Cyprus has no shortage of histories

What it lacks is a shared understanding of them

Three recent books help explain why consensus on the nature of the Cyprus problem, let alone the solution, remains so difficult. And, perhaps, why dozens of UN diplomats have failed to find a solution that is acceptable to both Greek and Turkish Cypriots in 62 years.

Mustafa Ergun Olgun’s Betrayal, The Other Side of the Cyprus Case, Marilena Varnava’s Cyprus Before 1974, The Prelude to Crisis, and Andreas Theophanous’s What Really Happened in Cyprus approach the Cyprus problem from different starting points.

They do not tell the same story. They do not begin from the same tragedy. That is precisely why they are important to read.

All three books have depth to them with essential detail over hundreds of pages, so they take some reading. I can, however, see that Cypriot, UN, EU, UK, Turkish and Greek officials, politicians, academics, journalists and keen amateurs like myself interested in the political history of Cyprus may well find them particularly useful to read. 

Known to virtually all Turkish Cypriots, Olgun lived through the Cyprus conflict, was wounded in it, and later served in senior negotiating roles under Rauf Denktash, Dervis Eroglu and Ersin Tatar. His book is the most encyclopaedic account I have encountered of the Turkish Cypriot perspective on the history of the Cyprus problem. 

For Olgun, everything begins with the 1960 Republic, which he presents as a partnership state founded by two politically equal peoples and built on a constitutional compromise agreed by the two communities, Turkey, Greece and the UK. Turkish Cypriots were not simply a protected minority, but co-founders. If they were merely a minority, later constitutional changes could be called reform. If they were co-founders, the unilateral removal of their political equality was dispossession.

This is why 1963 is decisive in Olgun’s account. He treats the 13 proposed constitutional changes as a direct attack on Turkish Cypriot equality. The violence which followed and the flight of 25,000 Turkish Cypriot refugees into enclaves in 1963-64 are presented as the result of existential fear and lost confidence in the state.

For Olgun, the betrayal then became international. UN Security Council Resolution 186 recognised the Greek Cypriot-only administration as the government of all Cyprus and all Cypriots.

He explains that four decades later, Turkish Cypriots voted yes to the UN Annan Plan while Greek Cypriots voted no, yet the Greek Cypriot side acceded to the EU and Turkish Cypriots remained isolated and deprived of their inherent equality. Promises by the UN and the EU not to penalise, but to help Turkish Cypriots for supporting the peace plan were not kept.

This also shapes Olgun’s interpretation of 1974. He does not see Turkey’s military intervention as the beginning of the Cyprus problem, but as the consequence of what had already happened. The coup of July 15, 1974, backed by the mainland Greek junta and followed by the installation of Nikos Sampson, is presented as proof that Turkish Cypriots faced another existential threat.

For Olgun, the creation of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus resulted from the Greek Cypriot rejection of equality-based power sharing and pursuit of hegemony. The island’s future, he argues, depends on equal rights and status for both peoples.

Marilena Varnava’s book, an academic study based on doctoral research and published by IB Tauris, performs a different task. It is not a Turkish Cypriot polemic and it is not a Greek Cypriot defence. Its great value is that it slows the Cyprus story down. Many accounts rush from 1960 to 1974 too quickly. Varnava refuses that shortcut. Her subject is the decade in which the two communities became increasingly separated in administration, economy, security and psychology.

Varnava accepts that the 1960 Republic had fragile foundations. The Constitution required compromise, but the political culture of the island had not produced the habits of compromise. Greek Cypriots regarded many Turkish Cypriot constitutional rights as excessive and obstructive. Turkish Cypriots regarded them, including the vice president’s veto, as safeguards against domination.

Her treatment of Resolution 186 is valuable because she notes that Greek Cypriots saw it as one of their greatest diplomatic victories. What Olgun sees as international betrayal was therefore also understood by Greek Cypriots as diplomatic success. The same decision which strengthened one side’s international standing deepened the other side’s sense of exclusion.

Her account of the 1963 to 1964 movement of Turkish Cypriots into enclaves is more layered than Olgun’s, but it does not dismiss their suffering. She recognises that Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT) pressure may have played a part in some cases, while also giving weight to fear, violence, looting, displacement, damaged property and the failure of the Greek Cypriot-only state to provide confidence. Her account shows how suffering, mistrust and fear interacted with political strategy.

Professor Andreas Theophanous at the University of Nicosia, writes from a position committed to the Republic of Cyprus and Cypriot Hellenism. His emotional centre is 1974, with Turkey’s military incursion, refugees, missing persons, economic collapse and what he sees as the continuing threat to the Republic at the heart of his analysis.

Yet Theophanous is also sharply critical of Greek Cypriot and Greek failures. He criticises fanaticism, intolerance, poor political judgement, Eoka B, the Greek junta and the failure of Athens to defend Cyprus.

For him, the 1960 Republic was not the ideal partnership state described by Olgun. It was an imposed and deeply problematic constitutional arrangement. Makarios’ 13 points are therefore presented as an attempt to make the state functional, although he recognises that the Turkish side saw them as a coup against the philosophy of the Constitution.

Theophanous’ account of the road to the 1974 coup is interesting. He treats Eoka B and the Greek junta as disastrous forces which betrayed Cyprus and Hellenism and gave Turkey the opportunity it had been waiting for to intervene.

Beyond this, Theophanous argues for a more pragmatic and strategically disciplined future approaches to the Cyprus problem, rooted in expertise, dialogue and realism.

Read together, the three books do not give us a single agreed Cyprus history. But they show that Cyprus cannot be understood from one date or one tragedy alone.

Cyprus has no shortage of histories. What it lacks is a shared understanding of them. The day must surely come when there is an attempt at “truth and reconciliation” between the two communities.