The Cyprus Emergency of 1955-1959
The Cyprus Emergency was the most awkward of the British decolonisations: a four-year guerrilla campaign by Greek-Cypriot nationalists demanding union with Greece (enosis), fought against a British colonial government that could not bring itself to leave, in a NATO context where every option annoyed either the Greeks or the Turks. The thesis of this article is that the Emergency exposed the limits of the British post-imperial strategy: the British could not, in the end, hold Cyprus, could not grant enosis, could not partition, and could not, without serious damage to the Western alliance, allow the situation to drift. The Zurich-London agreements of 1959 were the result, and the 1974 Turkish invasion was the consequence. The compromise that the British negotiated in 1959 was the best they could get; the compromise was not, however, good enough.
The Background
Cyprus had been under Ottoman rule for three centuries before it was transferred to the British in 1878, and the British administration was confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The Greek-Cypriot community, which constituted about 80 percent of the Cypriot population, was overwhelmingly in favour of enosis, and the enosis movement had been a major element in Cypriot politics since the 1930s. The Turkish-Cypriot community, which constituted about 18 percent of the Cypriot population, was opposed to enosis and was generally in favour of the continuation of British rule or of the partition of the island.
The post-war political changes in Britain and Greece were a major element in the Cyprus question. The British government, having committed itself to the principle of colonial self-government, was under pressure to make some accommodation with the Cypriot demands. The Greek government, having been in a state of civil war from 1946 to 1949, was initially in a difficult position, but the post-war reconstruction of Greece, supported by the United States through the Truman Doctrine of 1947, was a major element in the stabilisation of the Greek political system. The Greek government, which had traditionally supported the enosis movement, was in a stronger position to support the movement in the 1950s.
The British government’s position on Cyprus was complicated. The British had a substantial military presence in Cyprus, with the headquarters of the British Middle East forces located in Nicosia, and the British were reluctant to give up the island. The British were also concerned about the strategic implications of enosis, particularly the implications for the British position in the Middle East and the British relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally. The British position was, in the words of the historian Robert Holland in The British in Cyprus (1998), “a classic imperial position: the strategic value of the territory was greater than the value of the territory to the inhabitants, and the British were reluctant to give up the territory without a substantial quid pro quo.”
The EOKA Campaign
EOKA was established in 1955 by Colonel George Grivas, a Greek army officer who had served in the Greek resistance and in the Greek civil war. Grivas was a committed enosis supporter, and he had the support of the Greek government, which provided arms and financial support for the EOKA campaign. The EOKA campaign, which began on 1 April 1955 with a series of bomb attacks on British military and government targets, was a guerrilla campaign of substantial scope. The EOKA fighters, mostly young Greek-Cypriot men, attacked British military and police targets, assassinated Greek-Cypriots suspected of collaboration with the British, and used terrorist tactics against the Turkish-Cypriot community.
The British response to the EOKA campaign was substantial. The British governor, Sir John Harding, declared a state of emergency in November 1955, and the British deployed a substantial military and police force to Cyprus — perhaps 30,000 men at the peak of the Emergency. The British security forces used a combination of conventional military operations, intelligence work, and internment to suppress the EOKA campaign. The most controversial aspect of the British response was the use of interrogation techniques that have been the subject of substantial subsequent criticism, including the alleged use of torture against EOKA suspects. The most famous case was the interrogation of Makarios III, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus, who was deported to the Seychelles in March 1956. The historian Brendan O’Leary, in his article on the British counter-insurgency in Cyprus, has described the British response as “the model that the British would use, with varying degrees of modification, in Malaya, Kenya, and Aden.”
The British Political Response
The British political response to the Cyprus question was complicated by the change of government in 1955. The Labour government of Clement Attlee, which had come to power in 1945, was committed to the principle of colonial self-government, and the Attlee government’s offer of a constitutional conference in 1954 was a major step in the British recognition of the Cypriot question. The Conservative government of Anthony Eden, which came to power in 1955, was more reluctant to make concessions to the enosis movement, and the Eden government’s response to the EOKA campaign was substantially more hardline than the Attlee government’s response had been. The Eden government’s deportations of Makarios to the Seychelles, and its refusal to enter into serious negotiations with the Greek-Cypriot leadership, hardened the EOKA campaign and made the eventual settlement more difficult.
The Macmillan government, which came to power in January 1957, was prepared to consider a more substantial compromise. The Macmillan government’s most important political move was the appointment of a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Radcliffe, the British jurist, to advise on the constitutional future of Cyprus. The Radcliffe Committee, which reported in December 1956, recommended that Cyprus be granted self-government but rejected the demand for enosis. The Radcliffe Report was a major step in the British recognition that enosis was not achievable, and it paved the way for the subsequent political negotiations. The British historian David French, in The British Way in Warfare (2011), has described the Radcliffe Report as “the moment when the British government accepted the political reality that the Greek-Cypriots had created.”
