2. BACKGROUND TO THE DISPUTE
18. Cyprus is an island of only 3,572 square miles lying about 80 miles west of the coast of Syria, less than 50 miles south of Turkey, but almost 250 miles east of Rhodes, the nearest island forming part of the Greek Republic. The population of Cyprus is currently estimated to be about 700,000 of whom - despite the island's proximity to Turkey and distance from Greece - about 80 per cent are of predominantly Greek origin, using Greek as their mother tongue and largely adhering to the Greek Orthodox faith. The Turkish Cypriot population, speaking Turkish as its mother tongue and overwhelmingly Muslim, makes up most of the remarking 20 per cent of the population.14
19. Between 1517 (when Cyprus was conquered from the Venetians) and 1878, the island was part of the Ottoman Empire, but the Greek language, culture and religion were nonetheless generally allowed to flourish, despite some violent persecution of Greek Cypriot leaders, particularly during the Greek War of Independence. In 1878 de facto control passed to Great Britain, in return for British protection for the Ottoman Empire against Russia, and in 1914 Britain formally annexed the island in response to Turkish support for Germany in the First World War. During this first phase of British rule there was already considerable support amongst Greek Cypriots for union with Greece (Enosis) and in 1915 the British Government actually offered Cyprus to Greece in return for Greek support in the War. When, in 1917, Greece finally did enter the War on the allied side, the offer was no longer open.
20. British sovereignty in Cyprus was formally recognised by Turkey in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, and thereafter Cyprus was governed as a British colony until August 1960. In 1931, following rioting in favour of Enosis, the elected Legislative Council was abolished, and Cyprus was thereafter prevented - largely through Greek Cypriot opposition - from experiencing any form of democratic self-government (except at a municipal level) before independence.
The "independence" settlement
21. The Cypriot population acquired a form of independence, and sovereignty over 97 per cent of the island, in August 1960. The eventual settlement was largely drawn up not by direct negotiations between the United Kingdom (as the colonial power) and the Cypriot people, but by negotiations between the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey, and was subsequently approved (with some amendments) by the United Kingdom and the non-elected leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.
22. It was an unusual form of independence in many other respects.15 First, the settlement reserved to the United Kingdom continuing sovereignty over 3 per cent of the island territory, in the so-called Sovereign Base Areas at Akrotiri and Dhekelia, together with the use for an indefinite period and for primarily military purposes of a substantial number of "retained sites" in the territory of the Republic, currently reduced to 17 in number. Second, under the Treaty of Alliance, it specifically sanctioned the stationing of 950 mainland Greek troops, and 650 mainland Turkish troops, on the territory of the new Republic. Third, it prohibited the amendment of the "Basic Articles" of the Constitution by the Cypriot people without the concurrence of the three "Guarantor" powers. Fourth, it offered the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot peoples a system of government so complex that it would have presented a serious challenge for even the most sophisticated and experienced political community. Sophisticated the Cypriots, of both communities, undoubtedly were. Politically experienced they were not. Fifth, the settlement gave the three "Guarantor" powers - Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom - open-ended responsibilities (and, more important, rights) to intervene either collectively or unilaterally to maintain the situation created under the settlement. Finally, and perhaps most important, the settlement specifically prohibited what had become the dominant political aspirations of the two Cypriot communities - either union with another state, or partition of the island.
23. The 1960 settlement has been widely criticised as unworkable, but there is no reason for the United Kingdom to accept exclusive responsibility for the Treaties and the Constitution themselves, or for the fact that in practice they did not secure a stable future for Cyprus. Unless the United Kingdom had been prepared to ride out the international storm which would have resulted from an outright refusal to grant independence to this European colony (itself an aberration), some form of compromise was the only option open to it in the face of Greek Cypriot demands for "self-determination" (which would have meant Enosis) and the Turkish Cypriot refusal to be absorbed into Greece. The final solution of the British Government of the time - to recognise the locus of both the Greek and Turkish Governments, and to encourage and support them in reaching a compromise settlement for Cyprus which avoided the extremes of both Enosis and partition - was an honourable attempt to fulfil British obligations to both communities in Cyprus and to achieve a solution which, with Greek and Turkish backing, could have defused the intercommunal violence and terrorism which then threatened to overwhelm the Cypriot people.
