Ozcan AkinciWhen the Cyprus question is discussed in Western political discourse, the story almost invariably begins in July 1974. Türkiye’s military intervention is presented as the opening chapter, detached from the events that preceded it.
This selective chronology has shaped international perceptions for decades, but it also obscures the political and humanitarian realities that made the intervention a necessity.
History did not begin in Cyprus in 1974. It began to unravel in 1963.
Following the end of British colonial rule, the Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 as a bi-communal partnership founded on the political equality of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and safeguarded by international treaties.
It was not conceived as a majoritarian state but as a constitutional order in which neither community could dominate the other.
Yet for influential segments of the Greek Cypriot leadership committed to ‘Enosis’, an irredentist campaign to unite Cyprus with Greece, this framework was never regarded as a permanent settlement but as an obstacle to the creation of a unitary Greek state.
Within a few years of independence, efforts to revise the constitutional balance began eroding the foundations of the partnership.
By the time EOKA terror erupted in 1963, the crisis was no longer merely political, it had become a challenge to the very constitutional order on which the Republic of Cyprus had been founded.
Any serious discussion of the Cyprus conflict, therefore, must first answer a more fundamental question: why did the constitutional Republic of Cyprus collapse only three years after its independence? Why were more than one hundred Turkish Cypriot villages attacked?
Why were thousands of Turkish Cypriots forced into isolated enclaves that covered only a small fraction of the island? Why did intercommunal violence continue for more than a decade before Türkiye intervened?
‘Unity’ that fractured a nation
The answer cannot be understood without examining the ideology that dominated both Greek Cypriot extremists and the junta in Athens: Enosis.
The Akritas Plan, drafted by leading Greek Cypriot figures, envisioned dismantling the constitutional partnership established in 1960, neutralising Turkish Cypriot resistance and paving the way for Enosis.
Soon afterwards, the Bloody Christmas in December 1963 marked the beginning of systematic violence. Turkish Cypriot neighbourhoods and villages came under attack.
According to various reports, hundreds of Turkish Cypriots were killed in the initial clashes and the following years, with estimates of the total number of Turkish Cypriot deaths between 1963 and 1974 ranging from several hundred to over a thousand.
Approximately 103 villages were affected by violence and forced displacement over the following years. Tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots were ultimately confined to enclaves covering only around three percent of the island.
This period is often reduced to a footnote in international discussions. Yet removing the years between 1963 and 1974 from the historical record also removes the context necessary to understand why the crisis reached its climax in July 1974.
Beginning the story in 1974 inevitably transforms cause into consequence.
The ideology of Enosis did not simply threaten Turkish Cypriots. It steadily undermined Cyprus’s constitutional order and radicalised politics on both sides of the Aegean. Even many Greek Cypriots who opposed extremism became victims of the growing radicalism surrounding the Enosis project.
By the early 1970s, Greece was no longer the democratic state often portrayed in contemporary political narratives. Following the Colonels’ Coup of April 1967, the country had become one of Europe’s most repressive military dictatorships.
Political parties were dissolved, constitutional rights suspended, thousands of citizens imprisoned or exiled, torture became widespread and strict censorship silenced the press. Universities, long regarded as centres of political debate, were brought under tight state control.
The suppression of the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 exposed the brutality of the regime to the world. The army’s violent response to student demonstrations became a defining symbol of military rule and further eroded the junta’s domestic legitimacy.
Washington was increasingly uneasy. Although Cold War calculations initially encouraged cooperation with the military government, the US Congress expressed strong and growing criticism over systematic human rights abuses, political repression and the regime’s growing instability became increasingly visible in the US Congress, the American press and official policy discussions.
Declassified diplomatic records reveal a relationship characterised by mounting frustration over the junta’s behaviour and its inability to stabilise the region, rather than unconditional confidence.
On July 15, 1974, the Greek military regime, backed by EOKA-B terror group, orchestrated a coup against President Archbishop Makarios III and installed Nikos Sampson, a figure closely associated with the Enosis movement. The objective was unmistakable: to remove the internationally recognised government and complete Cyprus’s union with Greece.
Makarios himself left little doubt about where responsibility lay. Addressing the United Nations Security Council on July 19, 1974, he declared, “The Greek military regime has extended its dictatorship to Cyprus”. He described the events not as an internal matter but as an external invasion that violated Cyprus’s independence and sovereignty.
