European Parliament Elections
For the first time Turkish Cypriots were allowed to use their free will in the European Parliament Elections although according to the 1960 Republic of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots has the right to hold the elections within the Turkish Community solely for the 2 seats reserved for them.
Turkish Cypriots are the founder and partner of the 1960 Republic of Cyprus with the ratio of 7 to 3. This means in all levels of the government there should be 7 Greek and 3 Turkish civil servants jointly give service to the public, or at least 2 to 1.
The Constitution of Republic of Cyprus, amended by the Greek Cypriots illegally and unilaterally, after their notorious attack to the Turkish Cypriots for extermination on the night of December 21, 1963. Turkish Cypriots were expelled from the government offices on gun point and the Republic became a unitary Greek Government.
This is one of the reasons why I, and other columnists and politicians define the Republic as “1960 Republic of Cyprus “. Turkey also recognizes the “1960 Republic of Cyprus” but not the existing unitary Greek Republic of Cyprus, which took power after the illegal amendment of the constitution on 1964, without the consent of the Turkish Cypriots.
1960 Republic of Cyprus officially had 6 seats in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 4 seats for the Greek Parliamentarians and 2 for the Turkish Cypriot Parliamentarians. Elections to be held within the Communities separately, Greek Cypriots voting for the 4 Greek Cypriot candidates and Turkish Cypriots for 2 Turkish Cypriot candidates. The ballot boxes were to be placed in the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot regions separately, and the counting in the presence of civil servants of the each community separately.
The 1960 Republic of Cyprus became a member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on September 21,1961 and represented in the Parliament by 2 full members and 2 substitute members from the Greek Cypriots and 1 full member and 1 substitute member from the Turkish Cypriots.
Our very first representatives in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe were Mr. Halit Ali Rıza and Mr. Ümit Süleyman, the first, full member and the latter substitute. Mr. Süleyman’s membership ended on Janury 1, 1963 and Mr. Burhan Nalbantoğlu replaced him. Their membership ended on May 1, 1964.
For the Spring 1964 session of the Assembly, Greek Cyprus Government sent a delegation consisted of 6 Greek Cypriots and no Turkish Cypriots and the credential of this delegation was refused by the assembly due to lacking the Turkish Cypriot representation.
For the Autumn 1964 Session of the assembly, Greek Government sent a delegation consisted of 2 full and 2 substitute members all from Greek Cypriots and the Assembly approved the credentials of the four Greek Cypriot parliamentarians on probation, subject the composition of the Cyprus delegation would include Turkish Cypriots on the next Session of Autumn 1965.
Representation of Cyprus was suspended when the Turkish Cypriot members could not attend the meetings and later totally cancelled. Parliamentary Assembly insisted on full representation of Cyprus rather than only by Greeks Cypriots.
European Parliament made a big mistake of giving credential to the Cyprus delegation consisted of 6 Greek Cypriots. They should have asked from the Greek Cypriot Government as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe did, to include Turkish Cypriots in the delegation. Since that time unfortunately Greek Cypriots are occupying illegally the seats of Turkish Cypriots in the European Parliament.
The European Union’s unilateral support of Greek Cypriots in the island actually delays the solution and damages the relations between EU and Turkish Cypriots.
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The Coup of 1974
The coup d’eta which took place on July 15, 1974 to oust the President Archbishop Makarios was organized solely by the junta in Greece which ended by the intervention of Turkey. It wasn’t he first attempt but the last one against Arcbishhop Makarios.
In addition to the above coup d’eta he survived four assassination attempts which took place between the years 1964 to 1974. On the one before the last, his helicopter was shot down immediately after the takeoff in Nicosia on March 8, 1970. The pilot was seriously wounded but no bullets hit him.
It was believed that the master mind of the assassination was Polycarpos Georgadjihes, the Minister of Interior who was forced to resign due to the tremendous pressure exerted by the Junta in Greece to Makarios. He was in connection also with the extreme nationalists of Cyprus and Junta in Greece without knowing his resignation rooted from there. After a week or so, Polycarpos Georgadjis was found dead outside the village of Mia Milia, shot from the scruff with a single bullet. The execution was very professional and till today the murder case couldn’t unveiled.
