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The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion
In 1974 the Greek colonels ousted the Greek-Cypriot leader of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, and Turkey retaliated by invading and seizing a third of the island. Cyprus remains split in two, like Berlin before the wall came down, bristling with troops and spying bases, and permanently policed by the United Nations. Henry Kissinger claimed he could do nothing to stop the coup because of the Watergate crisis, but this book presents evidence to support the view that it was no failure of American foreign policy, but the realization of a long-term plot. The authors describe the strategic reasons for Washington's need to divide the island. Their account encompasses an international cast of characters that includes Eden, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kissinger, Wilson, Callaghan, Grivas, and the leaders of the two halves of the divided island, Clerides and Denktas.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 2000
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November 11, 2016
This is an extremely good book.
With that said, let's get its main weakness out of the way first: It's not a history book.
You don't get told how come Greeks and Turks ended up living together on Cyprus. You don't get told about the Byzantine Empire and its thousand year history of moving populations, the Ottoman conquerors who followed and continue that practice (indeed they are post-1989 repopulating Cyprus with Muslims who flee Bulgaria), or the Millet system that split up brothers down religious lines (as in Sarajevo or Salonica).
No attempt is made to understand the context under which the Greeks rose in the nineteenth century or to clarify modern Greece's original "client state" status as a French/British/Russian thorn in the side of the Ottoman Empire or the "gunboat diplomacy" that had Greek politics arbitrated by the Foreign Office for the first seventy years of the Greek state's existence. Scant mention is made of the fact that the UK was for centuries the biggest lender to the Porte in Constantinople, switching to Athens after 1896 (and until 1974). There's no mention of the Balkan Wars that started in 1912 and hopefully ended in 1993, providing a much bloodier, but similarly rooted, parallel to the Cypriot saga. The 1922 Asia Minor disaster for the Greeks which marked the end of a hundred-year-long re-conquest of occupied land is not mentioned once. You don't get told the story of what happened in Crete or Rhodes, both of which joined the Greek state, albeit with radically different outcomes for their Muslim populations.
Rather, what we have here is a thorough piece of investigative journalism.
The angle is very much the British angle. Indeed the anti-colonial, liberal British angle.
So this is the history of Cyprus from 1952 to 1974 viewed through the eyes of the liberal British press.
In short, you get ten pages apiece for every year between 1952 and 1974. The authors first go through every meeting that took place between people relevant to Cyprus's struggle to obtain statehood (both Greek and British) and probably list every bomb the Greek guerillas of EOKA detonated to rattle the British, though they stop well short of going through the travails of the Greek resistance fighters and their families at the hands of British commander Harding and his men. You also get good sketches of the Greek and British protagonists of this fight (Makarios, Grivas, Eden and Macmillan) as well as all the intrigue and politics between them, including a long chapter on the Macmillan "coup." The strategic importance of Cyprus is stressed as part of the events in 1948 and most importantly the 1956 Suez crisis and the humiliation of the British at the hands of Nasser and Eisenhower.
The extremely significant point is made that Turkey (which had been on the losing side of WWI and not on the winning side in WWII and thus had had no voice -in stark contrast to Cyprus whose men had been drafted to fight alongside the British) had no horse in the race whatsoever until in 1955 Anthony Eden invited the Turks to participate in the talks about the future of the island as a way to force Greece to back off. It's tough to know if this is right, but it's mentioned as a fact. It's quite significant that the pogrom of the Greeks of Istanbul came right on cue, however. And the authors don't miss the opportunity to mention that this had been standard operating procedure for the British as they lost their empire. Whenever possible, anti-colonial struggle was countered with a claim that Britain was there to arbitrate between two warring factions. They add, moreover, that the British formed an auxiliary police made up entirely of Turkish-Cypriots, precisely to foment Greek-Turkish strife.
The story of the revolution and its success is told, which brings us to 1960 and the circumstances under which Britain, Greece, Turkey and the US jointly drafted in absentia of the locals a constitution for the new Cypriot state that worked for every single one of them but not at all for the Cypriots and contained the seeds of its own destruction, which followed three years later. In short, the document was written to assuage the Americans' fears of AKEL (the very strong Communist party in Cyprus) and the Soviets, to guarantee vast tracts of land for British bases, to make Greece and Turkey both feel like the other would keep out and to make sure everybody locally had a veto, which the Turkish minority got in the habit of exercising on every decision. But what suited Eisenhower, Macmillan, Karamanlis and their Turkish counterparts (who never made it to the signing due to a coup and were hanged for conceding too much) was unworkable for the Cypriots.
1n 1963 Makarios decided to break the political stalemate by effectively annulling the constitution. The bloodshed that followed mainly cost Turkish-Cypriot lives, as it had been the Greeks of EOKA who had the expertise of fighting (against the British) and the weapons to conduct warfare. The authors are quite clear that the Greeks were explicitly provoked, probably with intent, but they were undeniably very keen to respond to the provocations.
