Cyprus: A Modern History [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

William Mallinson's book claims to be "a modern history" of Cyprus, but it is a history of Cyprus from 1950 to the present. Although the "Cyprus Problem" becomes "hot" in 1950s, it is impossible to understand why without a thorough coverage of the period before. Mallinson implies that what transpired before 1950 is unimportant to Cypriot history or the Cyprus Problem. The diplomatic focus neglects Cyprus's political, social and cultural past.

Mallinson blames the existence of the "Cyprus Problem" on the interests of foreign powers, thus ascribing to the populist conspiracy theory of the Cyprus Problem. Mallinson claims that the Cypriots exerted minimal influence over their homeland's destiny, which is quite wrong, since right-wing Greek Cypriot leaders through EOKA in the 1950s and then various right and left wing paramilitary groups during the 1960s and 1970s and right-wing Turkish Cypriots through TMT from the 1950s, exerted a great deal of control over the actions of their people and the policy of the other government's involved.

As I will show below, Mallinson fails to adequately deal with the two fundamental issues relating to Cyprus before 1950: the British strategic interest and the rise of nationalism.

Mallinson claims that Cyprus's strategic importance was established upon the British occupation in 1878. In fact Cyprus's strategic place within the British imperial structure was questioned, uncertain and anomalous and this was the belief of most politicians - especially of the Liberal Party - as well as the naval and military advisors and was reflected in efforts to cede Cyprus to Greece after 1912. Although that policy failed it does not change the fact that Cyprus was considered strategically useless before 1916. After the British offered Cyprus to Greece in October 1915, imperialists urged military advisers to reconsider Cyprus's place within the British imperial structure and they advised that Cyprus was too strategically valuable to be ceded to Greece. Nevertheless, Cyprus was never established as a strategic asset until the early 1950s, although during the Suez Catastrophe the British were forced to use Malta, 1,000 miles away, to launch their naval invasion.

Many historians that approach Cyprus's history from the Greek nationalist paradigm continue to give credence to a speech supposedly given by an Orthodox Cypriot prelate to Sir Garnet Wolseley, Cyprus's first high commissioner, with a request that Cyprus be given to Greece. These commentators, including Mallinson, use the speech because it forms the basis of their argument that the Greek Cypriots were Hellenised when the British arrived in 1878. But Rolandos Katsiaounis proved nearly a decade ago that such a speech was never made. Some, including Mallinson, even argue that enosis had existed in 1821 at the time of the Greek War of Independence, when this was not the case as Rebecca Bryant showed this in her groundbreaking study Imagining the Modern, which I. B. Tauris publish in 2004, a year before Mallinson's book. Bryant convincingly argued that the encounter of the Cypriots with modernism after the British arrival resulted in the development of nationalisms on the island.

Mallinson focuses on the strategic interest and the rise of nationalism in the 1950s, but makes errors and omissions. He attempts to cover the British desire to hold onto Cyprus's sovereignty in the 1950s, but fails to provide the real reason for this - the positioning of nuclear weapons on the island for use in defence of the Baghdad Pact which comprised Turkey. He does not analyse EOKA or TMT, right-wing extremist terrorist groups that controlled their communities through fear and heroism, especially the members of the former, in pursuit of their desire for enosis. It was that catastrophic desire, coupled with the desire to overturn the agreements of 1960, which led to its failure and not, as Mallinson asserts, the fault of a "botched constitution".

It is here where Mallinson's focus with the role of the foreign powers in Cyprus needed to be counterbalanced with an analysis of the local responsibilities. Turkish Cypriot extremists, led by Rauf Denktash and radical elements in the Turkish military, wanted to undermine the Zurich-London Accords to show that the Greeks were incapable of safeguarding their rights. The Greek Cypriot leadership wanted to undermine the same agreements to bring about enosis or their domination of the Turkish Cypriots by showing that the agreements were unworkable. To this end, the former EOKA leaders founded paramilitary groups. The three main ones were headed by Polycarpos Georgadjis and Tassos Papadopoulos, the Interior and Labour ministers respectively; Vassos Lyssarides, Makarios' socialist physician; and Nikos Sampson, an unsavoury and fanatical nationalist. It is quite amazing that Georgadjis and Sampson are mentioned only twice and Lyssarides not at all. The person who orchestrated the tragedy of 1963-64 was Georgadjis. As Droushiotis has shown, Georgadjis believed that the quickest way to show that the Zurich-London accords were unworkable was to provoke the Turkish Cypriot extremists, which he knew were armed, to challenge the state. The inter-communal violence that gripped Cyprus from thereon has its roots in Georgadjis' desire to dominate the island. The fact that Mallinson failed to consult the important works on Cyprus from 1960-74, shows his inexperience in the historiography of Cyprus.