24. That the 1960 settlement failed was partly the result of its complexity, and of the many opportunities it offered for institutional confrontation between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. It was also largely the result of a lack of commitment by Cypriot leaders - and particularly Greek Cypriot leaders - to give the new constitutional arrangements a fair trial. With hindsight it is easy to see that Cyprus had imposed on it - for generally honourable reasons - a form of "independence" with which it was unable to cope, and which was ultimately destined to fail. It is much more difficult to describe a settlement which, at that time, would have been equally acceptable to the two Cypriot communities and their "motherland" countries, and more likely to endure.
25. The outcome was, however, that Cyprus obtained a Constitution which proved unworkable, in the framework of an international arrangement which in practice provided no effective guarantee for its future stability and security. In a sense, therefore, Cyprus is still looking for a stable and enduring independence settlement, albeit 27 years after its nominal independence from the United Kingdom.
The breakdown of constitutional government
26. As both sides agree, the 1960 Constitution proved to be a cumbersome and frustrating instrument of government for all concerned, although the two sides attribute responsibility for the failure of the Constitution to different causes. The main substantive issue which brought the two sides into conflict - the establishment of separate Turkish municipalities - led both the Greek and Turkish Communal Chambers in the Legislature to "enact" legislation which was clearly unconstitutional, and was ruled as such by the Supreme Constitutional Court. Following the announcement of President Makarios' 13-point plan for the amendment of the Constitution (occasionally alleged to have been encouraged by the United Kingdom Government)16 and subsequent intercommunal violence, the Turkish Cypriots effectively withdrew (or, in their terms, were excluded) from the Legislature, the civil service and most other organs of the Constitution, and at the end of December 1963 established their own Turkish Cypriot administration, headed by the Vice-President of the Republic.
27. During this period the physical separation of the two communities (though not as yet on "zonal" lines) began to take shape, with many Turkish Cypriots withdrawing into enclaves inaccessible to the Greek Cypriot authorities and no longer effectively controlled by them. There is little doubt that much of the violence - which the Turkish Cypriots claim led to the total or partial destruction of 103 Turkish villages and the displacement of about a quarter of the total Turkish Cypriot population - was either directly inspired by, or certainly connived at, by the Greek Cypriot leadership. The British forces in Cyprus eventually intervened to establish the "Green Line" in Nicosia, and in March 1964, on a British initiative, the United Nations Force in Cyprus was established to "dissuade" the two communities from violence, and a UN mediator was appointed. Only as a result of intense diplomatic activity, particularly by the US, was a direct military intervention by Turkey prevented at this time.
28. The effect of the crisis of December 1963 was to deliver control of the formal organs of government into the hands of the Greek Cypriots alone. Claiming to be acting only in accordance with the doctrine of necessity17 the Greek Cypriot members of the House of Representatives enacted a series of laws which provided for the operation of the various organs of government (including the Legislature itself) without Turkish Cypriot participation. Although none of these laws purported formally to amend the 1960 Constitution (a procedure which the Cypriot Supreme Court had ruled to be unlawful) they nonetheless had the effect of substantially altering the practical application of the Constitution. Moreover, the Greek Cypriots, despite the objections of the Turkish Cypriots, were recognised as the lawful government of the Republic of Cyprus, and in consequence retained their membership of the Commonwealth, the United Nations and many other international organisations and agencies with little effective opposition.18
29. The Turkish Cypriots, meanwhile, sought to establish for their own community a separate administration which had more or less to be built from scratch. Most Turkish Ministers and officials seem to have had no opportunity even to clear their personal papers from their desks when the administrations were separated at the end of 1963, and the Turkish Cypriot authorities thereafter had virtually no access to official files concerning their own community. During our discussions in Cyprus a number of Turkish leaders described to us the traumatic experience of finding themselves responsible for running the affairs of their community while sitting at empty desks and surrounded by empty filing cabinets. Several Greek Cypriot officials also privately expressed to us their admiration for the manner in which a new governmental structure had been put together by their Turkish compatriots in these quite daunting circumstances.
30. Equally damaging from the Turkish Cypriot point of view was what they considered to be their effective exclusion from representation at, and participation in, the international fora where their case could have been deployed. The acceptance at this time by the United Nations and most other international organisations of the legality of what had become an exclusively Greek Cypriot administration as the sole Government of the Republic of Cyprus is the source of continuing intense bitterness amongst Turkish Cypriot leaders.19 Although Dr Kutchuk, and subsequently Mr Denktash, were still officially "'recognised" by many Governments (including that of the United Kingdom) as Vice-President of the Republic, an official Turkish Cypriot presence in the international political scene virtually disappeared overnight.
31. In brief, the outcome or the 1963 crisis was the collapse or the system or government established under the 1960 settlement. Although the Cyprus Government now claims to have been merely seeking to "operate the 1960 Constitution, modified to the extent dictated by the necessities of the situation",20 this claim ignores the fact that both before and after the events of December 1963 the Government of President Makarios continued to advocate the cause of Enosis and actively pursued the amendment of the Constitution and the related Treaties to facilitate this ultimate objective. In February 1966, for instance, Archbishop Makarios declared that "The Agreements have been abrogated and buried",21 and when in July 1965 the Turkish Cypriot members of the House of Representatives sought to resume their seats they were told by the President of the House that they could do so only if they accepted the legislative changes to the operation of the Constitution enacted in their absence by the Greek Cypriot majority.22 Moreover, in June 1967, the Greek Cypriot legislature unanimously passed a resolution in favour of Enosis, in blatant contravention of the 1960 Treaties and Constitution.
32. Indeed, when the then British Foreign Secretary (Mr (now Sir) James Callaghan) gave evidence to the Select Committee on Cyprus in 1976, he justified the Government's failure to intervene militarily in 1974 to restore the 1960 Constitution partly on the grounds that "the Constitution had not been working since the early 1960s". 23 The present British Government now claims that it has "not accepted that the Constitution is not still in force",24 although it has subsequently conceded that "some of the provisions of the Constitution are not at present in operation".25 These provisions include several of the Basic Articles guaranteed by the United Kingdom, Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Guarantee.
1964-74
33. During the four years following the constitutional breakdown of December 1963, various attempts were made to reach a settlement. While the UN mediators sought (with singular lack of success) to bridge the gap between the two Cypriot communities, there was a series of direct talks between Greece and Turkey which in one way or another toyed with the idea - first floated by the US Secretary of State (Dean Acheson) in 1964 - of Enosis with territorial compensation for Turkey and minority safeguards for the Turkish Cypriots who wished to remain on the island. These discussions appear to have continued in some form until the autumn of 1967, although Archbishop Makarios had completely rejected the original Acheson Plan when it was leaked in July 1964.
34. During this period of very high tension Greece maintained substantial numbers of mainland troops in the island (variously estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000 men) in contravention of the 1960 Agreements. The tension came to a head in November 1967, when twenty-three Turkish Cypriots were killed in an attack by the Cypriot National Guard (led by General Grivas) on a Turkish enclaved village. Under the threat of an immediate Turkish military intervention, the Greek Government was eventually persuaded to withdraw the bulk of its illegal military forces in the island, although a smaller number of officers and NCOs remained. This in turn led to at least a temporary relaxation of tension, and direct intercommunal talks resumed in June 1968. Despite some early optimism that a new constitutional settlement might be secured the talks, which continued sporadically until the eve of the crisis of 1974, actually achieved little.