The timing was disastrous, however, for the Greeks. The way the authors present it, not only was Britain losing its status as a world power, but the US was by then locked in a mortal fight with the Soviet Union. One year after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was not the time to take matters in your own hands, especially if your island was serving as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for NATO in its eastern flank, to say nothing of the folly of provoking a NATO ally with a border with the Soviet Union and extensive US nuclear missile installations.
And thus started a dance that could only really end the way things did end. The author details a number of plans to split Cyprus up, to create cantons etc.
Next it feels like the book becomes an account of every single meeting that took place between people relevant to preventing a Turkish invasion (Greek, Turkish, American and British, in all permutations and combinations). If two relevant actors met to discuss Cyprus, the authors document the meeting and have a shot at telling you what was discussed, what the relevant actors meant to obtain from the meeting, what the result of the meeting was and how it was relevant to what happened next. Finally, you get a day-by-day account of the movements of the Turkish invading force in July and August of 1974 and the book ends with an interview with Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger is, to cut a long story short, the villain of this book.
But this is decidedly not the familiar type of nostalgic British tale where everything was fine when Britain ruled and the Americans came next and messed it all up.
Rather, the picture presented is one where for ten years Makarios played off the Americans against the Soviets at the UN, stood between Grivas' EOKA B right wingers and the communist AKEL in Cyprus, and (from the Greek coup of 1967 onwards) also had to fight off the continued hostility (and assassination plots) of Athens. President Johnson is credited with calling off a Turkish landing as early as 1964 and comes off as a hero who found time for Cyprus while losing in Vietnam.
The accusation against Kissinger is very simple: he sought to bring an end to all this (and stability to the Eastern flank of NATO) by instructing the government in Athens to organize a coup in Cyprus, having the leader of the coup declare union (Enosis) with Greece and thus giving the Turks the constitutional license they needed to invade, thereby securing the British military bases, providing new US bases and eliminating the threat posed by the communist AKEL, to say nothing of the nuisance of Makarios. Moreover, while US foreign policy is normally a cacophony of influences from the State Department, Congress, the NSA and the CIA, the assertion is made that Kissinger managed to hijack the NSA, bypass the CIA and ignore Congress to achieve his aims.
The evidence provided is circumstantial (example: Turkey had amassed 80k troops opposite Cyprus and invaded within 4 days of the coup, which must be some type of record if you don't have the heads up), but in light of more recent events in American history, I don't really need to be persuaded that conservative Americans could plan an invasion to bring a new order to a part of the Middle East without fully accounting for what might happen next.
Also, absolutely everything I do know for fact about Cyprus that gets alluded to here checks 100%. So, for example, Evangelos Averoff recounted to my dad the meeting between Papagos and Eden (at which he was present) pretty much how it was presented here. And my friend Renos' dad was a wireless operator for Grivas and remembers him as even more bloodthirsty than he is depicted in this book. And of course I lived through a lot of this as a young boy.
So I buy it.
That said, the conspiracy is not central to the book. The true value is that this is an extremely thorough account and the authors are very careful about presenting facts as facts and guesses as guesses
With that said, let's get its main weakness out of the way first: It's not a history book.
You don't get told how come Greeks and Turks ended up living together on Cyprus. You don't get told about the Byzantine Empire and its thousand year history of moving populations, the Ottoman conquerors who followed and continue that practice (indeed they are post-1989 repopulating Cyprus with Muslims who flee Bulgaria), or the Millet system that split up brothers down religious lines (as in Sarajevo or Salonica).
No attempt is made to understand the context under which the Greeks rose in the nineteenth century or to clarify modern Greece's original "client state" status as a French/British/Russian thorn in the side of the Ottoman Empire or the "gunboat diplomacy" that had Greek politics arbitrated by the Foreign Office for the first seventy years of the Greek state's existence. Scant mention is made of the fact that the UK was for centuries the biggest lender to the Porte in Constantinople, switching to Athens after 1896 (and until 1974). There's no mention of the Balkan Wars that started in 1912 and hopefully ended in 1993, providing a much bloodier, but similarly rooted, parallel to the Cypriot saga. The 1922 Asia Minor disaster for the Greeks which marked the end of a hundred-year-long re-conquest of occupied land is not mentioned once. You don't get told the story of what happened in Crete or Rhodes, both of which joined the Greek state, albeit with radically different outcomes for their Muslim populations.
Rather, what we have here is a thorough piece of investigative journalism.
The angle is very much the British angle. Indeed the anti-colonial, liberal British angle.
So this is the history of Cyprus from 1952 to 1974 viewed through the eyes of the liberal British press.
In short, you get ten pages apiece for every year between 1952 and 1974. The authors first go through every meeting that took place between people relevant to Cyprus's struggle to obtain statehood (both Greek and British) and probably list every bomb the Greek guerillas of EOKA detonated to rattle the British, though they stop well short of going through the travails of the Greek resistance fighters and their families at the hands of British commander Harding and his men. You also get good sketches of the Greek and British protagonists of this fight (Makarios, Grivas, Eden and Macmillan) as well as all the intrigue and politics between them, including a long chapter on the Macmillan "coup." The strategic importance of Cyprus is stressed as part of the events in 1948 and most importantly the 1956 Suez crisis and the humiliation of the British at the hands of Nasser and Eisenhower.
The extremely significant point is made that Turkey (which had been on the losing side of WWI and not on the winning side in WWII and thus had had no voice -in stark contrast to Cyprus whose men had been drafted to fight alongside the British) had no horse in the race whatsoever until in 1955 Anthony Eden invited the Turks to participate in the talks about the future of the island as a way to force Greece to back off. It's tough to know if this is right, but it's mentioned as a fact. It's quite significant that the pogrom of the Greeks of Istanbul came right on cue, however. And the authors don't miss the opportunity to mention that this had been standard operating procedure for the British as they lost their empire. Whenever possible, anti-colonial struggle was countered with a claim that Britain was there to arbitrate between two warring factions. They add, moreover, that the British formed an auxiliary police made up entirely of Turkish-Cypriots, precisely to foment Greek-Turkish strife.
The story of the revolution and its success is told, which brings us to 1960 and the circumstances under which Britain, Greece, Turkey and the US jointly drafted in absentia of the locals a constitution for the new Cypriot state that worked for every single one of them but not at all for the Cypriots and contained the seeds of its own destruction, which followed three years later. In short, the document was written to assuage the Americans' fears of AKEL (the very strong Communist party in Cyprus) and the Soviets, to guarantee vast tracts of land for British bases, to make Greece and Turkey both feel like the other would keep out and to make sure everybody locally had a veto, which the Turkish minority got in the habit of exercising on every decision. But what suited Eisenhower, Macmillan, Karamanlis and their Turkish counterparts (who never made it to the signing due to a coup and were hanged for conceding too much) was unworkable for the Cypriots.
1n 1963 Makarios decided to break the political stalemate by effectively annulling the constitution. The bloodshed that followed mainly cost Turkish-Cypriot lives, as it had been the Greeks of EOKA who had the expertise of fighting (against the British) and the weapons to conduct warfare. The authors are quite clear that the Greeks were explicitly provoked, probably with intent, but they were undeniably very keen to respond to the provocations.
The timing was disastrous, however, for the Greeks. The way the authors present it, not only was Britain losing its status as a world power, but the US was by then locked in a mortal fight with the Soviet Union. One year after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was not the time to take matters in your own hands, especially if your island was serving as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for NATO in its eastern flank, to say nothing of the folly of provoking a NATO ally with a border with the Soviet Union and extensive US nuclear missile installations.
And thus started a dance that could only really end the way things did end. The author details a number of plans to split Cyprus up, to create cantons etc.
Next it feels like the book becomes an account of every single meeting that took place between people relevant to preventing a Turkish invasion (Greek, Turkish, American and British, in all permutations and combinations). If two relevant actors met to discuss Cyprus, the authors document the meeting and have a shot at telling you what was discussed, what the relevant actors meant to obtain from the meeting, what the result of the meeting was and how it was relevant to what happened next. Finally, you get a day-by-day account of the movements of the Turkish invading force in July and August of 1974 and the book ends with an interview with Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger is, to cut a long story short, the villain of this book.
But this is decidedly not the familiar type of nostalgic British tale where everything was fine when Britain ruled and the Americans came next and messed it all up.
Rather, the picture presented is one where for ten years Makarios played off the Americans against the Soviets at the UN, stood between Grivas' EOKA B right wingers and the communist AKEL in Cyprus, and (from the Greek coup of 1967 onwards) also had to fight off the continued hostility (and assassination plots) of Athens. President Johnson is credited with calling off a Turkish landing as early as 1964 and comes off as a hero who found time for Cyprus while losing in Vietnam.
The accusation against Kissinger is very simple: he sought to bring an end to all this (and stability to the Eastern flank of NATO) by instructing the government in Athens to organize a coup in Cyprus, having the leader of the coup declare union (Enosis) with Greece and thus giving the Turks the constitutional license they needed to invade, thereby securing the British military bases, providing new US bases and eliminating the threat posed by the communist AKEL, to say nothing of the nuisance of Makarios. Moreover, while US foreign policy is normally a cacophony of influences from the State Department, Congress, the NSA and the CIA, the assertion is made that Kissinger managed to hijack the NSA, bypass the CIA and ignore Congress to achieve his aims.
The evidence provided is circumstantial (example: Turkey had amassed 80k troops opposite Cyprus and invaded within 4 days of the coup, which must be some type of record if you don't have the heads up), but in light of more recent events in American history, I don't really need to be persuaded that conservative Americans could plan an invasion to bring a new order to a part of the Middle East without fully accounting for what might happen next.
Also, absolutely everything I do know for fact about Cyprus that gets alluded to here checks 100%. So, for example, Evangelos Averoff recounted to my dad the meeting between Papagos and Eden (at which he was present) pretty much how it was presented here. And my friend Renos' dad was a wireless operator for Grivas and remembers him as even more bloodthirsty than he is depicted in this book. And of course I lived through a lot of this as a young boy.
So I buy it.
