Get Real! wrote:My priority is to analyze and understand as many of the intricate details as possible, of the history of this God forsaken island for my sake, and that of any one else who may be interested, and I honestly don't care if bringing something to the surface serves someone's cause today or not, as long as it is FACTS that surface.
Been trying to find authoritative information on the "Referendum for ENOSIS". Will this do? Below is an extract taken from:
http://www.eumed.net/entelequia/pdf/2007/e05a02.pdf
In 1948 the Greek Orthodox Church rejected a selfgovernment offer made by the British government on the grounds that selfgovernment would be “the grave of Enosis”. The Communists grabbed the chance, and on 23 November 1949 the municipal councils of Larnaca, Famagusta, Limassol and Morphou, largely controlled by the Communists, announced that they would send a memorandum to the UN Security Council denouncing British rule and demanding Enosis. Just three days later, on 26 November, AKEL officially endorsed this move. The Communists’ petition was duly sent to the United Nations.
As a corollary, the Church of Cyprus was stymied; and on 1 December of that same year Makarios, the metropolitan of Citium, the very one who was later to become Archbishop and President of Cyprus, put forward the idea of conducting a plebiscite on the Enosis question. His proposal was accepted. So, on 8 December 1950, Makarios II published an encyclical to be read all over the Island: Enosis was regarded as the sole aim of the “Cypriots’ struggle”; and the Cypriots were invited to proclaim their proEnosis sentiment through a plebiscite’s “peaceful battle”. The plebiscite was to be held from 15 January 1950. Nonetheless, on 5 January, a broadcast in Greek was monitored from Sofia, the main passage of which read as follows:
“January 15th will be a historic day for the Cypriot people… On that day the whole of Cyprus by plebiscite will state its just demand for union with its mother country, Greece, and will strengthen its decision to fight for breaking of the Imperialist bonds and attaining its national freedom and restoration…In spite of all the difficulties created for the Cyprus question by monarchofascism [i.e. the Greek government and state apparatus]…, and in spite of the intensity of the British Imperialism in its determination to keep the land as a military base, the Cypriot people not only refused to give up the fight, but rallying around their party, the Progressive Workers Party [= AKEL], they have intensified their struggle. This heavy pressure by the popular masses has forced the rightist Ethnarchy [i.e. the Church of Cyprus] to proclaim a unionist plebiscite….; has forced it [i.e. the Church] to submit to AKEL…”.
So all was light: After Makarios II had refused selfgoverned for Cyprus, the Communists seized the chance to try to remove the Church from the leadership of the Enosis movement. Moreover, the future Archbishop Makarios III helped them by putting forward the idea of a plebiscite. And the Iron Curtain countries, of which Bulgaria was the mouthpiece in the Balkans, grabbed the chance to create an acute problem within the Western Alliance. For the Greek Civil War between the Government Army and the Communist guerrillas had come to an end only in August 1949; and for Communists, both Cypriot and European, the Enosis movement was a vehicle for them to reenter into the political life of the Greek microcosm.
The point is, however, that the rôle of Makarios, metropolitan of Citium, was more than ambiguous: had the Communists been left alone in their UN memorandum proposal, the whole plan of theirs would have been wrecked. As it was, it was he who pushed the Church to adopt a plebiscite initiative and mutatis mutandis to accept AKEL as a champion of the Enosis movement. And so the quasilatent alliance between Makarios, future Archbishop and President of Cyprus, and the Communists sealed the fate of Cyprus politics for the worse. For it was under the aegis of the Autocephalous Church of Cyprus that AKEL would develop rapidly into a catalyst for the political life in the Eastern Mediterranean area.
Muddy Waters
The plebiscite was held; and it was a vindication of the prognosis made by its organizers: the overwhelming majority of GreekCypriots voted for Enosis. Nonetheless, had the Communists not taken part in the “peaceful battle” of the plebiscite, it is doubtful whether the breathtaking majority of the “Nova Justiniana” Archbishop’s flock would have endorsed the Enosis option. Even so, Makarios II reported the result to Sir Andrew Wright, Governor of the Island; and on 2 March, 1950, he sent him another letter which read as follows:
“We are in receipt of your letter… in reply to our document… reporting to Your Excellency and, through you, to the British Government, the result of the plebiscite conducted… on January 15th , 1950, and calling the Great Britain… to conform to the demand of the people of Cyprus… for union with their Mother Greece. We are sorry that by that reply the British Government, against every moral law and disrespectful of the principle of the peoples’ selfdetermination and the Declaration of Human Rights, is disregarding the most just demand of the people of Cyprus to live free by uniting with their Mother Greece”...
This letter disregarded two major factors, namely the Turkish Cypriots and the international obligations of the United Kingdom. In point of fact, according to a secret agreement drawn up in May 1916 by representatives of the British and the French governments, “His Majesty’s Government undertook never to enter negotiations with a view to the cession of Cyprus to third Power without the previous consent of the French Government”. Was that 1916 secret treaty still valid in the early 1950s? It is hard to say with certainty. Nevertheless, France was then clearly opposing any interference with the relations of nonselfgoverned territories and their administering Power; and given the international tension which was coming to a head in 1950, it is beyond doubt that, even if the UK government had then been willing to acquiesce in the Enosis demand, the union of the Island with Greece would have been difficult to achieve that time – on the grounds of the Western Block’s “common security”. And so, the only palpable outcome of the plebiscite agitation was that a Cypriot “embassy”, headed by Kyprianos, metropolitan of Kyrenia, deposited the documents containing the results of the plebiscite at the UN Secretariat, in the United States. Nonetheless, the TurkishCypriots had already countered: in April of that same year an appeal signed by the Turkish National Party and other organizations representing the Turks of the Island was submitted to the United Nations. According to them, the union of the Island with Greece was most likely to bring with it financial ruin, racial and social disorder, and even “ideological civil war”, given that “one half of the Greeks of Cyprus” were “Communists”. The corollary was that Cyprus should remain under British administration – unless returned to Turkey, exsovereign Power and nearest neighbour of the Island. And so the United Nations turned out to be a major arena in the Cyprus struggles and conflicts to be endured. In retrospect, it was for the worst the Island was henceforth to be floundering in muddy waters.
Author: Dimitris Michalopoulos. Academic director, Historical Institute for studies on Eleutherios Veniselos and his Era, 2 Chr. Lada str.,GR-10561 Athens, Greece (e-mail:
[email protected]). Dimitris Michalopoulos was born in Athens in 1952. He studied history in the University of Athens and in the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, inParis, where he obtained his doctorate in 1978. During the years 1980-1982 he served in the office ofCostantine Karamanlis, then President of the Hellenic Republic. Since 1982 he has been lecturer and since 1988 assistant professor in Diplomatic History and Greek Foreign Policy at the University of Salonika. From 1990 up to 2000 he was the director of the Museum of the City of Athens.
