The increase in the number of violent acts EOKA committed against the British necessitated the declaration of a state of emergency in the island. This declaration provided Greece with the pretext to renew her attempts regarding the Cyprus question at the United Nations.108 In order to avert these attempts, British called ‘a conference in London on the political and defence questions affecting the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus’ and invited the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey.109 According to O’Malley and Craig, underlying the then British Prime Minister Eden’s decision to call the conference was the idea that ‘the conference would provide a chance to change the international perception of the Cyprus problem as a purely anti-colonial struggle and put the spotlight on the antagonism between Greece and Turkey instead’ with a purpose to ‘put pressure on Athens to accept a compromise plan that suited Britain.’110
While Turkey had ‘remained quiet about Cyprus after being on the losing side in the First World War,’ Dr. Kuchuk — the communal leader of the Turkish Cypriots who was to
106 Ehrlich, op. cit. at pp. 13, 14; O’Malley and Craig, op. cit. at p.14; Stefanidis, op. cit. at p.77.
107 Ehrlich, op. cit. at p.14.
108 O’Malley and Craig, op. cit. at p.19.
109 Ibid, pp.19, 20.
110 Ibid, p.19.
be elected the first Vice-president of the Republic in 1960 — suggested the reasons for the Turkish government’s quietness in the following terms:
This has been the attitude of the Turkish government. They have never taken the Greek campaign for enosis seriously because they believed that Great Britain’s decision not to quit the island was an unassailable answer to the whole question; but they have made it emphatically clear that if Great Britain ever considers leaving Cyprus then the Turkish government has a great interest in the ownership of the island [...] Turkey cannot tolerate seeing one of her former islands, lying as it does only forty miles from her shores, handed over to a weak neighbour thousands of miles away, which is politically as well as financially on the verge of bankruptcy.111
Turkey followed a very similar line in the London conference as the Turkish Foreign Minister Fatin Zorlu vociferated Turkey’s opposition to Greece’s demand for a plebiscite in Cyprus on the issue of self-determination and insisted that if British were to relinquish sovereignty over the island, Cyprus should revert back to Turkey due to the island’s geographically strategic position.112
Realising that this argument may not be sufficiently convincing, Zorlu sent a coded telegraph to the Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes informing him that the British and the Greek authorities would not be persuaded by mere persistence of the Turkish line of argument, and that, orders from Menderes to relevant positions would be very valuable to the Turkish cause.113 Following this telegraph, on 6th and 7th September 1955, anti-Greek protests took place in Turkish cities of Istanbul and Izmir destroying many Greek properties
111 Dr. Kuchuk’s editorial in his newspaper Halkın Sesi (Voice of the People) on 17 August 1954, quoted in Hitchens C., Hostage to History: Cyprus – From the Ottomans to Kissinger, (London: Verso, 1997) pp. 41, 42. 112 O’Malley and Craig, op. cit. at p.22.
113 Kılıç E. Özel Harp Dairesi (Special Warfare Department), (İstanbul: Güncel Yayıncılık, 2007) p.87.
— 73 churches, 8 cemeteries, 26 schools, 1004 houses, 4,212 shops, 21 factories, 17 hotels, 97 restaurants and 23 warehouses — and killing 16 Greeks.114
Initially, the protests were portrayed as a reaction to the bombing of the Turkish consulate in the Greek city of Salonika — the location of the consulate was near the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal115 — and this would seem a good-enough provocation to stir up the emotions of Turkish nationalists; however, it was later to be revealed that the bomb in Salonika was planted by a young Turkish man.116 In addition to this, it was also revealed that, Menderes met the president of Kıbrıs Türktür Cemiyeti (Cyprus is Turkish Society), informing him of Zorlu’s request for ‘an uncontrollable Turkish public reaction;’ the president of the society later disseminated this information to the local branches of the society and the very next day, on 6th September, the events in Istanbul and Izmir took place.117 The British plan to shift the spotlight in the Cyprus problem had succeeded. On the pretext of the crises in Istanbul and Izmir, Zorlu left the London conference,118 the Greek bid for self-determination in Cyprus failed at the UN, 119 and a new chapter in the question of Cyprus began.