That said, the conspiracy is not central to the book. The true value is that this is an extremely thorough account and the authors are very careful about presenting facts as facts and guesses as guesses
February 22, 2020
The Cyprus Conspiracy - America, Espionage, and the Turkish Invasion by Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig
It's easy to dismiss a book with "Conspiracy" in the title, but I highly recommend the book for its breadth of research. It's a completely different tone from Hitchen's quite angry Hostage to History. The authors have dug into State Department archives, minutes of Parliament, various memoirs, interviews, etc. to paint a particular picture. This makes it a rather lengthy and tedious read, at times, similar to many books on the "Cyprus Problem."
I think the interview with Kissinger in the appendix somewhat weakens the authors' efforts to find a smoking gun -- that Kissinger (and America's foreign policy establishment) essentially had the result of the 1974 separation in mind from the beginning. But it is clear from interviews and memoirs that there are different perspectives on what took place during the crisis. The Turkish leadership claim one thing, British leadership another, Greeks another, Americans another. It's easy to pick any one thread or comment and say "Aha!" Kissinger dismisses the idea of some consistent U.S. plan from 1964-1974 to achieve the 1974 outcome. In my observation, America's foreign policy establishment changes too much between administrations, and with career diplomats only spending 2-3 years in any given role. Hence, institutional knowledge suffers and it's quite difficult to maintain some secret ten-year plan to achieve a specific policy outcome. As the authors point out, there was also a good bit of dissent in the U.S. Foreign Service about what happened. Also, for America and NATO today, the current situation is anything but ideal. Many people serving in Cyprus today are ignorant of the 1964 context, which is another reason I recommend this book.
The greatest takeaway from the book for me was that 1964 was just as critical a year as 1974. On that point, the book is very informative and inspired me to purchase former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George Ball's memoir:
"In 1964, US Assistant Secretary of State George Ball told a British officer who was working to end the growing ethnic separation by bringing both sides together, ‘You've got it wrong son. There's only one solution to this island, and that's partition.' The officer, Lieutenant Commander Martin Packard, confirmed that the maintenance of the military facilities on Cyprus was deemed of para-mount importance by the British and American governments and their military advisers at the time, and they thought this would more easily be achieved in a divided Cyprus. Did they finally achieve their aim in 1974? That is what this book seeks to prove."
Many people today are forgetful or cannot conceive of the Cold War and Middle Eastern great power competition context that made Cyprus such a critical place such that America and NATO wanted to guarantee it stayed in NATO hands and away from Soviet influence, no matter what. I think many are also ignorant of the tense crisis of 1964 that almost led to war and demanded intervention from the highest levels.
"1964 – In January, acting US Secretary of State George Ball suggested partition. President Johnson resisted calls for the United States to send in troops. In February, a US contingency plan to allow a ‘controlled' Turkish occupation in northern Cyprus was discussed with Britain...Turkey threatened to invade, but Johnson vetoed it in a ‘brutal diplomatic note'. Turkey backed down. In August, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson proposed enosis, with a military base for Turkey and autonomous cantons for Turkish Cypriots. When this failed, Acheson and Ball considered forcing Greece and Turkey to split Cyprus between them. Grivas returned to Cyprus."
While I think the book fails on its goal to "prove" that America and Britain finally achieved their aim at partition in one fell swoop in 1974, it succeeds in showing that 1964 is the more critical year. There was already an idea of partition in place, U.N. troops keeping the peace, etc. The situation just hadn't reached a stable equilibrium yet. It was clearly unstable and untenable even in 1960. It took the events of 1974, the junta in Greece, the coup in Cyprus, to push things toward an equilibrium. I think the "Cyprus Problem" has largely been intractable because it's a classic Nash equilibrium. There is a perhaps more ideal outcome, 1964 would have liked to see the island divided between Greece and Turkey. But the current less-ideal Nash outcome has become stable-- Turkish and Greek Cypriots are all Cypriot passport holders who can travel freely between the territories and freely travel to Europe. The Republic of Cyprus is an EU member, the British still have their sovereign bases, and with each passing year the difference between the two sides grows both legally and in terms of difference in infrastructure (per a recent World Bank report about the increasing monetary cost of re-connecting the two sides). Also, it's possible that too many parties have a stake in maintaining the status quo to move to the more ideal equilibrium.
With all of the research and information, I give this book four stars out of five.
It's easy to dismiss a book with "Conspiracy" in the title, but I highly recommend the book for its breadth of research. It's a completely different tone from Hitchen's quite angry Hostage to History. The authors have dug into State Department archives, minutes of Parliament, various memoirs, interviews, etc. to paint a particular picture. This makes it a rather lengthy and tedious read, at times, similar to many books on the "Cyprus Problem."
I think the interview with Kissinger in the appendix somewhat weakens the authors' efforts to find a smoking gun -- that Kissinger (and America's foreign policy establishment) essentially had the result of the 1974 separation in mind from the beginning. But it is clear from interviews and memoirs that there are different perspectives on what took place during the crisis. The Turkish leadership claim one thing, British leadership another, Greeks another, Americans another. It's easy to pick any one thread or comment and say "Aha!" Kissinger dismisses the idea of some consistent U.S. plan from 1964-1974 to achieve the 1974 outcome. In my observation, America's foreign policy establishment changes too much between administrations, and with career diplomats only spending 2-3 years in any given role. Hence, institutional knowledge suffers and it's quite difficult to maintain some secret ten-year plan to achieve a specific policy outcome. As the authors point out, there was also a good bit of dissent in the U.S. Foreign Service about what happened. Also, for America and NATO today, the current situation is anything but ideal. Many people serving in Cyprus today are ignorant of the 1964 context, which is another reason I recommend this book.
The greatest takeaway from the book for me was that 1964 was just as critical a year as 1974. On that point, the book is very informative and inspired me to purchase former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George Ball's memoir:
"In 1964, US Assistant Secretary of State George Ball told a British officer who was working to end the growing ethnic separation by bringing both sides together, ‘You've got it wrong son. There's only one solution to this island, and that's partition.' The officer, Lieutenant Commander Martin Packard, confirmed that the maintenance of the military facilities on Cyprus was deemed of para-mount importance by the British and American governments and their military advisers at the time, and they thought this would more easily be achieved in a divided Cyprus. Did they finally achieve their aim in 1974? That is what this book seeks to prove."
Many people today are forgetful or cannot conceive of the Cold War and Middle Eastern great power competition context that made Cyprus such a critical place such that America and NATO wanted to guarantee it stayed in NATO hands and away from Soviet influence, no matter what. I think many are also ignorant of the tense crisis of 1964 that almost led to war and demanded intervention from the highest levels.
"1964 – In January, acting US Secretary of State George Ball suggested partition. President Johnson resisted calls for the United States to send in troops. In February, a US contingency plan to allow a ‘controlled' Turkish occupation in northern Cyprus was discussed with Britain...Turkey threatened to invade, but Johnson vetoed it in a ‘brutal diplomatic note'. Turkey backed down. In August, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson proposed enosis, with a military base for Turkey and autonomous cantons for Turkish Cypriots. When this failed, Acheson and Ball considered forcing Greece and Turkey to split Cyprus between them. Grivas returned to Cyprus."
While I think the book fails on its goal to "prove" that America and Britain finally achieved their aim at partition in one fell swoop in 1974, it succeeds in showing that 1964 is the more critical year. There was already an idea of partition in place, U.N. troops keeping the peace, etc. The situation just hadn't reached a stable equilibrium yet. It was clearly unstable and untenable even in 1960. It took the events of 1974, the junta in Greece, the coup in Cyprus, to push things toward an equilibrium. I think the "Cyprus Problem" has largely been intractable because it's a classic Nash equilibrium. There is a perhaps more ideal outcome, 1964 would have liked to see the island divided between Greece and Turkey. But the current less-ideal Nash outcome has become stable-- Turkish and Greek Cypriots are all Cypriot passport holders who can travel freely between the territories and freely travel to Europe. The Republic of Cyprus is an EU member, the British still have their sovereign bases, and with each passing year the difference between the two sides grows both legally and in terms of difference in infrastructure (per a recent World Bank report about the increasing monetary cost of re-connecting the two sides). Also, it's possible that too many parties have a stake in maintaining the status quo to move to the more ideal equilibrium.
With all of the research and information, I give this book four stars out of five.
February 12, 2012
There's a strikingly repetitive pattern in geopolitics - it sucks to be a "small/weaker" state and the "big/powerful" states couldn't care less about the values of democracy, human rights, self-determination or basic fairness when/if their self-interest is even remotely at stake.
The Question of Cyprus is one of the world's most intractable conflicts and is not likely to go away anytime soon. The sad reality is, most people don't even realize there's a problem (or could even find Cyprus on a map), let alone understand the roots of the problem. Like the break-up of Yugoslavia and/or the current situation in Kosovo, there's a lot more than meets the eye and the Lame-stream....err....mainstream....press.
The book tracks the history of modern Cyprus in the 20th Century thru the Turkish invasion (1974) and beyond. In doing so, it reveals a striking pattern in which true independence is denied to the island and any effort at true democracy is undermined in favor of big-power interests - primarily the US and Britain. The Brits worked to undermine true independence for Cyprus throughout the 1st half of the 20thC in order to insure their numerous geopolitical interests on the island would be protected and insured. And, where the Brits leave off in the 1960s-1970s, the Americans step in. Henry Kissinger is one of the most despicable, conniving, corrupt and truly shameless human beings the world has ever known. His role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in Cyprus (Makarios) and the subsequent (encouraged) Turkish invasion & occupation of Cyprus is just another episode of scumbaggery to add to his long resume of scumbaggery the world over.
Anybody interested in geopolitics will find the book interesting. The reality is, the world should know a lot more about Cyprus in that its geopolitical importance is immense and the Makarios Coup and Turkish Invasion/Occupation are a microcosm of sleazy, underhanded political maneuvering by the "Great Powers" which can be seen everywhere from the Balkans to Latin America to SE Asia. Anybody interested in the truth behind political posturing and false pretenses of "supporting democracy" (and other lies) should read this book. The truth is, as Machiavelli pointed out (or maybe it was Bismarck): "there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies....only permanent interests." Cyprus is just another in a long list of examples where this is (sadly) true.