The coup and invasion or 1974
35. The Athens-inspired military coup against President Makarios in July 1974, apparently engineered by mainland Greek officers in the Cyprus National Guard, was undoubtedly intended to bring about an early declaration of the union of Cyprus with Greece, and thus to overthrow the remaining vestiges of the 1960 independence settlement and any prospect of a negotiated return to the 1960 Constitution or some mutually acceptable alternative. The coup was therefore not only in contravention of the letter of the 1960 Treaties, but was a complete renunciation of the spirit and purpose of the Treaties.
36. Since one Guarantor of the 1960 Constitution was now actively engaged in undermining it, the obligation in the Treaty of Guarantee for the Guarantors to "consult" was unlikely to result in any agreed "representations or measures". After failing to enlist British support, Turkey therefore invaded Cyprus, in exercise of her rights under Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee. It seems quite likely that if Turkey had stopped at that point, and had then been prepared genuinely to negotiate a return to the 1960 settlement (or an agreed alternative), her actions would have come to be seen as a legitimate - and responsible - exercise of her treaty rights and obligations. Indeed, since her actions had achieved their most immediate ostensible objectives - to secure the reversal of the Sampson coup d'etat and to prevent the declaration of Enosis - within a matter of days (and had also helped to precipitate the overthrow of the military regime in Athens), Turkey could have emerged as the saviour not only of the Turkish Cypriots, but also of the Greek Cypriots, from the consequences of Greek military aggrandisement.
37. Instead, however, the Turkish Government sought to try to indicate a settlement particularly favourable to itself and to the Turkish Cypriots from a position of temporary military advantage. At the second Geneva Conference in mid-August 1974, following the coup d'etat, Turkey made peremptory demands which the Greek Cypriots could not possibly have been expected to accept, and when, inevitably, they were rejected, effectively imposed them by occupying about 36.4 per cent of the island by military force. While the first Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974 could have been regarded as a legitimate and successful exercise of her Guarantor rights in order to prevent Enosis, the subsequent Turkish occupation of the whole of the area north of Nicosia has been, and must be, seen as an illegitimate (but, for the time being at least, equally successful) attempt to impose partition. In July 1974 Turkey appeared to be acting in support of the 1960 settlement; in August 1974 Turkey was undoubtedly using force to prevent its restoration.
38. It is difficult not to sympathise with Greek Cypriot claims that Turkey's intervention in July 1974 was from the start designed to lead to the partition of Cyprus, and that the Sampson coup merely provided a legally defensible excuse. But, of course, Turkey's earlier, pre-independence, preference for partition as an alternative to Enosis can only have been reinforced (and with good reason) by the actions of both the Greek Cypriot and Greek Governments in the period since independence in 1960. When in 1974 a coup d'etat in favour of Enosis was precipitated (ironically against the modem embodiment of Enosis aspirations), a Turkish reversion to the policy of partition can hardly have been surprising. Its enforcement by purely military means cannot, however, be justified, and was clearly a breach both of general international law and of Turkey's specific obligations under the 1960 Treaties.
39. The effects of the 1974 crisis: The immediate effect of Turkey's military occupation of the north of the island was the more or less forcible removal of about 180,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes in the north, with the loss of agricultural and industrial assets which they claim to have accounted for about 70 per cent of Cypriot GNP at the time, and of about 40,000 Turkish Cypriots who were either forced or persuaded to leave their homes in the south of the island. By the summer of 1975 only a handful of Cypriots continued to live on the "wrong" side of the line. There was also a residue of acute bitterness, greatly intensified by the intercommunal violence which had accompanied the Turkish invasion, allegations of massacres by both communities and claims that substantial numbers of Cypriots of both communities had disappeared without trace.
40. Although intercommunal talks were resumed as early as 1974, the Turkish Cypriots declared the establishment of a "Turkish Federated State of Cyprus" in February 1975, and, with substantial Turkish assistance, began the process of creating an independent and autonomous administration in the north, ostensibly as a prelude to securing agreement with the Greek Cypriots on the formation of a federal constitution for the whole island. Subsequently, despite many efforts to make progress towards this objective (accepted in principle by President Makarios in 1977) through further rounds of intercommunal talks, the Turkish Cypriots in November 1983 declared the creation of a fully independent "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" a move immediately condemned by the UN Security Council.26 Turkey (which remains the only country to have recognised the new state) exchanged Ambassadors in April 1984, provoking further condemnation by the Security Council in May of that year.27
The UN Secretary-General's initiative
41. Despite Turkish moves to entrench and formalise the partition of Cyprus, the UN Secretary-General managed to bring President Kyprianou and Mr Denktash together for "proximity talks" in the autumn of 1984. The outcome of these and subsequent UN-sponsored discussions was three separate but closely related sets of documents. The first version, in January 1985, was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots as the basis for a settlement, but not accepted by President Kyprianou, on the grounds that a number of important issues remained to be negotiated. The second version, in April 1985, was accepted by President Kyprianou, but rejected by Mr Denktash on the grounds that he could go no further than the Secretary-General's framework agreement of January. A third draft framework agreement was eventually produced by the Secretary-General at the end of March 1986. This was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots. President Kyprianou, however, then insisted that the outstanding issues of major concern to the Greek Cypriot community (the withdrawal of Turkish troops and settlers, effective international guarantees, and the application of the "three freedoms" of movement, settlement and property) should be resolved, either at an international conference, or at a high-level meeting between Cypriot leaders, before final agreement on a new constitutional framework. 28
42. Subsequent discussions have continued between the Secretary-General's office and the two sides in Cyprus to seek to resolve the apparent deadlock reached in March 1986. During our visit to Cyprus in December 1986 support for the Secretary-General's initiative was expressed by almost every political leader in both Cypriot communities, but there was little indication that either President Kyprianou or Mr Denktash were actually in a position to make significant concessions to get serious talks under way again. Nonetheless, when the Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister gave evidence to us in March, he rejected the idea that the negotiations had reached a dead-end, and claimed that "some progress" had been made in talks with the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs in November 1986 and February 1987.29 The Minister of State (Baroness Young) expressed the official British Government view that the Secretary-General's efforts had "already achieved more progress towards a settlement than any previous attempts", and offered "the only realistic chance of a settlement in Cyprus".30
43. There is, indeed, no doubt that significant concessions have been made by both sides (and particularly by the Greek Cypriots) during tile course of these negotiations. The questions remain. however, whether either side is prepared to make the additional concessions required for a settlement, whether there actually exists a mutually acceptable common ground on which the two sides can meet, or whether - as each side not infrequently alleges in respect of the other - neither community has a sufficient interest in, and commitment to, an agreed settlement to allow the Secretary-General's negotiations to produce a solution.
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Footnotes:
12 Appendix A.
13 Appendix A.
14 The last full census of Cyprus was conducted in 1960.
15 The four principal settlement documents were (i) the Treaty of Establishment, (ii) the Treaty of Guarantee, (iii) the Treaty of Alliance (between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey) and (iv) the Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus. The four documents, together with Annexes, etc, were published in July 1960 as Cmnd 1093. The main texts of the Treaties are reproduced as pages 27-31 of the Evidence attached to this Report.
16 See John Reddaway, Burdened with Cyprus: The British Connection (London, 1986) pp 138-40.
17 See Evidence, pp S9 and 91-94.
18 One notable exception was the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, where attempts to sit an all-Greek Cypriot delegation were successfully resisted until 1983.
19 eg Q 1.
20 Evidence, p 59.
21 Z M Nedjatigil, The Cyprus Conflict: A Lawyer's View, Lefkosa, 1982, p 31. See also Government Observations on the Report of the Select Committee on Cyprus (Cmnd 6579), August 1976.
22 UN Secretary-General's Report 8/6569 (July 1965), paras 7-11 (CPS/71).
13 Report from the Select Committee on Cyprus, Session 1975-76 (HC 331), Q 138 (Appendix 1).
24 Q 158.
25 Evidence, p 26.
26 Resolution SCR 541.
27 Resolution SCR 550.
28 See Evidence, pp74-79.
29 QQ 227-8.
30 Q 51
