Greeks and Turks

The island of Cyprus has long been the object of desire - over the years and centuries, the English, the Greeks, the Ottoman Turks, and other powers have controlled, or attempted to control, the island. Its location places it perpetually in the midst of conflicting geopolitical ambitions. In 1960, it became independent, but its Turkish and Greek ethic residents did not blend harmoniously into one nation, and each group wanted to join the island diplomatically to its homeland. Conflicts between the two groups on the island tempted Turkey to send its army in 1964, but LBJ warned Turkey away from such action. Historian Barry Werth explains what happened in 1974:

In July, a Greek military junta had engineered a coup on the Mediterranean island, where ancient ethnic rivalries between Greeks and Turks had neared the breaking point for more than a decade. The junta installed as a president a former guerilla leader who called for enosis - unification with Greece. Kissinger, distracted by Watergate and with no good options, initially cabled both capitals that the United States rejected enosis, and he warned away the Soviets. Beyond that, the U.S. position, oddly aloof given the dangers to the Western alliance and international stability, supported the junta - until it was ousted eight days after the coup.

Providentially, the Watergate scandal was now moving into the past, and American was benefitting from the capable leadership of President Gerald Ford. Ford, in turn, correctly assessed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as possessing the both the international understanding and the diplomatic skills needed to navigate the complex situation in Cyprus. On Wednesday, August 14,

during the early morning hours, Ford came face-to-face with his first foreign crisis. Kissinger woke him by telephone to say that Turkish forces had launched heavy air and ground attacks and appeared to be on their way toward seizing most of northern Cyprus. The Geneva peace talks had collapsed. Thousands of Greek Cypriot refugees were pouring southward after Turkish planes bombed Nicosia, the capital.

The Turks had already briefly invaded Cyprus in July of 1974; now, approximately a month later, they were doing it again. Within a few days, the Turkish forces took over a little less than half of the island. A ceasefire left the island split between Greeks and Turks. The other split nations in the world at that time (Korea, Germany, Vietnam) were directly the result of the Cold War. The dividing of Cyprus was primarily the result of longstanding tensions between Greeks and Turks, but indirect Cold War implications were present as well, demanding that Ford and Kissinger devise a thoughtful American response. To minimize loss of life, and avert a potentially larger conflict involving other nations in the region, Cyprus was left as a partially-divided territory with an ambiguous status: the Turkish region was not recognized as a legitimate government. It remains in essentially the same condition forty years later.