If you think America only cares about democracy and human rights first and foremost above all, this is an eye-opening book (since it's obviously not true). If you already realize that line is a bunch of crap, then this is a (yet another) case study in geopolitical sleaze where the rights and ambitions of a people are thwarted by the big power interests - all orchestrated by one of the scummiest Machiavellian political figures of all time, Mr. Henry Kissinger.
The fact that the Nobel Committee gave Kissinger is (yet another) demonstration of what a joke that institution is...by the way.
Recommended for those who like history, geopolitics and the shaping of the modern world.
The Question of Cyprus is one of the world's most intractable conflicts and is not likely to go away anytime soon. The sad reality is, most people don't even realize there's a problem (or could even find Cyprus on a map), let alone understand the roots of the problem. Like the break-up of Yugoslavia and/or the current situation in Kosovo, there's a lot more than meets the eye and the Lame-stream....err....mainstream....press.
The book tracks the history of modern Cyprus in the 20th Century thru the Turkish invasion (1974) and beyond. In doing so, it reveals a striking pattern in which true independence is denied to the island and any effort at true democracy is undermined in favor of big-power interests - primarily the US and Britain. The Brits worked to undermine true independence for Cyprus throughout the 1st half of the 20thC in order to insure their numerous geopolitical interests on the island would be protected and insured. And, where the Brits leave off in the 1960s-1970s, the Americans step in. Henry Kissinger is one of the most despicable, conniving, corrupt and truly shameless human beings the world has ever known. His role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in Cyprus (Makarios) and the subsequent (encouraged) Turkish invasion & occupation of Cyprus is just another episode of scumbaggery to add to his long resume of scumbaggery the world over.
Anybody interested in geopolitics will find the book interesting. The reality is, the world should know a lot more about Cyprus in that its geopolitical importance is immense and the Makarios Coup and Turkish Invasion/Occupation are a microcosm of sleazy, underhanded political maneuvering by the "Great Powers" which can be seen everywhere from the Balkans to Latin America to SE Asia. Anybody interested in the truth behind political posturing and false pretenses of "supporting democracy" (and other lies) should read this book. The truth is, as Machiavelli pointed out (or maybe it was Bismarck): "there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies....only permanent interests." Cyprus is just another in a long list of examples where this is (sadly) true.
If you think America only cares about democracy and human rights first and foremost above all, this is an eye-opening book (since it's obviously not true). If you already realize that line is a bunch of crap, then this is a (yet another) case study in geopolitical sleaze where the rights and ambitions of a people are thwarted by the big power interests - all orchestrated by one of the scummiest Machiavellian political figures of all time, Mr. Henry Kissinger.
The fact that the Nobel Committee gave Kissinger is (yet another) demonstration of what a joke that institution is...by the way.
Recommended for those who like history, geopolitics and the shaping of the modern world.
dnf
August 18, 2020Sadly, despite enjoying the premise of this and the majority of the details within, this one was just a little too fact and date centric for me to really stay engaged with. I may give this a go at another stage, it certainly encouraged me to ask questions of the official version of events during the 1974 war, and enabled me to think critically about the UK’s role....
October 31, 2024
I came into reading this book because I wanted to read about the modern history of Cyprus from independance onwards but really this book is a history of Cyprus from 1930s until 1974. Its strength if you ask me is how enlightening it is about foreign policy of the West in the Middle East in the 1950s and how tied together Cypriot independence is with the Suez Canal crisis for example and its details about where military action occured whether during the 1955-59 struggle or the intercommunal violence in 1963, or junta's coup and Turkish invasion in 1974, were very interesting details to anyone familiar with Cyprus and in particular Nicosia but not so interesting to an outsider.
This is a repeating problem of the book, is that it assumes a similar degree of familiarity of the reader with its mentioned people and places and doesn't ever give reminders. It's easy to get lost in the strange transliteration of certain Greek and Turkish names as well as the American and British ones and forget between chapters just who is the ambassador and just what opinions they have.
It's difficult to review this book as it's certainly clearly written by journalists and does at times feel like the longest newspaper article you've ever read. That does mean that it's extremely thorough but after a while journalese can become a little boring. Sometimes the authors choose to prioritise certain details in ways that seemed odd to me as a reader, for example often quoting the views and opinions of various amabassadors who are not involved in the conspiracy at all and so don't seem to have much weight.
The book also lays out certain framing devices that signal it is 'on the side of Cypriots', for example the book repeatedly says 'no Cypriots were asked about their self-determination - Why should these four guarantor powers decide their fate'. The book calls on people to focus on the views of Cypriots themselves, but doesn't seem to enlighten us much as to what Cypriots did indeed think at the time.
In fact the only Cypriot whose opinion is repeatedly stated is Cleridis. Cleridis still speaks in the book much less than Kissinger, the UK Government, the Americans and of course the Greek Junta and Turkey, all of which gives the sense that the book doesn't particularly want to champion what Cypriots (other than Cleridis) thought at the time. It is also worth noting that Cleridis' opinion is often presented without much scrutiny, as in fact a reliable first person perspective of events, however many other viewpoints are presented with high journalistic scrutiny.
