Who’s still paying attention, 50 years later?
I am starting this piece by answering a question I often get from my followers on social media. They ask me whether it had crossed my mind that dark July of 1974 and later in August of that same year – when the betrayal of the Athens junta was complete, and under a democratic Greek government – that 50 years would go by and the situation in Cyprus would still be the same. The answer could be a simple “no.” But 50 years of occupation cannot be dismissed with a single word, a simple denial.
In November 1976, I hastened to be the first to ring the bell of Agia Foteini Church in Anafotia, outside of Larnaca, after Cyprus’ RIK radio station announced Jimmy Carter’s victory. It was my greatest disappointment during these 50 years: we had believed in the new American president, but great hope was followed by great sadness, which persists in our hearts to this day.
I left for America the following year and in 1978 started seeing Cyprus’s tragedy unfold in the halls of the United Nations and later in the US Congress. As we once more believed that we would be vindicated by the US legislature and see our country liberated.
The journey from that day when the Turks snatched our land has been full of emotional punches and incredible sadness – I had just turned 16 the month before the betrayal and the Turkish invasion. Many of us were doubly betrayed. The junta and its minions in Cyprus peddled patriotism and promoted the dream of Union (“Enosis”) with Greece, knowing how strong sentiment was for the motherland. From 1955 to 1959, the young men of Cyprus fell on the battlefield shouting “Freedom and Union” before drawing their last breath.
Being labeled as traitors when they genuinely believed they were carrying on the struggle for union was torture for many. The ersatz guerrilla rebellion of EOKA B was not about ideals, but about paving the way for betrayal. Fifty years later, and after having spent half my life digging through American archives, I firmly believe that Georgios Grivas’ descent to Cyprus was the first part of the plan. I also believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that Major Giorgos Karousos, who was cheated by EOKA’s Grivas into believing that resistance against the dictatorship would begin in Cyprus, was the first to realize that Cyprus was being sold down the river in the name of the so-called “anti-communist struggle,” and this is why junta strongman Dimitrios Ioannidis ordered his assassination.
It should go without saying, but I will for the record, that Archbishop Makarios must have been one of the most conscientious anti-communists in the Hellenic world at the time. So, claims about his being a satellite of the USSR were not only ludicrous; they were downright spurious. While plowing through confidential documents at the US National State Archives in Maryland, I often thought of the betrayal of Cyprus as a game of chess, with one mastermind, Henry Kissinger, and a bunch of pawns following his orders.
Following the publication of Alexis Papachelas’ excellent book “A Dark Room, 1967-1974” (Metaichmio publications), is there a single person who still believes anything but the raw truth? I admit that I was scared to click on the audio file the executive editor of Kathimerini included in his book.
It was a torturous moment for me, a confirmation of everything I believed deep down in my heart, ever since that morning when my father came and woke us up at 6 a.m. on July 20 to tell us that the “Turks have hit Kyrenia.”
“Are you sure, Andreas?” my mother asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “The English said so.”
The English … Those eternal enemies of Cyprus, who won’t rest until not a single Greek soul is left on the island.
A week earlier, on July 14, 1974, we had taken an excursion on the village bus to the beautiful town of Praxandros, Kyrenia … It was the last time.
Teeming archives
Cyprus is the victim of a betrayal by the Athens junta, in cahoots with Kissinger’s America and Bulent Ecevit’s Turkey – any other claim is a lie. The archives of the then secretary of state teem with evidence. Efforts to place the blame elsewhere are futile. It is also so very simple, really. Kissinger believed that Makarios was turning into a blend of Castro and Gaddafi and was not about to lose Cyprus after losing Malta. He believed that whoever controlled the line from Gibraltar to Cyprus, via Malta and Crete, controlled the world. Just take a look at a map.
The journey from that day when the Turks snatched our land has been full of emotional punches and incredible sadness
Anything we say about the past is just lost words. Few care about what happened 50 years ago and those of us that do want subsequent generations to know the truth. So, the question is: Where do we go from here? What kind of a solution do we want?
The answer for so-called “citizens of the world,” the neoliberals in Athens is simple, because Cyprus for them is far away. They just don’t care. But how easy is it for those of us who were born on the island to answer that question? It is not easy.
I would like to publicly pose a question which I have put to Greek politicians: Would you accept a solution that foresees a Turk as the president of “New Cyprus” every three years, who would sit beside the Greek prime minister at the European Union and the United Nations? And whose policies would that “president” express? That of “New Cyprus” or that of Turkey? Without naming names, every single one of them responded in the negative, giving the answer to what kind of solution we want, even unknowingly perhaps.
The only way to go back to the pre-1974 situation is war, and a war that could be lost again. It is, therefore, out of the question for the very simple and basic reason that no one wants such a thing to happen. The solutions that have been put on the table every so often pointed to power sharing; no politician in Greece would agree to that. Isn’t anyone else surprised that four Cypriot presidents, all fanatically in favor of a solution – Glafcos Clerides, George Vassiliou, Nikos Anastasiadis and Dimitris Christofias – all failed spectacularly?
Here’s another thing I believe: these leaders, who expressed support for the Annan Plan, would never have told the people to vote in favor of it if they had been president during the April 2004 referendum. It’s one thing to be responsible for putting a signature to something and another to throw stones from a safe distance.
No way forward
Cyprus, and Greece along with it, have, unfortunately run out of options. I have seen serious people attracted to the notion of a two-state solution. It’s anathema, I know. No one wants to believe that we’re going to accept this solution 70 years after it was first put on the table. But what do its supporters say, publicly? That way at least we’ll have a large chunk of Cyprus that’s purely Greek.
We have to call a spade a spade, though. Neither the avid champions of “any” solution have the gall to publicly reveal what they believe, nor do the others who secretly support what simple folk cry out for in despair: for each to have their place, for the Turkish Cypriots to stay in the “north” and the Greek Cypriots in the “south.”
There may be no miracles in this day and age, but there are alliances. If we look back on the past 50 years too hard, we’ll just get depressed. We insisted on a Cyprus with no alignment status, we opposed ties to Israel and let Turkey have them for 40 years, we gave our soul to every foreign nation, protesting in favor of El Salvador and Nicaragua. And we never asked ourselves: What are we getting in return? When was the last time Greeks marched in Syntagma Square for Cyprus, for the Aegean, for the Greeks of Albania? But when it comes to everyone else’s problems, we’re happy to rush to rally.
Do we deserve it?
The conclusion is that we are governed by our (various) demons and are at a dead-end. Two well-known politicians on the island claimed that Solomos Solomou [a young Greek-Cypriot man killed by a Turkish military officer in 1996 while trying to take down the Turkish-Cypriot flag from the UN buffer zone] was crazy because it did not suit their narrative, when all he had done was lash out against the oppressor.
In closing this note, I cannot but mention the corrupt political system that has governed Cyprus. During these 50 years of occupation, corruption has been rife, everywhere, quite literally. A rough calculation with some economist friends in the United States found that corruption accounts for around $2 billion a year. How many fighter jets, battleships and tanks could Cyprus have bought with that 100 billion (euros or dollars?)? Has anyone done the math? I sometimes believe we deserve our tribulations.
I have said what I have to say about the Greek political system. Most Greek politicians believe that Cyprus is just a headache that Greece needs to get over. Will they still think the same if it means that Turkey will turn its focus exclusively on the Aegean and Evros?
Michail Ignatiou is a White House and State Department correspondent for Hellas Journal.