For Türkiye, the situation carried legal as well as political implications.
As one of the guarantor powers under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Ankara argued that the collapse of constitutional government and the threat posed to the Turkish Cypriot community required action after diplomatic efforts failed to restore the status quo.
Türkiye’s Cyprus Peace Operation of 1974, therefore, cannot be understood in isolation from the decade that preceded it.
Even one of the principal figures behind the 1974 coup later acknowledged the truth. In 1981, Nikos Sampson stated: “Had Türkiye not intervened, I would not only have proclaimed Enosis, I would have annihilated the Turks of Cyprus.” The plotters had badly miscalculated.
What the peace operation achieved
The consequences of the intervention extended far beyond Cyprus. Within days, the military regime in Athens collapsed under the weight of the crisis it had created.
The coup against Makarios had failed, the prospect of Enosis had evaporated, and the junta’s inability to manage the confrontation with Türkiye destroyed what little legitimacy it still possessed.
Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis, the regime’s powerful strongman, rapidly lost control, and on July 24, 1974, only four days after Türkiye’s military intervention began, Constantine Karamanlis returned from exile to lead a civilian government.
Greece’s democratic transition, known as the Metapolitefsi, had begun.
The irony is striking. Greece, long proclaimed in the West as the cradle of democracy, had been ruled for seven years by one of Europe’s most repressive military dictatorships. Every year, Greece rightly celebrates the restoration of democracy on July 24.
Yet the chain of events that made that restoration possible is rarely acknowledged in international discussions.
The very junta that suppressed democracy in the “birthplace of democracy” was brought down in the aftermath of the Cyprus crisis it had provoked.
The same military intervention remembered in Greece almost exclusively as a national trauma also accelerated the downfall of the junta that Greeks themselves celebrate for having ended.
What makes this even more remarkable is that the very coup designed to complete Enosis ultimately destroyed the dictatorship that conceived it.
The post-1974 security environment on the island also deserves a more balanced assessment than it often receives. Political negotiations have repeatedly stalled, and Cyprus remains divided.
Yet another equally important fact is frequently overlooked.
Since 1974, the island of Cyprus has not experienced a return to the large-scale intercommunal violence and bloodshed that characterised the period between 1963 and 1974.
This raises an important question for those who demand the unconditional withdrawal of Turkish forces while rarely addressing the conditions that led to their deployment in the first place.
Any serious proposal for the island’s future must explain not only how political reconciliation can be achieved but also how the security vacuum that enabled the violence of the 1960s would be prevented from re-emerging.
Today, more than half a century later, echoes of the past can still be heard in regional politics.
Successive Greek governments have continued to weaponise the “Turkish threat” narrative while expanding defence cooperation, lobbying intensively in Washington and European capitals, and acquiring large quantities of weapons from aggressive regional actors, most notably Israel.
This “Turkish threat” narrative echoes the dangerous rhetoric of the pre-1974 era.
The geopolitical context has changed, but some rhetorical patterns remain familiar.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has transformed European security priorities. Instability across the Middle East continues to threaten regional order. Energy security, migration, maritime competition and the security of critical supply routes have become central concerns.
Within this environment, Türkiye holds a uniquely important strategic position. Its geography connects Europe, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East.
It possesses NATO’s second-largest military, controls access to the Black Sea through the Turkish Straits, plays an increasingly significant role in regional energy corridors, and has emerged as an indispensable actor in crises stretching from Ukraine to Syria.
This strategic reality increasingly shapes Washington’s calculations. Sustainable security in NATO’s southern flank cannot be built by marginalising Türkiye. Rather, it depends upon recognising Türkiye as one of the alliance’s indispensable pillars.
The ‘Cyprus crisis’ was not the story of a Turkish military intervention.
It was the culmination of a decade-long collapse of constitutional order, intercommunal violence and extremist nationalism on the island, and military dictatorship in Greece.
Remembering only July 1974 while forgetting December 1963 does not produce historical balance. It produces historical distortion.
If the international community seeks a more honest conversation about Cyprus, it must first be willing to restore the missing decade to the historical record.
Only then can the island’s past, and its future, be understood in their full complexity.
