The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1971, Blaðsíða 19

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
17
PEACEKEEPING IN CYPRUS
by Captain John K. Marteinson
Cyprus, a tiny jewel-like island set
in the Eastern Mediterranean has
quite rightly been described as having
a legacy of strife. The reasons behind
the present conflict would take vol-
umes to examine in depth, but in any
case began centuries before with the
migration of Turks to the island dur-
ing the Ottoman Empire rule. With
the birth of the Greek Kingdom in
the early 19th century came a growing
desire among many of the Greek-Cyp-
riots that union of the island with
Greece would bring them fulfillment
among their own people. And, at the
heart of the matter is the island’s geo-
graphy—only 40 miles from the main-
land of Turkey, but more than 500
from the nearest of the Greek islands.
Violence has been almost an every-
day part of life in Cyprus since the
struggle for independence from Bri-
tain began in 1948. The British, after
fighting the EOKA guerillas for al-
most ten years, disentangled itself from
the problem by granting independence
to the island in 1960. In their haste to
pull out, the British left the new re-
public with an almost unworkable
Constitution in which excessive power
had been given to the Turk minority
(20%) by the system of checks and
balances. After three years of trying
to make the government machinery
function efficiently, Archbishop Ma-
karios, the President of the Republic,
announced that a new constitution
had to be written so that the govern-
ment could function. The Turk-Cypri-
ots vehemently rejected any change to
the status quo.
On Christmas Day 1963 the island
erupted in a wave of murder and
terrorism. It has ceased to be relevant
who began all this—both sides were
certainly guilty of taking part in the
slaughter that followed. After the
wholesale massacre of hundreds of
Turk men, women and children in the
suburb of Omorphita, the Turk pop-
ulation over the whole of the island
withdrew into barricaded enclaves, and
in effect set up their own autonomous
governing body under the vice-pres-
ident, Dr. Kuchuk.
The entire international community
became concerned when the fighting
continued. British troops, already on
the island in the Sovereign Base Area,
were brought in to attempt to reduce
the tensions, but they were only
partially successful, and in any case
the British government had no desire
to be held responsible for enforcing
the peace on the island. In February
1964 the United Nations Security
Council was asked to intervene. In-
itially it was slow to react. Turkey
threatened to invade Cyprus to pro-
tect the Turk minority. Again, in