The coup staged by EOKA B and officers around 650 from Greece serving in the Greek Cypriot National Guards, put Turkish Cypriots under threat for a possible cleansing afterwards.
After a mere 7 years the President of the self declared “Cyprus Helen Republic” Mr. Nikos Sampson, spilled out his intentions as “Had Turkey not intervened I would not only have proclaimed ENOSIS—I would have annihilated the Turks of Cyprus.” to the correspondent of the Greek newspaper Eleftherotipia in an interview on 26 February 1981.
The Turkish Cypriots, after being forced out of the government offices on gunpoint in 1963, had suffered for eleven years in ghettos squeezed in only a mere 3 percent of the island, under inhuman conditions like the Gazza victims of today.
After quite a short period the notorious Cyprus born Greek military Colonel Georgios Grivas was invited to Cyprus by the president Makarios to lead EOKA to realize the ENOSIS, the Greek Cypriot’s big dream to annex the island of Cyprus to Greece.
Colonel Grivas was a lieutenant in the Greek army totaling over 20 thousand, stepped to the soil of Anatolia in the port of Izmir, on May 15, 1919 with the intentions to occupy the whole of western half of Anatolia.
The retreat of the Greek army after a three years long exploit in the depths of Antolia, from the port of Izmir on August 30, 1922 was quite deplorable. The amount of the surviving soldiers and officers, who managed to stay alive totaled to only one tenth of the gallant Greek Army who landed on 1919. Georgios Grivas was among the retreating Greek soldiers.
His hatred of Turks, twice blinded his eyes and forced him to make strategic military offences during the dark years between 1963 to 1974 that couldn’t be pardoned and he paid for them bitterly.
The first one was on August 8, 1964. With 5,000 infantry, most of them from Greece and armed coast guard home filotilla under his command he attacked to Kokkino (Erenköy), a strategic foothold under the control of 500 Turkish Cypriot students, situated on the north west of the Cyprus island. He did not take into consideration the diplomatic protests of Turkey and Turkish Cypriots. His retreat was quite shameful. The loss of the Greek National Guards was countless.
The second and the last one was on November 15, 1967. Again irrespective of the warnings and diplomatic protests from Turkey and Turkish Cypriots, he attacked to two Turkish villages, Kofunie (Geçitkale) and Ayios Theodoros (Boğaziçi) jointly controlling the main road between Nicosia-Limassol and Larnaca. Although he captured both villages and ruthlessly burned to death 32 Turkish Cypriots by sloshing petrol and setting fire on them, he and the commando division from mainland Greece, totalling 20,000 had to vacate the island, due to the military note given to Greece by Turkey…
He returned back to Cyprus on 1970, acvtually sent by the junta in Greece after three years, to oust the President Makarios.
Ata ATUN
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Very few people have bare idea what it was. Majority of the people had not heard of it yet.
Even most of the Greek Cypriots not heard of it. They innocently think that the Cyprus Problem had started in 1974. The reason I call it innocently is that, they were and still are, deceived by the Greek Ad-ministration or by their good old Politicians and by their ecclesiastics systematically.
The dense Greek propaganda, convinced the world that the problems or the disputes in Cyprus, started by the Turkish intervention in July 1974. Before that the island was so peaceful, that it could be ad-dressed as the paradise on the earth.
But in contrary to this allegations and the false propaganda, Archbishop Makarios II, the first president of the Republic of Cyprus, initially admitted to the press in New York after the coup that there was indeed a plan, before December 1963, to exterminate the whole Turkish Cypriot population overnight in order to remove the impediment to the “Greek national aspirations.”
This was in fact nothing but the Akritas Plan.
It was not some body else but again the “Black Monk” Makarios who had the Akritas Plan prepared, and the underground political and military organization established to support its execution as of December 1963.
Iphestos plans were not ever part of the dispute between Makarios and Ioannides, neither was the “sacred cause” of enosis.
The core of the dispute was about who would do it and be the eternal “Hero” of the Hellenic Nation.
Sampson was installed as the henchman of the Greek junta, Greek and Greek Cypriot armed forces had already started to surround Turkish Cypriot enclaves and villages. Communications had been se-vered, roadblocks set up, martial law and a curfew imposed and the airport sealed off.
The Iphestos Plan had been designed to cut off Turkish Cypriot enclaves and villages from each other, to isolate and besiege them and to deal with each of them individually, but simultaneously. Than erase them from the map and from the registry of the Bureau of vital statistics.
Black Monk Makarios and the Greek military junta, which came to power in 1967, were increasingly locked into a power struggle. This duel turned as of 1973 into a messy feud and a personal fight for survival between the “Black Monk” and Gen. D. Ioannides of the military police, the strong man of the revised junta in Athens.
The origins of the feud ran back to 1963-64 when Ioannides had served as a major in the Greek military contingent in Cyprus, be-friended Nicos Sampson and developed both a plan on how to get rid of the Turkish Cypriots and a hatred for the “treacherous ways of the Black Monk.”
The plan developed by Ioannides and his friend Sampson back in 1963 was, “to attack the Turkish Cypriots suddenly, all over the island, and eliminate them once for all”
The truth about the meeting in 1963 between the Black Monk Makarios and Sampson was somewhat different.
In 1976, that is two years after the coup had taken place and the Greek junta gone, he accused Gen. Ioannides of being “criminal” and alleged that, “he couldn’t even conceive the idea of killing so many innocent people”.
This allegation is of course out of character and not supported at all by the facts, by the way Black Monk Makarios behaved towards the Turkish Cypriot people under the Akritas Plan.
It was Makarios himself who had declared in 1964, in the course of the brutal Greek and Greek Cypriot onslaught against Erenkoy (Kokkina), that, “he would order an attack on every Turkish village, and Turkey would find no Turkish Cypriots left alive if they landed!” .
Quite scared of his tyrant attitudes towards Turkish Cypriots, he knew Turkey would step in one day, to save the lives of their collateral, which he faced with it in 1974…
Ata ATUN
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Is Varosha Key for the unification
For the past couple of years I read and hear from the Greek Cypriot politicians genius ideas and proposals about the Varosha. Some stubbornly states the “return of Varosha would ease the Cyprus issue”, some says “it would be a catalyst for the solution of long standing Cyprus problem.”
Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades said couple of days before, “noting that the priority of Famagusta was perhaps the catalyst for the long-standing Cyprus problem.”
And the pseudo Mayor of Famagusta Alexis Galanos mumbled similar words in Dherynia last week, stating “Opening the fenced – off part of the city of Famagusta in the occupied areas, known as Varosha, is key for the reunification of Cyprus.”
I wonder how they and the rest of Greek politicians do not remember the “Kuchuk Kaimakli” case.
On the eve of December 21, 1963 the organized armed Greek Cypriot militia as per the notorious Akritas Organisation, set up by the than EOKA leaders like Tassos Papadopulos, Spyros Kyprianou, Nikos Sampson – the president of the “Cyprus Hellen Republic” declared immediately after the July 15, 1974 coup- and others and the than president of the Republic Archishop Makarios as its invisible leader, attacked to Turkish quarters and villages all over the island. Hundreds of Turkish Cypriot children, women, elderly and civilians brutally exterminated during this last week of the year 1963, under the freezing cold of month December.
The Greek Cypriot irregular and illegal army attacked to Kuchuk Kaimakli as well. The commander of the Greek Cypriot irregular army was the notorious murderer Nikos Sampson. His fame was based on shooting from behind the defenseless and innocent wife and children of British soldiers and officers, shopping or walking in the Ledra Street of Nicosia, during the British Colonial period, second half of the 1950′s.
The troops of Nikos Sampson, invaded the area after a daylong severe clashes. The houses were looted first and then burned, some razed to the ground as well. The mosque was totally destroyed. In the cold, rainy and breezing days of December 1963, the smoke rising from the burned houses lasted for weeks. It was as if a living night mare.
The unfortunate natives of Kuchuk Kaimakli had to flee leaving all their belongings, wealth, memories, future dreams, loved ones and the than civilized life behind, under the fear of death. The only place they can shelter were the two cinema halls within the Turkish quarter of the walled city of Nicosia. They stayed there for couple of months with no electricity, water, kitchen, bathroom or even a proper toilet. None of the Turkish Cypriot natives of Kutchuk Kaimakli allowed by the Greek yoke to return back to their homes. It was strictly prohibited.
Republic of Turkey sent tents, food, clothing and money to these unfortunate victims of Greek Cypriots, immediately after the attacks to give them a push to survive.
After five severe and harsh years under the inhuman yoke of Greek Cypriots, finally the “peace negotiations” between the two people of the island started in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon in 1968. The second meeting held in Ledra Palace, the than HQ of UN situated within the buffer zone. The late Mr. R. R. Denktash was speaker of the Cyprus Turkish Communal Chamber and the late Mr. G. Klerides was the Greek Cypriot Communal Chamber/House of Representatives.
During one of these meetings Mr. Denktash requested permission from Mr. Klerides for the return of Kuchuk Kaimakli immigrants back to their homes. The answer of Mr. Klerides was a big “NO”, following his historical comment “we conquered Kutchuk Kaimakli with blood and can only give it back with blood“. He meant clearly “come and get it if you are brave enough”…
How in the hell the Greek Cypriot politicians allege “Opening the fenced – off part of the city of Famagusta in the occupied areas, known as Varosha, is key for the reunification of Cyprus” while they did not allow any Turkish Cypriot to return back to their houses during the dark years of 1963-1974. If there were no Turkish intervention on July 20, 1974, Kuchuk Kaimakli would still be the ghost town, probably together with the others after July 15, 1974 coup, after the cleansing the Turkish Cypriots operation as per the Iphestos Plan….
Ata ATUN
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15 July 1974 Turmoil (2/2)
Rejections of Makarios’s proposals for the amendment of the Constitution of Republic of Cyprus ignited the armed assaults of Greek Cypriots towards Turkish Cypriots with the intentions to convert the island into a sole Greek Cypriot soil
The Turkish Cypriot Member of Parliaments and Civil servants were expelled from their offices at gunpoint. Armed Greek Cypriot militia attacked to Turkish villages and as a result 103 Turkish villages had to be abandoned by the Turkish in order to stay alive. These immigrants had no food, no house to shelter, no medicine, no money, no hope and nothing at all to live decently as human beings.
On March 1964 the UN Security Council (UN SC) decided to send an international peace-keeping force to the island to lower the tension between the two communities.
After three and a half years, in April 1967 with a successfull coup d’etat in Greece the regime turned into the hands of military Junta under the leadership of Colonel Papadopoulos.
Although he and his military colleagues wished for the Union of Cyprus to Greece, Makarios, with his harsh experience of the past three and a half years in the island, did not believe in this utopic wish and continued advocating for an independent Greek Cyprus under his and Greek Cypriot’s sole control.
The Junta of Greece sent another notorious officer, Yiorgos Grivas, who was the founder and the leader of EOKA (National Organisation of Cypriot Struggles) an illegal armed militia, which was established in 1950 in order to realize the union to Greece, to the island on August 1971. He immediately formed a pro-Enosis underground organization called EOKA B and began secret, underground campaigns against Makarios. His aim was to replace him with a Greek Cypriot nationalist supporting union with Greece.
EOKA B by started terrorist acts against Makarios and his government on the winter of 1972. Junta leader was overthrown by Dimitrios Ioannidis in November 1973 who hated Makarios. He put forward an aggressive attitude towards Makarios which ignited and spirited up the EOKA B nationalists. Upon the death of Grivas in January 1974, the cooperation between EOKA B and Junta became more dense and Junta managed to take over the control of National Guards, official army of the Greek Cypriot community and Republic of Greek Cyprus.
On July 2, 1974 Arcbishop Makarios, the then President of the Republic of Greek Cyprus sent an official letter to Gizikis, the figurehead President of Greece, accusing the junta organizing negative campaigns and plottings against him. He demanded immediate withdrawal of the Greek officers assigned to the National Guard of Cyprus.
Only after a mere thirteen days, upon the instructions from the military Junta in Greece the National Guard of Cyprus under the command of the officers from the Greek army sent from Greece overthrew the President Makarios and established “The Hellenic Republic of Cyprus”.
So is the story behind the July 15, 1974 coup d’etat which messed up the island of Cyprus.
Turkey had to intervene to avoid the application of the IPHESTOS PLAN by “The Hellenic Republic of Cyprus”, which drafted in detail how, when, where and by which National Guard troop the Turkish Cypriots would be exterminated…..
Ata ATUN
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