Mallinson only presents one side of the events since the Turkish invasion and in particular the last decade. He ascribes to the "justice for Greek Cypriot" discourse and shows a marked inability to understand that the Greek and the Turkish Cypriots cannot both obtain justice. The solution must inevitably be a compromise. Mallinson again takes the conspiracy theory line and blames the international community for the failure of the latest effort to solve the crisis, especially the British. He calls the UN Plan "the United Kingdom Nations Plan", which implies that the plan was a UK (Lord Hannay) conspiracy. Not only was it not, being based on negotiations between President Clerides, Denktash, the UN Envoy to Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto and Lord Hannay, the British special representative (1996-2003), but the assertion conflicts with Hannay's first-hand account, which I.B. Taurus also published. Mallinson fails to realise that, regardless of their motives, the international community genuinely tried to solve the crisis and were obstructed first by Rauf Denktash and Turkey and then by Clerides' replacement, none other than Georgadjis' right-hand man in his paramilitary group, Tassos Papadopoulos. Mallinson claims that when the players met at Burgenstock prior to the 24 April referendum Papadopoulos submitted various amendments to the UN plan which were rejected, while eleven amendments proposed by the new Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, were accepted. Mallinson's source is Athens News. He ignored the two former presidents of the Republic of Cyprus, George Vassiliou and Clerides, who were part of the Greek Cypriot delegation, who revealed that Papadopoulos refused to propose changes when they urged him to and they made six proposed amendments and five of them were accepted. Then Papadopoulos submitted a 200 page document with amendments at the very last moment, which the UN believed was vague and far too late in the game. Predictably, Mallinson supports the "no" Papadopoulos eventually supported and criticises any party, especially PASOK, for supporting the referendum. Nothing is mentioned of the abuses committed against supporters of Cyprus's reunification, who criticised Papadopoulos's stance not to negotiate with Talat at Burgenstock. Mallinson analysed favourable newspapers and interviews and not the documentary evidence available, namely the eyewitness accounts, the letters between Papadopoulos and the UN, the reports of the Select Committee of Foreign Affairs in Britain, which was non-partisan and which includes hundreds of documents, and the report of Amnesty International (September 2004) on the abuses of the Papadopoulos regime against "yes" campaigners.

I was mildly intrigued by Andrekos Varnava's `review' of my book.

There are four general points that Varnava appears to have ignored. First, that my book is based on archival research, backed by over 650 references. Second, he should surely know that there are so many books about Cyprus, that it is impossible to use all of them in any particular book, even if some are well researched and written, because many tend to contain similar information. Third, he seems to criticise my book for being `diplomatic in focus, neglecting Cyprus' political, social and cultural past'. Yet the book is a diplomatic history, and books on diplomacy do not tend to concentrate on social and cultural matters. For this, Varnava needs to turn to an Encyclopaedia on Cyprus, or specialist books, of which there are also many. Fourth, Varnava says that because I apportion blame to the interests of foreign powers, I thus focus on the conspiracy theory. This assertion is crooked thinking and illogical: nowhere in the book do I even mention that the Cyprus problem is the result of conspiracy theory. Nor for that matter, do I attach much credence to conspiracy theory. Anti-conspiracy theorists such as Varnava often themselves conspire against the truth. In the case of Cyprus, those who ignore or play down facts excavated from archives are on fact themselves conspiring against reality. Varnava's accusations are therefore fantastic, since all my views are based on archival revelations, of which Varnava appears blissfully ignorant.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Varnava has spent years focusing on the `fallacy' of Cyprus' strategic importance being established upon the British occupation of 1878, since Cyprus', Britain's and other countries' obsession with Cyprus' location is certainly no fallacy. Or were Richard the Lionheart, Guy de Lusignan, the Venetians, the Ottomans and the British just playing tiddlywinks? Whatever the debate within the British establishment, Cyprus was undoubtedly obtained for strategic reasons, as a `place d'armes' to watch over Anatolia and to try to keep the Russians out of the Eastern Mediterranean. Knowledge of the Congress of Berlin and the Cyprus Convention (not to mention A.J.P Taylor's books, and a plethora of diplomatic papers released from the British National Archives), makes this abundantly clear, but not, apparently to Varnava.

Varnava also refers to British `efforts' to cede Cyprus to Greece after 1912. This is fantasy. Britain did not take up Venizelos' offer of a naval base on Cephalonia in return for enosis. Britain's sole interest, particularly when it offered Cyprus to Greece in 1915, was to bring Greece into World War One; because Greece joined Britain too late, the offer was withdrawn. Thus, Britain wished to hang on, just as it wishes to hang on to the bases today, on the US's behalf, and prevent Cyprus from being substantively involved in EU defence structures.

As regards the Bishop of Kition's request that Cyprus be ceded to Greece, Varnava ought to have read my endnote, where I quote Robert Holland in stating that the episode has been "somewhat elaborated in the telling". It has however been established beyond reasonable doubt that the Bishop referred to the union of the Ionian Islands to Greece.

Varnava is also mistaken in his clear disdain for enosis, when he claims that enosis did not exist in Cyprus in 1821. This is bizarre, given that the Ottomans hanged Archbishop Kyprianos and several other bishops and laymen shortly after the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, and then indulged in a massacre. Thereafter, and despite the British being less brutal than the Ottoman Turks, enosis was clearly on the agenda, particularly from the 1890s, when the British Colonial Office began to discuss it in its correspondence (see Sources for the History of Cyprus, Vol. XI, edited by Reed Coughlan, Greece and Cyprus Research Centre, New York, 2004): Varnava's knowledge of sources is clearly inadequate.

Turning to Britain's `desire to hold onto [sic] Cyprus' sovereignty in the 1950s', (how can you hold onto sovereignty of a non-sovereign area?) Varnava claims that Britain's real motive was the positioning of nuclear weapons. If he had read the voluminous Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office Archives, he would realise that Britain's obsession (mainly, but not exclusively harboured by the Ministry of Defence) was to hang on to Cyprus because of threats to British possessions elsewhere in the vicinity, particularly after the Suez débâcle. The nuclear question (on which many of the most pertinent papers are still unavailable) is only a small part of the picture, not the picture, as Varnava claims.

I do not share Varnava's keen interest, bordering an obsession, with analysing EOKA and TMT, which are to be found in no less than 13 pages of my book. EOKA grew essentially out of frustration with the British government (see, for example, Stefanidis' Isle of Discord), while TMT was the result of Turkish, British and US encouragement. Obviously, both were extremist organisations, in that they used violence.

Most seriously, however, dangerously dilettante, even, is Varnava' assertion that Georgadjis orchestrated the tragedy of 1963-64. