffle all week on what position to take on the crisis involving two of its allies.

The problem was that a cease-fire was impossible to enforce even for the 2,188-man U.N. peace-keeping force, which has been stationed on the troubled island since 1964. Within one day, 6,000 Turks had been put ashore in Cyprus. Not only were the Turkish forces fighting Cypriots loyal to Greece but both Greek and Turkish Cypriots were taking advantage of the invasion to resume fighting among themselves. Ankara was reportedly determined to land three divisions before it would even consider a ceasefire.

Angry Greek Cypriots, who only days before had been fighting one another over whether to remain loyal to Makarios and maintain their country’s independence or to form a union with Greece, now joined in determinedly to resist the invaders. Nikos Sampson appeared on television to declare his pride in the fighting spirit of his soldiers. “The Turkish enemy must be driven into the sea!” he cried. Prisons were emptied of fighting men, including 1,200 policemen who had supported Makarios and been jailed following Sampson’s successful coup against him.

They were a ragtag regiment. Some wore the camouflage suits of EOKA-B, the pro-Athens, anti-Makarios terrorist group. Others had on U.S. Army fatigues with American names still stenciled over pockets. All gave defiant V-for-victory signs as they straggled off to the front where they faced better-trained and equipped Turkish forces.

New waves of Turkish paratroopers were landed periodically throughout the week along with additional artillery and tanks. Turkish air force planes flew support for them, knocking out bridges and hitting police stations. The preliminary aims of the invading troops were to secure the ten-mile Kyrenia-Nicosia road and take the capital. They made quick advances the first day, capturing that corridor. Then Greek resistance sharply stiffened. Fierce fighting raged for Nicosia, with neither side in control of the city. A naval-air battle erupted Sunday on the southwest coast of the island, according to Ankara, when a Greek flotilla tried to land troops near Paphos. The Turkish General Staff claimed the attempt failed after Turkish warplanes repeatedly attacked the Greek forces, damaging destroyers and landing craft.

Caught in the middle of the conflict were at least 6,000 tourists. Under escort of U.N. and British troops, a makeshift convoy of more than 500 private autos, trucks and armored cars evacuated about 4,400 foreign nationals from the beleaguered capital to the British base at Dhekelia.

Suspicious Greeks. Everywhere there were the tragedies and anomalies of war. One Turkish plane hit a Nicosia mental hospital, killing at least 20 patients and throwing the rest into a panic. One small boy rolled on the ground in hysteria and chewed pieces of broken glass. Greek Cypriots defending Nicosia periodically popped into available apartments to sip soda and listen to radio reports of how they were doing. But strangest and saddest of all was that the first battle between Greeks and Turks in seven years had been touched off by bitter animosity between Greek and Greek. The root of the war was enmity between the tall bearded Makarios and Greek Strongman Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannides. Makarios felt that Ioannides, working through Greek officers who have long commanded the Cypriot militia, was trying to turn his people against him.

As much as it distrusted the Turks, the Athens regime looked on the archbishop as the immediate enemy. The violently anti-Communist regime in Athens was suspicious of the archbishop’s dealings with Moscow and the support he received from the 40,000-member Cypriot Communist Party. The junta reviled him as “Red,” and worried that he would open Cyprus to the Soviet navy. In recent months, the anti-Makarios campaign was stepped up, and posters denouncing Makarios appeared on walls in Athens.

Makarios grew uneasy under Athens’ mounting campaign, sensing a coup in the wind. He realized that his greatest danger was the presence of the 650 Greek officers on the island, and three weeks ago he wrote a letter to Greek President Phaedon Gizikis demanding their removal. Their continued presence, he said, was “harmful to relations between Athens and Nicosia.” In a sermon two weeks ago, he spoke of feeling “the invisible hand that is threatening the liberty of Cyprus and menacing my life.” Just three days before the coup he asserted that he had proof that Athens was plotting his overthrow.

Though Athens denied that it contemplated any action against Makarios, there was little doubt on or off the island that a plot to depose the archbishop was planned by the secretive Ioannides, 52, chief of the Greek military police and strongman behind President Gizikis. Under the mounting demands from Makarios, Ioannides finally ordered the coup to take place Monday morning and, as the archbishop had feared, the Greek officers led the national guard against troops loyal to him. Using Soviet T-34 tanks that the archbishop had received from a 1964 aid pact with Russia, the guard attacked strategic locations, including the presidential palace, Nicosia airport and central prison, where hundreds of pro-enosis prisoners were being held.

When the fighting started, Makarios was in the presidential palace greeting a delegation of Greek Orthodox school children from Cairo. With the building being repeatedly hit by tank and mortar fire, the archbishop and three bodyguards ducked out a rear door, crossed a garden where no tanks or armored cars had yet appeared and commandeered a passing car. As the President of Cyprus lay on the floor, the party headed for Paphos, on the southwest coast, where Makarios was born and where the population was fanatically loyal to him.

At first he intended to escape into the forests and mountains around Paphos that he had known as a young shepherd. But then, he recalled later, “I decided I could serve my people better if I went abroad to rally international support against the Greek junta.” Through India’s General Dewan Prem Chand, commander of the 2,188-man United Nations forces on Cyprus, Makarios arranged for an R.A.F. helicopter to take him out of Paphos to a British base on the island.’ Before he left, however, he made a brief broadcast over the Paphos radio station, which had rechristened itself “the Voice of Free Cyprus.” The stronger Nicosia-based Cyprus Broadcasting Corp. was chortling: “Makarios is dead! Makarios is dead!” “Zo [I live],” said the archbishop. “Support me. Rise up and fight.”

At that point, the fighting was over —temporarily, as it turned out—and the national guard controlled the island.

About 30 people had been killed and 200 wounded in the day-long battle.

Even as Makarios was airlifted to Malta and then to London on an R.A.F. Comet jet, a notoriously ruthless terrorist named Nikos Sampson was already being sworn in as President.

Sampson, 39, who has openly bragged of killing at least a dozen men, earned his living as editor-publisher of the Nicosia newspaper Makhi (Struggle), one of the largest on the island. He was one of about two dozen powerful right-wing “warlords” who maintained small private armies for attacks on Turkish enclaves. But he was politically unsophisticated and suspected of being chosen by the Greek junta to become President because he would be a willing mouthpiece for Athens.

A son of peasants, Nikos Giorgiades adopted Sampson as his surname because he thought it expressed the strength an underground fighter ought to have. A British intelligence officer who has long known him said harshly:

“Sampson is a thug and killer, pure and simple.” British authorities believe that he was responsible for 26 killings in his fight against British rule, but he was never convicted of murder.

Sadistic Reputation. One senior British official recalls that after a terrorist killing, Sampson would frequently be “the first reporter on the scene. The reason, of course, was that he himself had committed the murders. He would hide behind a narrow turning in a Nicosia side street, wait for his victim to pass, and then blow the man’s head off or shatter his back. He would toss his gun to a small boy, who would disappear into the bowels of the earth. Sampson would then run away and reappear several minutes later clutching his reporter’s notebook.” Although much of his terrorism was politically motivated, he acquired a reputation for sadistically enjoying the pain he inflicted.

Sampson, in his single public appearance as President before the Turkish invasion, met foreign newsmen in Nicosia to charge Makarios with torturing Cypriots and display some of the archbishop’s weapons and “victims.”

The new President also insisted to the Turks—who well remembered the days when his gang used to attack them with provocations—that “the Turkish community is in no danger at all.” Cypriot Turks were unconvinced by his assertion. Rauf Denktas, leader of the Turkish community on Cyprus, refused to recognize Sampson’s takeover of power and openly called on Turkey and Britain to oppose him.

The Turkish government needed little prodding. Within recent months the festering relations between Greece and Turkey had worsened as a result of a dispute over a major discovery of offshore oil in the Aegean Sea near Thasos. The oil is situated in an area where the continental shelves of the two countries overlap, causing arguments about ownership. Turkey has indicated willingness to arbitrate the controversy, but Greece adamantly refuses. At the moment, Athens is in control of the area.

As a result of such irritations, Turks reacted with delight rather than alarm at the sight of war preparations. People cheered as ships, carrying equipment obviously designed for amphibious operations, gathered in the Turkish port of Mersin. Antiaircraft guns were hauled to Qankaya, one of the tallest hills in the capital, to protect the presidential palace. Blackouts were ordered for Ankara and other cities.

Turkish Passions. The Turkish Parliament openly fretted when Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, apparently seek ing a peaceful solution, flew off to Lon don for conferences with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, as well as the U.S. State Department’s Sisco. Turks feared that Ecevit might buckle once again, as Turkey has twice done in the past decade, rather than go to war over Cyprus. Instead, Ecevit took a hard line.

He firmly demanded withdrawal of the Greek officers from the island. Unless his terms were met, he warned, Turkey would exercise its treaty rights to move into the island and restore independence. His listeners believed the Prime Minister was bluffing. It was a serious underestimation of Turkish passions over Cyprus.

In Greece, racked by dictator governments since the 1967 revolt of the colonels, the mood was somber. After mobilization was ordered, a single car filled with young men waving a giant Greek flag slowly toured Athens’ Constitution Square. But there were few other patriotic demonstrations. Banks closed as they have before each recent domestic political crisis. Traffic jams occurred as Greeks left their jobs early to stock up on foodstuffs. Stores that were sold out of coffee, sugar and other staples locked their doors. Tourist attractions, including the Acropolis sound and light show, were canceled. The airport was closed, and the Athens telephone system was jammed by panicky foreign visitors.

The Greeks were not eager to fight.

For one thing, their army—supplied by the U.S., as Turkey’s is—is smaller than Turkey’s (see table page 33). For another, the tactical advantage was with the Turks, since they had made the first moves and were much closer to Cyprus.

The situation presented a dilemma for the unpopular junta, which would suffer whether it failed to fight or fought and did poorly. Either way, prideful Greeks would feel that the junta had allowed Turkey to humiliate their country. Athens radio at week’s end went off the air amid rumors of a major shake-up in the junta leadership.

Snarled Traffic. Rumblings of the Cyprus crisis echoed all around the Mediterranean. Syria placed its forces on maximum alert, and President Hafez Assad canceled a state visit to Yugoslavia. The Egyptian government ordered its navy to stay at home.

Commercial air traffic was snarled at the peak of the summer season, since regional controllers for international flights are located on Cyprus. With them off the job because of the fighting, airports were closed down at Beirut, Teheran, Tel Aviv and other cities, stranding thousands of businessmen and tourists. Only El Al was flying. The Israeli airline threaded its jets on a careful course to avoid both Cyprus air battles and hostile Arab air space.

Also in the air was Sisco, flying in Kissinger’s blue and white jet between Athens and Ankara, searching for solutions. He had been dispatched at the beginning of the week merely as a fact finder; when the Turkish ultimatum began to run out, he turned into a mediator, attempting to persuade the Turks to be patient and putting leverage on the Greeks to be generous.

The U.S. position on Cyprus was set by Kissinger himself after conversations with President Nixon at San Clemente.

In the State Department, it was privately described as one of “constructive ambiguity” by some who had been left in the capital to implement it. While not embracing the new President, the U.S. dropped the ousted Makarios by pointedly calling him only “archbishop” rather than “President.” To critics, that appeared to be an unseemly speedy desertion of a legitimate head of state.

The loudest catcalls for constructive ambiguity came from British critics of Kissinger who had a heavy stake in Cyprus. But working-level foreign service officers were also vocal in their complaints against his policy. They thought that the Secretary had ignored early warnings that a Cyprus coup might be in the offing, and that, in order to protect negotiations with Greece on home-port facilities for the U.S. Navy, he had not been forceful enough in criticizing the Greek regime. The U.S. confined its public comment on Greece to support of Cyprus’ “independence and territorial integrity and its constitutional arrangements.” Not until after the Turkish invasion did the U.S. finally acknowledge publicly what many other nations had been saying all week—that the Greek government had directly contributed to Makarios’ downfall. At a press conference, Kissinger denied that U.S. policy had been indecisive or biased toward Greece. He said that his prime concern was to maintain a low-keyed, evenhanded position toward both sides in hopes of calming the situation.

To try to carry out that policy, Sisco reportedly proposed in Athens that Sampson be replaced by a more moderate Cypriot as President, that Makarios be allowed to return to the island in his priestly capacity and that the Greek officers commanding the Cypriot national guard be withdrawn. The most the Greek junta was willing to do was to replace the 650 officers with other officers, which was scarcely a concession.

The Under Secretary did little better in Turkey, where some oversensitive officials complained that “the Middle East got Kissinger for a whole month and we get Sisco for a week.” Discussions between Sisco and Ecevit started out poorly when Sisco, because of scheduling difficulties, dispatched U.S. Ambassador William B. Macomber to the initial session in his place. Since Macomber was lower-ranking than Sisco, Ecevit disdainfully shuffled him off to see Foreign Minister Turan Gunes.

When the two principals finally did meet two hours later, Sisco recalled that Ecevit was a “humanist” who had written poetry in his youth and asked, “How can you think of shedding blood?” Though Ecevit was still maintaining that no decision to invade had yet been made, he replied with a broad hint about Turkey’s intentions: “I am convinced that my decision will prevent more bloodshed.” He cited the 1967 Cyprus crisis, in which U.S. Mediator Cyrus Vance persuaded the sides to pull back and avoid fighting. “If your colleague had not convinced us to change our minds about military interference, Cyprus today would be an island of peace.”

Actually Ecevit’s government had already decided on an invasion. Even as Sisco sat with the Prime Minister on the midnight before the landings took place, the Turkish fleet was approaching Kyrenia and pilots were manning their planes. With Turkish passions for action running so high, Ecevit was certain that his government would fall if it backed down. Moreover he sensed that no country was eager to recognize Sampson as President of Cyprus and thus no major power would complain too much if Sampson was toppled.

Soviet Massage. Ankara was also being massaged into fighting by the Soviet Union, which was happy to see the two NATO nations involved in an imbroglio. The crisis enabled Moscow to draw closer to Turkey by offering the nation encouragement and even possible aid, and thus recover some of the leverage it recently lost in the Middle East. It also offered Moscow an opportunity to foment disarray in NATO without risking serious damage to detente.

Beyond that Moscow had a practical reason for wanting anti-Soviet Greeks out of power on Cyprus. The island is the key Middle East intelligence center for the Kremlin (as it is for the U.S.). Russia’s Nicosia embassy is larger than any of its embassies in Cairo, Teheran and Beirut. A sophisticated communications center links the Cyprus embassy with Moscow and the Soviet Mediterranean fleet as well as with two Russian spy ships that monitor radio traffic off the Israeli coast. The entire operation would almost certainly cease if Sampson remained President of Cyprus.

On the day of the invasion, Ecevit went before the Turkish Parliament, whose 635 members have usually greeted his appearances without enthusiasm. Not this time. After Ecevit made a 90-minute explanation of why he had ordered the invasion, members gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. Ecevit asked for a declaration of war against Greece if one became necessary—and the cheering legislators left no doubt that they would happily grant it.

Enosis or Taksim. Ecevit’s sudden popularity could quickly sour after the euphoria of the successful invasion dissipated in the face of problems requiring solution. Foremost among them was how to bring peace to Cyprus short of stationing a standing army there. No one believes that Greek Cypriots would accept union with Turkey or rule by a Turkish Cypriot. One solution might be to have a Greek moderate acceptable to both island communities take over the presidency, or even have Makarios return. Another, less likely possibility is the old idea of double enosis—or taksim, in Turkish—under which Greek enclaves would be annexed to Athens and Turkish zones to Ankara. One difficulty is that ownership of land on Cyprus is so intermixed between Greeks and Turks that neighbors who have seldom agreed on anything would be unlikely to agree on which country controlled individual tracts of real estate.

But such political concerns were for the future. At week’s end attention was focused on the bloody fighting on Cyprus and efforts to keep it from spreading beyond the island.

* In modern times they fought in 1896-97 over Crete, which eventually went to Greece after a brief spell of independence, and in 1920 over Izmir, a Turkish province on the Aegean.