KurtFF8
20th March 2013, 15:02
Since the Cyprus financial crisis is an important news topic this week, I figured that reviewing the history of the island could be helpful. This is an article (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n08/perry-anderson/the-divisions-of-cyprus) by Perry Anderson from 2008 in the London Review of Books. I read it around then and remember it being quite informative about the history of divided Cyprus and how the Cold War played an important role.
It's quite long but here are a few points that may be helpful:
The Divisions of Cyprus
Perry Anderson
Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels. The furthest east of all the EU’s new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them.
Cyprus is, in truth, an anomaly in the new Europe. Not, however, for reasons Brussels cares to dwell on. This is an EU member-state a large part of which is under long-standing occupation by a foreign army. Behind tanks and artillery, a population of settlers has been planted that is relatively more numerous than the settlers on the West Bank, without a flicker of protest from the Council or Commission. From its territory are further subtracted – not leased, but held in eminent domain – military enclaves three times the size of Guantánamo, under the control of a fellow member of the EU, the United Kingdom.
The origins of this situation date back over a century, to the era of high Victorian imperialism. In 1878 the island was acquired by Britain from the Ottoman Empire as a side-payment for the Turkish recovery of three Armenian provinces ceded to Russia, and restored thanks to Disraeli at the Conference of Berlin. Coveted as a naval platform for British power in the Middle East, the new colony had from antiquity been Greek in population and culture, with a Turkish minority introduced after Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. But in the 19th century, distant four hundred miles from Greece, it remained unaffected by the national awakening that produced, first Greek independence itself, then successive risings against Ottoman rule in Crete and its union with Greece before the First World War. In Cyprus, popular unrest did not materialise for another half-century. Eventually, in 1931, desire for an equivalent Enosis boiled over in a spontaneous island-wide rebellion against British rule that left Government House in flames and required the descent of bombers, cruisers and marines to quell. Thereafter, Britain’s response to this outbreak of feeling was unique in the annals of the empire: a colonial regime that ruled by decree until the day the flag would be formally hauled down in Nicosia.
It was not until the postwar period, however, that a national movement really crystallised as an organised force on the island, in a strange mixture of times: post-dated in emergence, pre-dated in form. Pan-hellenism was in many ways, as Tom Nairn pointed out long ago, ‘the original European model of successful nationalist mobilisation’, producing in the Greek Wars of independence the first victorious movement of national liberation after the Congress of Vienna. Yet, he went on, ‘the very priority of Greek nationalism imposed a certain characteristic penalty on it,’ conferring on Panhellenic ideology increasingly ‘anachronistic and outdated’ features by the 20th century. But it was still quite powerful enough to capture the expression of popular revolt on the island after the Second World War. Once they awoke politically, the mass of the population ‘found the fully fledged, hypnotic dream of Greek nationalism already there, beckoning them. It was inevitable that they should answer that call to the heirs of Byzantium, rather than attempt to cultivate a patriotism of their own.’ Union, not independence, was the natural goal of this self-determination....
The Labour government in London, naturally, ignored this expression of the democratic will, its local functionaries dismissing it as ‘meaningless’. But in the shepherd of the referendum, Michael Mouskos, it had met with more than it reckoned. Five months later, he was elected head of the church, at the age of 37, as Archbishop Makarios III. Son of a goatherd, he had gone from a seminary in Cyprus to university in Athens and postgraduate studies in Boston, when he was suddenly recalled to the see of Kitium, and put in charge of the political hub of the ethnarchy, where he rapidly showed his rhetorical and tactical gifts. The referendum had demonstrated a general will. Over the next four years, Makarios set about organising it. Conservative peasant associations, right-wing trade unions and a popular youth group were built into a powerful mass base for the national struggle, directly under the aegis of the Church. Mobilisation at home was accompanied by pressure abroad, in the first place on Athens to take up the issue of self-determination in Cyprus at the UN, but also – departing from the traditions of the Church – rallying support from Arab countries in the region.
None of this made any impression on London. For Britain, Cyprus was a Mediterranean stronghold it had not the slightest intention of relinquishing. Indeed, upgrading its strategic role as soon as British garrisons in the Canal Zone were judged insufficiently secure, the High Command in the Middle East was transferred to the island in 1954. A year later, the colonial secretary – now Conservative – told the Commons that possessions like Cyprus could never expect self-determination. Nor, since London refused to allow any legislative assembly in which the four-fifths of the population in favour of Enosis would enjoy a majority, was there any question even of self-government. The outlook at Whitehall remained: we hold what we have. If public justification was needed, Eden would provide one that was crude enough: ‘No Cyprus, no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil. No oil, unemployment and hunger in Britain. It is as simple as that.’ Title to the island could dispense with normal sophistries: it was not arguable, a straightforward matter of force majeure.
Faced with an open assertion of indefinite colonial rule, pruned even of constitutional fig-leaves, the national cause in Cyprus was inevitably driven to arms. These could only be secured from one source, the mainland. In Athens, a regime of the authoritarian right was now in power, presiding over a system of vindictive discrimination and persecution that would last another thirty years: when the Church turned for support in Greece, what it found there could only be of one political complexion. After four years of trying in vain to arouse international opinion to bring pressure to bear on Britain, in early 1954 Makarios met secretly with a retired colonel of the Greek army, George Grivas, to plan a guerrilla campaign to liberate the island.