All that to say, it is a comprehensive overview of just how long the partition of Cyprus had been being debated between the guarantor powers and is a deserving thorough critique of Kissinger. It is also a very enlightening and damning read about the actions of the colonial UK Government towards Cypriots in the 1940s and 50s in the run up to independence - so I would recommend it for anyone seeking details about this too.
This is a repeating problem of the book, is that it assumes a similar degree of familiarity of the reader with its mentioned people and places and doesn't ever give reminders. It's easy to get lost in the strange transliteration of certain Greek and Turkish names as well as the American and British ones and forget between chapters just who is the ambassador and just what opinions they have.
It's difficult to review this book as it's certainly clearly written by journalists and does at times feel like the longest newspaper article you've ever read. That does mean that it's extremely thorough but after a while journalese can become a little boring. Sometimes the authors choose to prioritise certain details in ways that seemed odd to me as a reader, for example often quoting the views and opinions of various amabassadors who are not involved in the conspiracy at all and so don't seem to have much weight.
The book also lays out certain framing devices that signal it is 'on the side of Cypriots', for example the book repeatedly says 'no Cypriots were asked about their self-determination - Why should these four guarantor powers decide their fate'. The book calls on people to focus on the views of Cypriots themselves, but doesn't seem to enlighten us much as to what Cypriots did indeed think at the time.
In fact the only Cypriot whose opinion is repeatedly stated is Cleridis. Cleridis still speaks in the book much less than Kissinger, the UK Government, the Americans and of course the Greek Junta and Turkey, all of which gives the sense that the book doesn't particularly want to champion what Cypriots (other than Cleridis) thought at the time. It is also worth noting that Cleridis' opinion is often presented without much scrutiny, as in fact a reliable first person perspective of events, however many other viewpoints are presented with high journalistic scrutiny.
All that to say, it is a comprehensive overview of just how long the partition of Cyprus had been being debated between the guarantor powers and is a deserving thorough critique of Kissinger. It is also a very enlightening and damning read about the actions of the colonial UK Government towards Cypriots in the 1940s and 50s in the run up to independence - so I would recommend it for anyone seeking details about this too.
November 11, 2020
Overall, this was a good read but as a previous reviewer has said on this thread - this is not a history book in the truest sense of the term.
The book is well written and easy to read however a lot of important events are either omitted or glossed over very fleetingly. I understand this to be because this is a conspiracy book after all and it has to be aligned to the various theories in the book.
Brendan and Ian bring a lot to the table and shed light on serious events that do not get spoken about as much as others and if they do, they are commented on by people who do not have a clue about what happened in Cyprus.
Unfortunately, if you want to learn about the history of Cyprus, this is not the only book you can read. This mainly focuses on America and Britain above all else and no real mention of the island's history under Ottoman and Venetian rule (and before that). Similarly, the references to the massacres in 1963 and 1974 do not read as accurately as they could. Bloody Christmas is a well documented even that is recorded in most books about the history of Cyprus, yet this one does not reference Bloody Christmas at all. These events were pivotal, as were the massacres of the Cretan Turks, in the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot mind set at the time and deserved to be given the same weighting in this book as they had in real life.
Overall, a good read but not to be read in isolation. Recommended books to be read with this can be found on Amazon and GoodReads - I fear recommending anything specific to avoid any bias.
The book is well written and easy to read however a lot of important events are either omitted or glossed over very fleetingly. I understand this to be because this is a conspiracy book after all and it has to be aligned to the various theories in the book.
Brendan and Ian bring a lot to the table and shed light on serious events that do not get spoken about as much as others and if they do, they are commented on by people who do not have a clue about what happened in Cyprus.
Unfortunately, if you want to learn about the history of Cyprus, this is not the only book you can read. This mainly focuses on America and Britain above all else and no real mention of the island's history under Ottoman and Venetian rule (and before that). Similarly, the references to the massacres in 1963 and 1974 do not read as accurately as they could. Bloody Christmas is a well documented even that is recorded in most books about the history of Cyprus, yet this one does not reference Bloody Christmas at all. These events were pivotal, as were the massacres of the Cretan Turks, in the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot mind set at the time and deserved to be given the same weighting in this book as they had in real life.
Overall, a good read but not to be read in isolation. Recommended books to be read with this can be found on Amazon and GoodReads - I fear recommending anything specific to avoid any bias.
June 8, 2022
I really liked this book. I thought it would be a dry read but the author made an impressive effort to work through what became a very complex sequence of events. The players at hand never recognized the full cost and the externalities to their choices and behaviours which left a relatively peaceful country in tatters.
As another reviewer very eloquently put it, this is a somewhat leftist British view however I do feel that it is a significant work to review in order to understand the Cyprus situation better.
A highly recommended read.
As another reviewer very eloquently put it, this is a somewhat leftist British view however I do feel that it is a significant work to review in order to understand the Cyprus situation better.
