Cui bono ? Who really needed the overthrowing of Makarios ?

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Aug 10, 2010 at 19:23

Hello, dhimmi no more!

Well, with the Egyptian sources revealed our discussion becomes more and more interesting.

>... we can learn so much from the Egyptian archives that are open to historians and reading al-Ahram which is now archived on google and it was indeed surprising for example to kow that Makarious and Nasser with the help of the Greeks and Russia wanted to bomb Turkey and declare a free and Greek Cyprus"<

Can you tell me when this proposal was made ?

Anyway , if Turkey was bombing openly Cyprus in 1964 and 1974, then why should she not have been be given something of her own favourite medicine ? Only because she was well protected in her aggression against a neutral country by holy NATO ?

Reading the limited information at my disposal I am prone to conclude that Cyprus could get rid of its Turco-Anglo-Saxon protectors, guarantors and guardians and remain roughly independent only the way Nasser got rid of them , i.e. by engaging Russia and playing her off against America and NATO.

The bombs and napalm that the Turks dropped on Cyprus had been made in America. If Kissinger openly sided with the Turks and his former pupil Ecevit, then there was no other way to keep the aggressive Turks, sure of their powerful protectors , off the island except by threatening them with Russia. One extra Soviet division on the Turkish Armenian border in July-August 1974 would have stopped immediately all Turkish air raids against Kyrenia or Nicosia and turned the invasion fleet back to Mersin. It is roughly how in 1992/1993 the planned Turkish invasion of Armenia - because of continuous Azeri defeats and losses in Karabakh - was thwarted.

Makarios understood that dilemma clearly and sought Moscow's support. What would you have done in his position? True, even the Russians could not do much. Makarios was afraid of buying weapons from Russia not to enrage Turkey and America. After the April coup d'etat of 1967 Greece was against them preaching officially the hatred of the USSR. The Russians had no common border with Cyprus and their navy in the Mediterranean was small and outbalanced by the US 6th Fleet. At any event the Cypriot army had only 32 out-dated Russian T-34 tanks (bought via Egypt) while the Turks were attacking them with some 200 modern US-made M-47 and M-48 tanks. The same can be said about other kinds of arms and equipment. Thanks to NATO/US the Turks outnumbered and outgunned the Greeks.

But what is most remarkable is that when the Turks started their aggression against Cyprus the US media raised absurd charges it was the Russians - not the Americans !!! - that were pushing the Turks to invade Cyprus !!!

> It just makes me wonder if Makarious' friendship with Nasser, who was disliked by the US and Turkey and Israel, was the reason for the support of the Turks by the US, Britain and Israel and the Greek Cypriots were the final victims of this tragedy.<

Sure, he was denounced by Kissinger as "the Fidel Castro of the Mediterranean" and the Greek colonels were defaming him in the same spirit . As "Time" wrote on 29.07.1974 :

" As much as it distrusted the Turks, the Athens regime looked on the archbishop as the immediate enemy. The violently anti-Communist regime in Athens was suspicious of the archbishop's dealings with Moscow and the support he received from the 40,000-member Cypriot Communist Party. The junta reviled him as "Red," and worried that he would open Cyprus to the Soviet navy. In recent months, the anti-Makarios campaign was stepped up, and posters denouncing Makarios appeared on walls in Athens."

Interesting, isn't it ? Now if America saw Makarios as a threat to its pro-Turkish "solution" of the Cyprus issue and had such faithul helpers as the anti-communist colonels in Greece, then the coup d'etat , Sampson and what followed seems to require a little different interpretation to be consistent with facts , doesn't it ?

Add to this one nore fact - a strange reaction to the coup in Nicosia in Washington. First it was called "an internal affair of Cyprus", then America adopted what was cleverly called "constructive ambiguity" .

"Time" continues :

" In the State Department, it was privately described as one of "constructive ambiguity" by some who had been left in the capital to implement it. While not embracing the new President , the U.S. dropped the ousted Makarios by pointedly calling him only "archbishop" rather than "President." To critics, that appeared to be an unseemly speedy desertion of a legitimate head of state."

I have hinted at the absurd charges spread in America about Soviet prodding and support for Turkey's invasion . And here is how "Time' sells this disinformation :

" Soviet Massage. Ankara was also being massaged into fighting by the Soviet Union, which was happy to see the two NATO nations involved in an imbroglio. The crisis enabled Moscow to draw closer to Turkey by offering the nation encouragement and even possible aid, and thus recover some of the leverage it recently lost in the Middle East."
So here we go. A head of state inconvenient to America/NATO, denounced as a Soviet agent , is overthrown by a US-backed rabidly anti-Soviet regime in Athens. This fact is immediately used by a US "staunch" ally to grab as much territory on Cyprus as possible. Yet the official press suggests that on that occasion the Russians were on the side of their enemies and acted against their own interests. Remarkable. The American story doesn't hold water in this point at all , does it ?

I'd love to see what else the Egyptian press from 1974 reveals about the crisis. It is interesting to see what results the comparison of your sources and mine will lead, dear dhimmi no more.

Best regards ,

Jan

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".