In this new chapter, Turkey played a central role in shaping Turkish Cypriots’
reaction to Greek Cypriots’ struggle for enosis. In this regard, Zorlu persuaded Menderes for the formation of a Turkish organisation in Cyprus against the activities of Greek EOKA.120 Consequently, the Special Warfare Department under the General Staff of the Turkish Army established Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı (Turkish Defence Organisation, TMT) in Cyprus; a lieutenant colonel from the Warfare Department was appointed as its leader;
114 Hakkı M. M., Kıbrıs Çıkmazı (The Cyprus Dead-End), (İstanbul: Emre Yayınları, 2006) p.27.
115 The founder and the first president of the Republic of Turkey.
116 Kılıç, op. cit. at p.88.
117 Ibid.
118 Kılıç, op. cit. at p.87.
119 O’Malley and Craig, op. cit. at pp. 22, 23.
120 Kılıç, op. cit. at pp. 118, 119.
and the department was responsible for supplying arms to the new organisation.121 However, TMT’s role was not limited to fighting against EOKA and its ambition to achieve enosis.
TMT also adopted Taksim (partition) as its official principle and, according to Kızılyürek, with a fanatical and chauvinist approach, the organisation ‘convinced’ any Turkish Cypriot who would not support Taksim.122 TMT adopted the ‘partition’ thesis when it was first put forward by the then UK Secretary of State for the Colonies Lennox-Boyd. In this regard, Hitchens reported that,
[i]n 1956 Alan Lennox-Boyd told the House of Commons that a Greek Cypriot demand for union with Greece would be met by a British-sponsored plebiscite for Turks only. If the Turkish Cypriots voted to join Turkey, the island would be partitioned.123
Taking steps towards achieving partition, TMT incited violence to divide mixed communities of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.124 Among the people who suffered most from the terror of TMT were the Turkish members of PEO (Pancyprian Federation of Labour).
A federation for trade unions in Cyprus, PEO had Turkish Cypriot (as well as Greek Cypriot) members and a Turkish branch with its Turkish president. TMT targeted these members facilitating their switch from PEO to Kıbrıs Türk İşçi Birlikleri Kurumu (Cyprus Turkish Labour Union Association, KTIBK) and threatened anyone who refused to switch membership with violence.125 Consequently, an attempt was made to assassinate the president of the Turkish branch of PEO, Mr. Ahmet Sadi Erkurt, who survived the attempt despite suffering serious injuries.126 To bolster the separation of the communities, the
121 Ibid, p.119.
122 Kızılyürek N., Paşalar, Papazlar: Kıbrıs ve Hegemonya (Generals, Popes: Cyprus and Hegemony), (Lefkoşa: Khora, 2011) p.47.
123 Hitchens, op. cit. at p.46.
124 Bryant R., Imagining The Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004) p.173.
125 Kızılyürek (2002) op. cit. at pp. 261-264.
126 Ibid, p.264; An A., ‘45 Yıl Önceki 1 Mayıs Kutlamarı ve Sonrası’ (45 Years Ago: May Day Celebration and its Consequences), Yeni Çağ Gazetesi (New Age Newspaper), 7 June 2003, access:
leadership of Kıbrıs Türk Kurumları Federasyonu (The Federation of Cyprus Turkish Institutions, KTKF) worked in tandem with TMT and implemented separatist policies such as giving Turkish names to villages, urging Turkish citizens to speak Turkish avoiding communication in English or Greek, and finally, and most importantly, forcing Turkish persons to do business only with other Turkish persons.127
In addition to Greek Cypriots’ campaign for enosis, Turkish Cypriots’ counter-campaign for taksim formed the contours of the anti-colonial struggles against the British.
However, the British had a different idea regarding the probable solution to the Cyprus problem. This idea was to engage Turkey’s interest against Greece’s attempts to internationalise the problem. To the extent that this idea was successfully implemented, the problem remained regional and the solution merely dependent upon satisfying the concerns of mainland Greece and Turkey. Such a solution would, in turn, not only ignore the demands of Cypriot communities but also safeguard the British interests on the island.