A highly recommended read.
August 20, 2017
Turkish operation in Cyprus has been a defining incident of a decade in Turkey and Greece. Sanctions have been put on Turkey and people from both countries have suffered, if not physically, then mentally. But like I said, it was the incident of a decade, not more than that. Towards 1980s Turkey was busy with righy-left clashes, a coup d'etat and terrorism in South East while Greece was also busy with its own numerous problems.
Yet for people of Cyrpus, it meant the beginning of a non-ending struggle. Many internally displaced refugees lost their lands, many abandoned property were either looted or taken by the government and people who lived side by side were divided at once and maybe forever.
For a long time, however, this crisis seemed to be between Turkey and Greece. Two countries which are propagated as rivals were having a dispute over a piece of land, nothing but another territorial dispute, nothing but another statistic.
What is not usually known is that Cyrpus was an important base for British, eventually the western, army, and by failed foreign policy of British PM Anthony Eden, the biggest base in eastern Mediterranean, Suez was lost to the Egyptians. After such a loss to General Abdel Nasser, neither Eden nor the allied westeners could afford losing the bases in the island.
The book does an excellent job in explaining the rest of the history with highly reliable sources and interviews. I would reccomend it to people who have genuine interest in the issue. If you have limited knowledge about Cyrpus, then this should be read after one or two introductory books.
Yet for people of Cyrpus, it meant the beginning of a non-ending struggle. Many internally displaced refugees lost their lands, many abandoned property were either looted or taken by the government and people who lived side by side were divided at once and maybe forever.
For a long time, however, this crisis seemed to be between Turkey and Greece. Two countries which are propagated as rivals were having a dispute over a piece of land, nothing but another territorial dispute, nothing but another statistic.
What is not usually known is that Cyrpus was an important base for British, eventually the western, army, and by failed foreign policy of British PM Anthony Eden, the biggest base in eastern Mediterranean, Suez was lost to the Egyptians. After such a loss to General Abdel Nasser, neither Eden nor the allied westeners could afford losing the bases in the island.
The book does an excellent job in explaining the rest of the history with highly reliable sources and interviews. I would reccomend it to people who have genuine interest in the issue. If you have limited knowledge about Cyrpus, then this should be read after one or two introductory books.
October 5, 2024
Good but boring litany of diplomatic moves. Could have been written in the Atlantic or New Yorke long form journalism still. Still delivered all the facts you would need to know.
July 27, 2010
a "diplomatic" history of cyprus and the game played by the US and Britain to retain control of the military installations on the island since the end of world war two.
it's a fascinating read about events that i had never really heard of or understood - despite the fact that i thought i knew quote a bit about the middle east.
it's also overwhelmingly full of details - to a fault. it's hard to keep track of all the names, and the specific details like the names of the warships involved are excessive.
it's also told from a naive standpoint on the cold war - the premise is that the US "stands for national self-determination" and somehow cyprus proves to be an exception to this rule. well, okay: we know better, and this should make the reader be skeptical about the cold-war framework.
overall, it sheds a lot of light on this bit of history and serves as a refresher course on all the relevant disputes in the middle east until 1974.
it's a fascinating read about events that i had never really heard of or understood - despite the fact that i thought i knew quote a bit about the middle east.
it's also overwhelmingly full of details - to a fault. it's hard to keep track of all the names, and the specific details like the names of the warships involved are excessive.
it's also told from a naive standpoint on the cold war - the premise is that the US "stands for national self-determination" and somehow cyprus proves to be an exception to this rule. well, okay: we know better, and this should make the reader be skeptical about the cold-war framework.
overall, it sheds a lot of light on this bit of history and serves as a refresher course on all the relevant disputes in the middle east until 1974.
April 18, 2012
A detailed and well documented history of the Cyprus "troubles." This book illuminates all the players that ruined the lives of so many on Cyprus. There is no single source to blame for the struggles that the Cypriot people endured in modern times. Maybe history was to blame. I have read almost every book written on the subject and what seems to be missing and what "The Cyprus Conspiracy:..," brings out is how the context of the cold war played a role. The unique geography of the island also has been a factor in why so many powerful countries have had interests there.
January 16, 2019
An excellent account of what happened to such a beautiful country and how political boundaries have divided the island to this day. I found the details leading up to the events of 1974, well researched with lots of intriguing facts as to who was really involved as the writers pull no punches in pointing out the key players in the crisis. I personally used this book for research for my own thriller novel set at the time and am very pleased that I did so as I had it close to hand while writing my manuscript.
July 24, 2017
This book is a fantastically interesting piece of investigative journalism about British and American involvement in the coup on Cyprus, followed by the Turkish invasion which ceased a third of the island. It took me awhile to get through it, as there is a ton of information and people to keep straight. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though. While reading this book, I realized that I need to read up more on Henry Kissenger.
December 5, 2017
Really interesting. Extremely detailed, yet maintaining incredible flow and ease of understanding, something few books do well without getting too complicated.
Not for someone who wants a brief overview.
Not for someone who wants a brief overview.
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