Cyprus insurgency (1954-9). The third largest island in the Mediterranean, lying south of Turkey and west of Syria, Cyprus has a majority population that is Greek-speaking and Greek Orthodox Christian, plus a significant minority (15-20 per cent) of Turkish-speaking Muslims. Cyprus was acquired from the Ottoman empire by Britain in 1878, and recognized as a British colony by the new Turkey in 1923.
The British, after their withdrawal from Egypt in 1954, wished to retain Cyprus as a strategic base in the Levant. The majority Greek Cypriots, under their political and spiritual leader Archbishop Makarios III, elected in 1950, saw weakening British power as the chance for a long-treasured dream of political union with Greece, known by the Greek name of Enosis. A Greek Cypriot insurgency movement formed, known as EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, ‘National Organization of Cypriot Fighters’). Successive Greek governments found the Cypriot demands for Enosis impossible not to support, while it was strongly opposed by the Turkish Cypriots and by Turkey itself.
On 10 November 1954 Col George Grivas, a Cypriot-born Greek army officer known during the insurgency by the cover-name ‘Dighenis’, arrived to take command of EOKA. By April 1955 Greek Cypriot riots and demonstrations had developed into a serious insurgency. In September Sir Robert Armitage was replaced as governor of Cyprus with FM Sir John Harding. The policy of negotiating with Makarios for a political settlement while trying to split him from Grivas and EOKA continued until March 1956, when the British exiled Makarios to the Seychelles. Fighting and ambushes directed at the British alternated with atrocities by Greek Cypriots against Turkish Cypriots and vice versa. British troops unsuccessfully hunted Grivas and his men through the mountain ranges of central Cyprus, while assassinations and riots continued in the cities.
The limited value of Cyprus as a base in the 1956 Suez campaign convinced Britain to reach a settlement based on eventual self-government for Cyprus. But any settlement was hampered internationally by the mutually incompatible positions of Greece and Turkey. In December 1957, Harding was replaced as governor by the more conciliatory Sir Hugh Foot. After further fighting and murders, a preliminary agreement was reached between the parties in Zurich and London in February 1959. Makarios, although doubtful about any political settlement, returned to Cyprus on 1 March, and a ceasefire came into force two weeks later. In return for British retention of sovereign base areas, Cyprus became independent on 16 August 1960 with Makarios as president and a power-sharing system of government between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Britain, Greece, and Turkey became the guarantor powers of the settlement. Peace was short-lived, with fighting breaking out again by 1963, but the power-sharing arrangement lasted until the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
Bibliography
- Crawshaw, Nancy, The Cyprus Revolt (London, 1978).
- Holland, Robert, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954-1959 (Oxford, 1998)
— Stephen Badsey
