July 20, 1974, the day of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus under the code name “Attilas”, was not a thunderbolt. It was the culmination of a chain of criminal choices, national illusions and foreign interventions, which sealed the history of Hellenism with blood and division.
The Athens junta – the so -called patriots who overthrew democracy on the pretext of national salvation – entrusted the promises of the “allies” naively, and perhaps self -sacrifice. The removal of Makarios, the elected President of the Republic of Cyprus, and the July 15, 1974 coup, would pave the way for a “double union”: a Greek Cypriot south, under Greek control, and a Turkish Cypriot north. A simplistic, dangerous and geopolitical suicidal fantasy.
Turkey did not miss the opportunity. She cited her guaranteed rights, as provided by the 1960 Treaty, and launched the “Attilas” operation. July’s invasion was strategically designed and executed methodically, revealing that Ankara did not just respond to the coup – expected it. And Greece, dissolved by the junta, weak and secluded, watched the national tragedy to evolve.
The British, with their bases on the island and their multiple responsibilities as former colonists and guarantor power, chose inactivity. Perhaps as a revenge for the EOKA anti -colonial struggle. Perhaps because partition served their long -term strategic interests. London’s “neutrality” was nothing less than complicity.
At the same time, the Greek political leaders – before and after the junta – managed the Cyprus problem either with inactivity or short -sighted tactics. The inability to set up a single national strategy, the depreciation of the Turkish threat and the overestimation of allied commitments have led to a constant wreck.
Archbishop Makarios, despite his heroic moments, did not timely diagnose the change of geopolitical balances in the Eastern Mediterranean. In an attempt to balance between Greece, the US, the Soviet Union and the Unbound, he was trapped in a policy of lonely survival. The result: Cyprus is transformed from a bridge into a field of conflict.
The Turkish invasion and the subsequent occupation of 37% of the Cypriot territory remain, half a century later, an open wound of Hellenism. The partition was not a random accomplishment. It was the result of a betrayal – external and internal. Of foreign powers who played their own games. And the Greeks who betrayed Cyprus in the name of the “Union”.
Cold War, Langley and Kissinger’s “Solutions”
The junta of the “ethnic” was not a spontaneous “national outburst” of honest military; it was an American product of the doctrine of “communist dangers” in the NATO south. The CIA laid the carpet, Henry Kissinger orchestrated the score: Get out of the middle of Makarios, proceed to a “double union”, and if the plan turns … “Let Turkey do the job”. The US Secretary of State did not simply “follow” the developments; he left – if not encouraged – the landing Turkish ships to lift anchor, confident that a divisive Cyprus would be more stable for US interests than an independent, unbound.
The “useful idiots” of Athens
Colonels, blinded by nationalist hallucinations, believed they were serving the nation while actually served foreign dots. The coup on July 15, 1974 gave Ankara the Casus Belli he was looking for. When the Turkish tanks pressed the Great, the “eager” of Athens panicked phoned to Washington for help that never came.
British bases, colonial bills
London, a guarantor force with military colonial bases on the island, found … it is advisable to “maintain equal distances”. Old Empire closed the eye in Ankara And it has been historically proven that by force they “dragged” Turkey to claim Cyprus in the doctrine of “divide and reigned”, deliberately when the anti -colonial struggle of the Cypriots was in progress and enjoying a new role mediator.
Greek leadership without compass
Even after the fall of the junta, Cyprus handling was handed over to concomitant tactics. No longevity strategy, no national power investment. And if Makarios tried to balance between the US, the USSR and the Movement of the Unbelievable, he fell victim to the multifaceted game he had adopted: he was found isolated at the most critical moment. The same thing happened with the post -political governments that were subjected to the doctrine of “calm waters” with Turkey that gave it the right to create an end and today to claim the “de facto” partition of the island.
Dejavu in the Aegean?
Fifty -one years later, Ankara repeats the Cypriot motif in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean islands: revisionism, tooling of international conditions, committed on the field. The drillings have replaced the landing, but the logic is the same: pressure, “gray” and then “co -use”. In Washington – as in 1974 – the dominant issue is the “stability” of NATO’s southeastern wing. If Turkey is presented as a more “useful partner”, are we again in the certainty that the “allies” will justify us?
The ghost of 1922 (Asia Minor Disaster) and 1974 is hoping. The question is not whether the story is repeated; it is already repeated. The query is If the “useful idiots” of Athens will again appear—Comans who will willingly sign another national impasse, believing that the “big ones” will reward submission. Then, as it is now, the answer will be judged to be sober, strategic calm and, above all, refusal to deliver national sovereignty to the altar of the temporary “good child” of the allies and interests of US mining companies.
Because the story has another saying: whatever is not solved, cut off—And the knot, when cut with foreign knives, always leaves the same deep trauma in Hellenism.