It's quite long but here are a few points that may be helpful:
The Divisions of Cyprus
Perry Anderson
Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels. The furthest east of all the EU’s new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them.
Cyprus is, in truth, an anomaly in the new Europe. Not, however, for reasons Brussels cares to dwell on. This is an EU member-state a large part of which is under long-standing occupation by a foreign army. Behind tanks and artillery, a population of settlers has been planted that is relatively more numerous than the settlers on the West Bank, without a flicker of protest from the Council or Commission. From its territory are further subtracted – not leased, but held in eminent domain – military enclaves three times the size of Guantánamo, under the control of a fellow member of the EU, the United Kingdom.
The origins of this situation date back over a century, to the era of high Victorian imperialism. In 1878 the island was acquired by Britain from the Ottoman Empire as a side-payment for the Turkish recovery of three Armenian provinces ceded to Russia, and restored thanks to Disraeli at the Conference of Berlin. Coveted as a naval platform for British power in the Middle East, the new colony had from antiquity been Greek in population and culture, with a Turkish minority introduced after Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. But in the 19th century, distant four hundred miles from Greece, it remained unaffected by the national awakening that produced, first Greek independence itself, then successive risings against Ottoman rule in Crete and its union with Greece before the First World War. In Cyprus, popular unrest did not materialise for another half-century. Eventually, in 1931, desire for an equivalent Enosis boiled over in a spontaneous island-wide rebellion against British rule that left Government House in flames and required the descent of bombers, cruisers and marines to quell. Thereafter, Britain’s response to this outbreak of feeling was unique in the annals of the empire: a colonial regime that ruled by decree until the day the flag would be formally hauled down in Nicosia.
It was not until the postwar period, however, that a national movement really crystallised as an organised force on the island, in a strange mixture of times: post-dated in emergence, pre-dated in form. Pan-hellenism was in many ways, as Tom Nairn pointed out long ago, ‘the original European model of successful nationalist mobilisation’, producing in the Greek Wars of independence the first victorious movement of national liberation after the Congress of Vienna. Yet, he went on, ‘the very priority of Greek nationalism imposed a certain characteristic penalty on it,’ conferring on Panhellenic ideology increasingly ‘anachronistic and outdated’ features by the 20th century. But it was still quite powerful enough to capture the expression of popular revolt on the island after the Second World War. Once they awoke politically, the mass of the population ‘found the fully fledged, hypnotic dream of Greek nationalism already there, beckoning them. It was inevitable that they should answer that call to the heirs of Byzantium, rather than attempt to cultivate a patriotism of their own.’ Union, not independence, was the natural goal of this self-determination....
The Labour government in London, naturally, ignored this expression of the democratic will, its local functionaries dismissing it as ‘meaningless’. But in the shepherd of the referendum, Michael Mouskos, it had met with more than it reckoned. Five months later, he was elected head of the church, at the age of 37, as Archbishop Makarios III. Son of a goatherd, he had gone from a seminary in Cyprus to university in Athens and postgraduate studies in Boston, when he was suddenly recalled to the see of Kitium, and put in charge of the political hub of the ethnarchy, where he rapidly showed his rhetorical and tactical gifts. The referendum had demonstrated a general will. Over the next four years, Makarios set about organising it. Conservative peasant associations, right-wing trade unions and a popular youth group were built into a powerful mass base for the national struggle, directly under the aegis of the Church. Mobilisation at home was accompanied by pressure abroad, in the first place on Athens to take up the issue of self-determination in Cyprus at the UN, but also – departing from the traditions of the Church – rallying support from Arab countries in the region.
None of this made any impression on London. For Britain, Cyprus was a Mediterranean stronghold it had not the slightest intention of relinquishing. Indeed, upgrading its strategic role as soon as British garrisons in the Canal Zone were judged insufficiently secure, the High Command in the Middle East was transferred to the island in 1954. A year later, the colonial secretary – now Conservative – told the Commons that possessions like Cyprus could never expect self-determination. Nor, since London refused to allow any legislative assembly in which the four-fifths of the population in favour of Enosis would enjoy a majority, was there any question even of self-government. The outlook at Whitehall remained: we hold what we have. If public justification was needed, Eden would provide one that was crude enough: ‘No Cyprus, no certain facilities to protect our supply of oil. No oil, unemployment and hunger in Britain. It is as simple as that.’ Title to the island could dispense with normal sophistries: it was not arguable, a straightforward matter of force majeure.
Faced with an open assertion of indefinite colonial rule, pruned even of constitutional fig-leaves, the national cause in Cyprus was inevitably driven to arms. These could only be secured from one source, the mainland. In Athens, a regime of the authoritarian right was now in power, presiding over a system of vindictive discrimination and persecution that would last another thirty years: when the Church turned for support in Greece, what it found there could only be of one political complexion. After four years of trying in vain to arouse international opinion to bring pressure to bear on Britain, in early 1954 Makarios met secretly with a retired colonel of the Greek army, George Grivas, to plan a guerrilla campaign to liberate the island.