A Bad Show? The United States and the 1974 Cyprus Crisis

Twenty-five Toyotas, most of them Corollas, are parked in the dark and smelly basement of Dhrakran Ouzounian's car dealership in downtown Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. The cars are brand new; each odometer displays 32.9 miles, the exact distance from the port town of Famagusta to the center of Nicosia. Yet they are all 1974 models.

Ouzounian's dusty but fully functional Toyotas constitute a hidden emblem of the stalemated political situation on this eastern Mediterranean island. For more than a quarter century, the cars have been left stranded in the United Nations-controlled buffer zone that slices Nicosia, as well as the rest of the island, into two parts. Back in August 1974, the establishment of the cease-fire line marked the end of a thirty-day period of state-sponsored violence. In short, a Greek-led coup against the Cypriot government and the installation of puppet regime prompted Turkey to intervene and eventually occupy 37 percent of the island, citing the vulnerable situation of the ethnic Turks in Cyprus. Defeated and humiliated, mainland Greeks, Greek Cypriots, and Greek Americans directed their anger at the U.S. government, whom they identified as the ultimate villain. As history continues to haunt Cyprus, Hellenic bitterness toward the alleged destructive role played by the United States in 1974 remains intense. Eugene Rossides, a leader of the Greek American lobby in Washington since 1974, for example, claims that then secretary of state Henry Kissinger "instigated" the Greek-engineered coup and "initiated" the Turkish invasion. ¹ The premise of the argument is that Kissinger preferred dictatorships and shunned democracies. Many critics of the Nixon-Kissinger style of foreign policy echo this Hellenic analysis.

The principal U.S. policy makers of the time repudiate these accusations. Spearheaded by Kissinger, these senior officials maintain that they were content with the situation on Cyprus in the early seventies and that they did not see the crisis coming. They also plead that they rigorously tried to calm the Turks but were unable to stop them.

The ongoing historical debate revolves around two questions: First, what was the U.S. policy toward Cyprus before and during the crisis? More precisely, how was that policy formulated, what did it seek to accomplish, and how was it implemented? Second, how did this policy affect the flow of events in summer 1974?

Backtracking: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Cyprus

While the final phases of Watergate were causing turmoil in Washington in spring and early summer 1974, relative calm characterized the surface situation in Nicosia. Intercommunal talks had been moving forward, albeit slowly, for some six years, but many Turkish Cypriots, who were outnumbered by the Greek Cypriots by a ratio of four-to-one, remained unhappy. After violent clashes in the mid-sixties, nearly half of them had moved from ethnically mixed villages to armed enclaves, to which Greek Cypriots had no access. In practice, two governments existed on the island. Some Greek Cypriots sought change, as well. These right-wingers labeled President Makarios and his followers as traitors for no longer actively pursuing enosis, or union with Greece, the motherland.

To the United States, these local seeds of instability were of little concern. Indeed, the Nixon administration prided itself for having brought (a fragile) peace to the eastern Mediterranean. Kissinger's lone-cowboy shuttle had enhanced U.S. prestige in the Near East, and along the shores of the Mediterranean the Soviets were nowhere to be seen. After a long-standing row over opium, U.S.-Turkish relations had improved measurably. The United States also enjoyed cordial relations with the ruling military junta in Greece. Although Ankara and Athens, as always, viewed each other with suspicion, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's southern flank seemed as secure as ever. The United States had every reason to be "happy with the status in the region," as Kissinger's assistant on...