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Cyprus: Radically Changed Situation
Friday, Dec. 15, 1967

Like their ancient forebears at the siege of Troy, Greek soldiers slipped quietly aboard troop ships in a Cyprus harbor last week and sailed for home.



They left behind nothing resembling a Trojan horse as a symbol of Greek cunning, but only anger and disappointment. After relying for seven years on the troops to ensure its dominance over the Turks, the Greek Cypriot majority was furious at Greece's military rulers for buckling under to Turkish demands for a withdrawal of the great bulk of them. Said Synagromos, a leading Greek Cypriot newspaper: "The battle for Cyprus has unfortunately been lost for good."

Turkish Advantages. In Nicosia, stunned Greek diplomats conceded that the age-old Greek aim of enosis (union) between mainland and island was dead.

They also conceded that the settlement had enhanced Turkish prestige and plummeted Greek influence on the island to an alltime low. Said a ranking Greek diplomat in Nicosia: "Pax Hellenica has ended. It is being replaced by Pax Ottomana."

Under the settlement worked out by U.S. Presidential Envoy Cyrus Vance, last week's withdrawals will be followed by others, until Greece's 9,000-man force on the island is reduced to only 950, the number Greece is legally entitled to station there under Cyprus' independence agreements. In reciprocation, the Turks called off their invasion preparations against Cyprus and Greece and agreed to withdraw the 1,500 or so troops that they infiltrated into Cyprus in excess of their 650-man legal allotment. Shrewdly calculating that the Greek rulers lacked the support both at home and abroad to stand up to a crisis, Turkish Premier Siileyman Demirel thus managed to break Greece's military hold on the island. He placed it, at least temporarily, at the mercy of the Turks, whose airbases are only four minutes' flying time from Nicosia.

Wary of Yogurt. Through some deft last-minute maneuvers, Archbishop Makarios, the island's bearded President, managed to sidestep some of the immediate consequences of the settlement. Under the agreement, the Turks and Greeks called on him to disband his 11,000-man Greek Cypriot National Guard and to grant wide police powers to the 4,000 U.N. peace-keeping troops stationed on Cyprus. Fearing an encroachment on Cyprus' sovereignty, Makarios replied that he wanted the Security Council to endorse the truce package before he finally acted. That could mean never—since France and the Soviet Union oppose peace-keeping operations on general principles.

Makarios still faces a radically changed situation. He is now free to stop paying lip service to enosis and get on with the course he seems to prefer anyhow: making Cyprus a strong independent country. He will have to be more considerate of the 120,000 Turkish Cypriots, who are outnumbered by the 480,000 Cypriots of Greek origin, unless he wants to face renewed invasion threats from Turkey without his Greek army support and most of the Greek officers who commanded his guard. There was, in fact, already talk in Nicosia of a new reconciliation program to allay Turk Cypriot fears.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 89,00.html