The Turkish Arms Embargo. James F. Goode

In fact, it had contributed to the situation by steadily whittling away at the minority guarantees provided in the 1960 constitution.¹

      Along with Greece and the United Kingdom, Turkey was a guarantor of the 1960 constitution, which had established an independent Cyprus and provided many safeguards for the rights of the Turkish minority. Thus, when the coup took place and Sampson became head of the post-Makarios government, Turkey’s prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, believed he must act. Furthermore, Ankara determined that as a guarantor power, it had a right to take action to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority.

      Flare-ups of intercommunal violence had taken place repeatedly since 1960, most notably in 1964 and again in 1967. The Turkish government came close to launching an invasion in each of those years, but the Americans intervened, including the infamous Johnson letter of 1964. The soldiers remained in their barracks, but the Turks were bitter about the lack of support from Washington.

      Ten years later, in the summer of 1974, the Nixon administration was in disarray due to the Watergate scandal, and the president was edging toward resignation. Ankara knew that this time, there would be no Nixon letter. This seemed to be the perfect moment to secure the future of the Turkish Cypriot minority. Both Athens and Washington were in a confused and weakened state, and Greek Cypriot forces could hardly resist a Turkish onslaught.

      Hurried talks took place in London from July 16 to 20, but it was clear that Prime Minister Ecevit was in no mood for compromise. On July 20, after Turkish demands had not been met, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus. Having received the coded message “Ayse tatile cikti” (Aisha went on holiday), the Turks seized territory around the port city of Kyrenia, a center for tourism on the northern coast of the island and home to a large number of Turkish Cypriots.² The army seized the city and its hinterland and a narrow corridor to the inland capital, Nicosia, amounting to less than 5 percent of the island. On July 22 a cease-fire negotiated by Britain and the United States took effect, and talks were scheduled to resume two days later in Geneva under British sponsorship. Both the Greek junta and the Sampson government collapsed on July 23.

      The explosion of violence on Cyprus surprised the Americans, whose eyes had been fixed on a brooding President Nixon, who had withdrawn to his retreat in San Clemente, California. During a meeting of the Washington Special Action Group on July 17, chaired by the secretary of state, officials had concluded that the Turks were unlikely to invade. Kissinger could not understand why the Turks were insisting on returning Makarios to power, for he had been their archenemy. In any case, the United States had to make its position known to Turkey as quickly as possible: Washington would support an acting government under Glafkos Clerides for six months, followed by elections. Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, one of Kissinger’s top aides, made a hurried call to the Turkish ambassador to present the American thinking, and then he left for London to explain to Makarios and Ecevit in person the US proposal.³

      From the British capital, Sisco proceeded to Athens and Ankara. In the Greek capital, the collapsing junta agreed to a number of compromises to stabilize the situation on Cyprus, including the acceptance of a single Turkish enclave on the island. But these concessions came too late. The proponents of enosis had made a colossal blunder, opening the door for a Turkish invasion in the name of restoring the 1960 constitution. In Ankara, Sisco was waiting outside the meeting room of Turkey’s National Security Council on July 20, while inside, Ecevit was making the decision to invade.⁴

      Subsequent talks in Geneva made little progress. Neither the Greeks nor the Turks would shift their position, and British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan became increasingly frustrated. Kissinger rated Callaghan’s chances of success as very slim. Perhaps Kissinger hoped the feuding parties would eventually turn to him to work out a settlement. Meanwhile, the meetings in Geneva dragged on into August.⁵

      The embassy in Ankara reported general agreement between the military and the Ecevit government on the policy toward Cyprus. Furthermore, most Turks believed they should gain all they could from the current situation. They would not return to the status quo ante. According to one observer, “there was no other issue, domestic or foreign, on which there was such unanimity in Turkey.” Ecevit was a tough negotiator, as he had proved earlier during the opium crisis. As it turned out, he was not the moderate that his former Harvard University professor, Henry Kissinger, might have expected. The Turks made it clear that they wanted two separate communities on Cyprus, each with full autonomy. There could be a central government in Nicosia, but with limited powers. Callaghan wanted negotiations to take place between Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, but the government of Turkey thought that would be a waste of time. Ecevit wanted the guarantor powers—Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—to make the important decisions at Geneva, with the details to be worked out later. Ambassador Macomber was not hopeful.⁶

      Turkey had been building its force on Cyprus since the first invasion, and by August 14, it numbered 40,000. On that day, having exhausted his patience in Geneva, Ecevit gave the order to recommence Operation Attila to gain by force what had eluded Turkey in the negotiations. Facing little opposition, the superior Turkish forces seized almost 40 percent of the island, including the important city of Famagusta in the east and the international airport at Nicosia. The Turks took more than they had planned to retain as part of the Turkish Cypriot sector, perhaps taking a page from the Israelis after the 1967 Six-Day War—that is, use land as leverage to achieve acceptance of a new status quo. (Whatever their original intentions, the boundaries have remained fixed since that time.)

      Many more thousands of Greek Cypriots became refugees. Large numbers of Turkish Cypriots, who lived on the wrong side of the front lines were uprooted as well. Some of the latter ended up seeking shelter on the British air bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia. This was a sad fate for an island population that had enjoyed a higher standard of living than either the Greeks or the Turks prior to the coup d’etat and the Turkish invasion.⁷

      The Karamanlis government immediately withdrew Greece from the military structure of NATO, much as Charles de Gaulle had done with France in 1966. The prime minister was protesting an apparent lack of support by the members of the military alliance, including the United States. He had expected them to take firmer action against Turkey for its invasion of Cyprus.

      The Turkish government seemed to agree with Karamanlis that the United States supported its attempt to resolve the Cyprus problem. Even the Turkish media praised the United States for following “the wisest policy among the Western powers despite the opium issue.” The United States took Turkey’s side, it was said, because it recognized Turkey’s greater importance relative to Greece. One major paper, Cumhuriyet, announced that the United States understood the Turkish point of view.⁸

      In private, Turkish leaders admitted that the United States had tried to be evenhanded, in contrast to the anti-Turkish sentiments expressed by most Western governments. This sensitivity was appreciated in Ankara, and the newly installed Ford administration might have been able to negotiate with the Ecevit government and actually be listened to.⁹ Unfortunately, American policymakers did not take advantage of this opportunity in the interim between the initial invasion on July 20 and the dramatic expansion twenty-five days later.

      Kissinger’s response puzzled observers at the time and has confounded scholars ever since. It seems that he misjudged the Turkish prime minister, who proved to be more of a risk taker than any of his recent predecessors. How else can we account for the secretary of state’s apparent lack of preparedness to engage the looming crisis with his arsenal of diplomatic skills? At other points in his tenure, Kissinger might have taken control and set out in person for the eastern Mediterranean, rather than sending a deputy. His sudden appearance in Athens or Ankara would have conveyed a sense of urgency to the respective parties. He was, of course, facing a major crisis at home as the Nixon presidency unraveled. With the US government in disarray—Nixon was holed up in California when the first invasion took place, and Gerald Ford had been in the White House less than a week when stage two of Attila was launched—perhaps he felt that he could not leave Washington.

      Historians reflecting on these developments have concluded that the United States—that is, Henry Kissinger—could have done more to forestall the Turkish attack. Perhaps