The Intercommunal Tension
The intercommunal tension between the Greek and Turkish communities was a major element in the Cyprus question. The Turkish-Cypriot community, fearful of enosis, mobilised its own paramilitary forces — the TMT (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı, the Turkish Resistance Organisation) — in 1958, and the intercommunal violence between the Greek and Turkish communities was a major feature of the Emergency. The most serious external incident was the Istanbul pogrom of September 1955, in which Greek-owned property in Istanbul was attacked by Turkish mobs, in retaliation for the EOKA campaign in Cyprus. The pogrom, in which perhaps 4,000 Greek-owned houses and businesses were destroyed, was a major event in the deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations.
The Greek-Turkish tension was a major element in the British response to the Cyprus question. The British government, in the post-war period, had been concerned about the stability of NATO’s south-eastern flank, and the deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations was a serious problem. The British government was caught between the Greek demand for enosis, the Turkish opposition to enosis, and the strategic need to maintain the British military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The British historian Holland, in The British in Cyprus, has described the intercommunal tension as “the most intractable problem of the Emergency, and the problem that the Zurich-London agreements failed to resolve.”
The Zurich-London Agreements
The Zurich-London agreements of February 1959 were the political resolution of the Cyprus question. The agreements were the result of a complex set of negotiations involving the British, Greek, and Turkish governments, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. The key figures were Archbishop Makarios III, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus, and Dr. Fazıl Küçük, the leader of the Turkish-Cypriot community, who represented the two communities in the negotiations.
The agreements established the Republic of Cyprus as an independent state, with a constitution that would balance the interests of the Greek and Turkish communities. The constitution, drafted by the Radcliffe Committee and modified in the negotiations, provided for a presidential system with a Greek-Cypriot president and a Turkish-Cypriot vice-president, and a system of weighted voting that would give the Turkish-Cypriot community a substantial role in the government. The agreements also provided for the continuation of the British Sovereign Base Areas at Akrotiri and Dhekelia, and for the eventual withdrawal of the British military forces from the rest of the island.
The Cypriot independence was a compromise. The Greek-Cypriot community gave up the demand for enosis, and the Turkish-Cypriot community gave up the demand for partition. The compromise, however, was not durable. The intercommunal tension between the Greek and Turkish communities continued, and the constitutional arrangements were increasingly unworkable. The 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, in response to a Greek-supported coup against the Makarios government, was the most serious crisis, and the partition of the island along the Green Line has been a continuing source of tension. The compromise of 1959 was the best the British could get; the compromise was not, however, good enough.
The British Withdrawal
The British withdrawal from Cyprus was completed in 1960, when the Republic of Cyprus became an independent state. The British Sovereign Base Areas at Akrotiri and Dhekelia, however, were retained under the terms of the Zurich-London agreements, and they remain British territories to this day. The British military presence in Cyprus has been a continuing legacy of the colonial period, and the bases have been a continuing point of Cypriot political complaint.
The Cyprus Emergency, in the longer view, was a major episode in the post-war decolonisation of the British Empire. The Emergency, in many respects, was a model of the post-war British decolonisation: a sustained security operation, a substantial political negotiation, and a compromise that preserved some British strategic interests. The Emergency, however, was also a major failure of British decolonisation policy. The compromise that was established in 1959 did not resolve the underlying Greek-Turkish tension, and the 1974 partition of the island has been a continuing source of international tension. The historian Brendan O’Leary, in his article on the British counter-insurgency in Cyprus, has argued that the British failure in Cyprus was the failure to recognise that the intercommunal tension was a more fundamental problem than the question of enosis, and that the British should have insisted on a more substantial intercommunal settlement as the price of independence. The argument is compelling, but the British, in 1959, were not in a position to insist.
Historiographical Note
The historiography of the Cyprus Emergency has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older tradition, of which the work of the British colonial historian Robert Holland is representative, treated the Emergency as a major episode in the post-war decolonisation. The more recent scholarship, of which the work of David French, Brendan O’Leary, and the contributors to The Oxford History of the British Empire is the most distinguished representative, has produced a more nuanced picture. The Emergency, on this more recent view, was a major episode in the post-war British decolonisation, and the compromise that was established in 1959 was a consequence of the British recognition that the strategic value of the territory was not sufficient to justify the costs of continued rule. The current generation of historians has been particularly interested in the intercommunal tension that the Emergency exposed, and the work of Brendan O’Leary, John Coulter, and the more recent writing of Robert Holland has produced a more integrated picture of the intercommunal dimension of the Emergency.