159. The island of Cyprus, leased to Britain by the Ottomans in 1878, was annexed in 1914 by London, which was recognized in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. In 1955, the right-wing Greek Cypriot organization EOKA, led by the anticommunist army officer Georgios Grivas, began terrorist attacks against the British administration in Cyprus and Greek and Turkish leftists in order to achieve the unification of Cyprus with Greece (“Enosis”). Against this backdrop, a provocation, which had developed from the false news that a Greek had thrown a bomb at the house where Atatürk was born in Thessaloniki, turned into a violent pogrom in Istanbul on September 6-7, targeting mainly Greeks, but also Armenians and Jews. Thousands of Greeks fled the country after the pogrom.

160. The Ankara-backed Turkish Resistance Organization (TMT), established against Greek Cypriot nationalists, was equally anticommunist and reactionary. Its members were called “mujahideen” and although it advocated the partition of Cyprus and the annexation of the north to Turkey (“Taksim”), it operated under the tolerance of the British administration. The TMT assassinated leaders of the Turkish labor movement, especially those who favored unity with Greek workers.

161. The establishment of the independent Republic of Cyprus in 1960, following the 1959 Zurich and London agreements between the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey, did not resolve the conflict. While Britain withdrew from the island in exchange for two military bases, Greek and Turkish nationalist forces resumed violence in 1963, killing hundreds from both communities and displacing tens of thousands of Turks. Throughout this period, the Stalinist AKEL, which advocated the unification of Cyprus with Greece and the “Popular Front” with the Greek Cypriot bourgeoisie, played a destructive role in dividing the Cypriot working class along ethnic and religious lines.

162. By 1974, as the deteriorating economy with increasing unemployment and poverty under the state terror and the interim regime increased the social opposition among the working class, peasantry and youth, the Kemalist CHP, under its new leader Bülent Ecevit, developed a “populist” and supposedly “pro-labor” discourse. Thus, with the support of the Stalinists and the DİSK, the CHP emerged as a bourgeois “left” alternative and became the first party in the 1973 elections. In 1974, the CHP, which formed a coalition government with the National Salvation Party (MSP), an Islamist-nationalist party led by Necmettin Erbakan, declared in the coalition protocol that “We consider it necessary that the common defense bases and facilities, war vehicles and equipment in our territory should be under the control of the Turkish state” against the US-NATO controlled bases, and announced that it would review the laws on energy resources in line with “national interests.” Boron mines were then nationalized.

163. In May 1974, the CHP-MSP government issued a general amnesty, releasing tens of thousands of prisoners, including leftists arrested after the 1971 military memorandum, in order to consolidate its mass base amid growing tensions with the United States. The government also lifted the ban on opium cultivation imposed by the interim regime at Washington’s request. Less than two months later, on July 12, the United States cut off all aid to Turkey except military assistance. The growing conflict between Ankara and Washington would come to a head just a few weeks later when the Turkish army began invading Cyprus.

164. On July 15, 1974, EOKA-B, led by Greek officers and supported by the National Guard of Greek Cypriot soldiers and the Greek colonels’ junta, staged a military coup against President Makarios III of Cyprus and replaced him with Nikos Sampson. Makarios was a leader of the “Non-Aligned Movement,” a group of countries trying to maneuver between US imperialism and the USSR in international politics. Washington saw Makarios, who was increasingly turning to the USSR, as an obstacle to its imperialist domination in the region. The Greek junta of colonels, looking for a way to deflect the growing popular anger at home, calculated on the neutrality, if not the support, of Washington, and embarked on the Cyprus adventure.

165. The government in Turkey was also looking for ways to distract working people from growing social and economic problems and to advance its interests in the Mediterranean. The Turkish parliament, which met urgently while Prime Minister Ecevit was in London for diplomatic talks, authorized the government to declare general war on July 20, 1974. On the same day, the government declared martial law in 14 provinces and sent troops to Cyprus. While Turkish forces entered parts of Nicosia and Turkish-populated towns such as Kyrenia, a ceasefire was declared on July 22, 1974, in accordance with Article 5 of United Nations Security Council Resolution 353 of July 21. On July 23, the junta in Greece, facing massive social opposition and losing the support of its US-NATO backers, handed over power to Konstantinos Karamanlis, while Glafcos Clerides replaced Sampson in Cyprus. On July 25, when the talks in Geneva ended in a deadlock, the Turkish Armed Forces launched a second operation on August 13, capturing Lefke and Magosa within three days. This second operation led to Greece’s withdrawal from NATO’s military wing on the grounds that it had “failed to stop the conflict between two of its members.”

166. The International Committee of the Fourth International issued a statement following the events in Greece and Cyprus. It linked the coup on the island, which was known to the CIA, to US plans to strengthen its position in the eastern Mediterranean against the Soviet Union and the Arab nationalist regimes. Emphasizing that the governments in Athens, Ankara and Nicosia are bourgeois regimes in the service of imperialism and incapable of playing a progressive role, the statement opposed the partition of the island and demanded the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Cyprus. The IC explained that the Stalinist AKEL’s policy of class collaboration with the Cypriot bourgeoisie in the name of “sacred unity,” which betrayed the Greek and Turkish Cypriot workers, played a decisive role in the unfolding catastrophe. It declared that the only way forward was through the struggle for a united, socialist Cyprus, stating:

The defeat of Makarios is not a defeat for the forces of socialist revolution in Cyprus. On the contrary it is a complete exposure of the rottenness and impotence of the native bourgeoisie and the necessity to replace this regime with a socialist workers’ and farmers’ government uniting the Turkish and Greek masses.^[1]

167. The Athens-backed coup against Makarios and the subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which resulted in the mutual displacement of some 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots, created an ethnic wall between Cypriots that still exists today. With the declaration of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus in February 1975, the division of Cyprus into two ethnically based states was officially realized. This was followed in November 1983 by the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is controlled by Ankara and not recognized by any other country.

168. The only progressive solution to the problems of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot working people as a result of the partition of Cyprus, which reveals the reactionary and bankrupt character of nationalism, is a united and socialist republic of Cyprus. This means establishing the political independence of the Turkish and Greek working class from the Turkish and Greek bourgeoisies, which for decades have repeatedly come to the brink of conflict over their reactionary interests in the Aegean and Mediterranean, and uniting and mobilizing workers in the struggle for a socialist federation between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus.