CYPRUS AND NATO

The island of Cyprus, which remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for more than 300 years, increased its strategic importance in the Eastern Mediterranean with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In 1878, British statesman Benjamin Disraeli described the island to Queen Victoria as "the key to West Asia." Indeed, the British first took control of the island of Cyprus in 1878, and then annexed it to the British Empire in 1914. The island was governed as a colony of the British Empire until 1960.

The Geek Cypriots, who were the majority community living on the island initiated on 1 April 1955, anti-British terrorist acts that aimed at the unification (enosis) of the island with Greece  through the exercise of the right to self-determination.

In March 1957, British Prime Minister Macmillan and US President Eisenhower, both leading members of NATO, met on Bermuda Island and discussed the Cyprus issue, reaching the following decision: “The British military bases on the island are sufficient. Let the remaining territory be divided among the island's inhabitants.” That is the basis of the current political situation.

Lennox-Boyd, the then British Colonial Secretary, a master of the divide-and-rule policy, incited the Turkish Cypriots, who constituted the minority community, to demand the partition of the island through bilateral self-determination by the end of 1957. The creation of the Turkish Cypriot underground organization TMT to counter the Greek Cypriot underground organization EOKA, and the transformation of the anti-colonial struggle into intercommunal conflict, took place in 1958, thanks to the British imperialists and their local collaborators. Documents revealed years later that both underground organizations were linked to the "Gladio" organizations in Greece and Turkey, both NATO members.

When the “enosis” (union with Greece) policy of the Greek Cypriots and the “taksim” (partition) policy of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots failed to gain support in the United Nations, the idea of ​​granting independence to the island of Cyprus was put forward by NATO Secretary-General Henry Spaak in June 1957.

In November 1958, the leader of the Greek Cypriots, Archbishop Makarios, accepted this idea, and as a result of the agreements signed in Zurich and London in February 1959, the "independent" Republic of Cyprus was declared on August 16, 1960. Thus, the intercommunal conflict of objectives was temporarily "resolved" with this formula, the danger of a Turkish-Greek war was averted, and NATO's strategic interests in the region were secured.

During the signing of the Zurich and London agreements in 1959, the Foreign Ministers of Turkey and Greece signed a 'gentleman's agreement' providing for the banning of the Communist Party in Cyprus. According to the first two articles of this agreement, 1- Turkey and Greece would support the entry of the Republic of Cyprus into NATO, 2- The two governments agreed to take action with the President and Vice-President of the Republic of Cyprus to ban the Communist Party and its activities.

According to the Cyprus Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance signed in 1960, the United Kingdom, one of the leading NATO countries, obtained two sovereign military bases on the territory of the 'independent' Republic of Cyprus, along with a number of privileges. Greece and Turkey, other NATO member countries, gained the right to maintain a regiment of 950 and 650 troops respectively in Cyprus.

The policy pursued by the Turkish Cypriot leadership in line with British interests had secured a 30% share in the administration and up to 40% in the army for Turkish Cypriots, who constituted 18% of the island's population. However, when the new Cypriot state did not ban the Cyprus Communist Party (AKEL) and adopted a non-aligned foreign policy, imperialism and its local collaborators, seeking to protect British-American interests in the region, initiated intercommunal conflicts in December 1963 and implemented a plan to send NATO troops to the island. As will be recalled, at the insistence of Cypriot President Makarios, instead of NATO troops, a UN peacekeeping force was sent to the island in March 1964.

The enosis and taksim theses, which would have led to the NATOization of Cyprus, were never supported by either the Socialist Bloc or the Non-Aligned Movement. This was because it was a fact that in both scenarios, Cyprus would fall into NATO's hands, either wholly or partially. However, the increasingly developing working-class movement in Cyprus after the independence of Cyprus, and the neutral foreign policy of the governments under Makarios, disturbed imperialism. The warmongers of NATO, linked to American imperialism, wanted to use Cyprus as an attack base against the liberation movements in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cypriot President Makarios, on the other hand, pursued a policy of balance domestically, while maintaining an anti-imperialist foreign policy and was firmly opposed to the establishment of NATO bases on the island.

Martin Packard was a British intelligence commentator who, while serving as a NATO staff member in Malta, was assigned in 1963 as a Greek interpreter to the United Forces in Cyprus. In his memoirs, published in 2008 under the title "Getting it wrong: Fragments from a 1964 Cyprus Diary," he makes numerous references to the work of NATO secret services in Cyprus. The role of British and American imperialism is clearly visible in the reports the author wrote about his daily activities and contacts. When US Secretary of State George Ball visited the island in 1964, Martin Packard accompanied him on this official visit. Packard wrote "When we returned to Nicosia, Mr. Ball expressed his appreciation for the work that had been accomplished and then said sympathetically: 'But you have misunderstood everything, my boy. Has no one yet told you that our goal is partition?'"

After the intercommunal clashes of December 1963, Cyprus, described as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier of imperialism" or the "Cuba of the Eastern Mediterranean," became the subject of various negotiations due to its proximity to the region's oil fields and its strategic importance. The Acheson Plan, which envisioned giving a large part of the island to Greece, separating a small area for Turkish Cypriots to be gathered and given to Turkey as a military base, and neutralizing President Makarios and eliminating Greek Cypriot communists, was prepared for this purpose, although it could not be implemented at the time.

Although significant progress was made by both sides in the intercommunal peace talks that began in 1968, by the summer of 1974, the agreements had not yet been signed. At the NATO Council meeting held in Lisbon on 3-4 June 1971, the US-backed military regimes in Athens and Ankara decided to coordinate their actions for a NATO-backed solution.

Indeed, the anti-Makarios fascist coup of July 1974 and the subsequent Turkish military intervention on the island were carried out within this framework. The operations to divide Cyprus into Turkish and Greek zones using military force and violating the principles of international law ultimately aimed to turn Cyprus into a NATO protectorate.

Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig, in their book "The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion," wrote: "In his memoirs, which span 1150 pages and are titled "Years of Renewal," Kissinger devotes 47 pages to the Cyprus crisis of 1974, yet he makes no mention of the US plans prepared in February 1964, which allowed for a limited occupation of the island by the Turks, or the proposals by George Ball and Dean Acheson to force Greece and Turkey to partition the island. One of these proposals envisioned the Greeks declaring enosis (union with Greece) and a part of Cyprus being given to the Turks as a military base as part of a pre-agreed bargain."

Greece, one of the three NATO countries that guarantee the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus, interfered in the island's internal affairs by orchestrating a fascist coup against the legitimate government of Cyprus.

Turkey, the second guarantor country, occupied Cyprus, dividing it in two and creating a dependent statelet in the north, altering the demographic structure by transferring population from Turkey to the island.

The third guarantor country, and former colonial power, Great Britain, which has maintained two sovereign military bases on the island since 1960, remained a passive observer, only concerned with securing its military bases.

The US appears pleased with the separation of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. Kissinger's words on 13 August 1974, after Turkey's first military operation on the island, are very meaningful: "There is no reason from an American point of view why the Turks should not possess one-third of Cyprus." It is also recorded that a day later, his advisor Helmut Sonnenfeld conveyed the following message to him: "Assuming that the Turks will quickly seize Famagusta, give the Turks special assurances that we will find a solution encompassing one-third of the island within a kind of federal arrangement."

Thus, as a result of the second military operation that began on 14 August 1974, the project of partitioning the island, which imperialism had put forward in 1956, was realized years later on 16 August 1974, the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Cyprus. Greece withdrew from the military wing of NATO as a protest from this date until 1980, while the US imposed an arms embargo on Turkey from the end of 1974 to September 1978.

Since the summer of 1974, 37% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus has been under Turkish military occupation, and various resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and Security Council on the matter remain unimplemented.

In the 52 years since the partition of the Republic of Cyprus, the policy of the occupying power, Turkey, has never deviated from the deceptive statement made by then-Prime Minister İsmet İnönü in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in September 1964: “We began negotiations not with partition, but with federation, in order to remain within the framework of the agreements.” Therefore, the efforts to establish a new federal constitution for the joint administration on the island, which was founded in 1960 and lasted only three years, were stalled in Crans Montana in 2017 by Turkey, which favoured partition, after going through various stages. Turkey has chosen not to announce when it will withdraw its military units, said to number 40,000.

On the other hand, the Greek Cypriot side has begun efforts to provide the necessary naval and air base facilities for a new military alliance to be established in the Eastern Mediterranean to Israel and other NATO countries, and has announced that it will apply for NATO membership after a possible solution. In this case, there are also proposals that the Turkish soldiers in the north could remain under the NATO umbrella. In short, the island of Cyprus continues to play the role of NATO's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Cyprus is the only country where a portion of its territory was used as a sovereign British base after the Second World War. For years, those who have prevented the achievement of intercommunal peace and agreement are British and American imperialists, their aggressive NATO organization, and their local collaborators. They know very well that once intercommunal peace and unity are achieved, the next step will be the demilitarization of the island.

4th July 2026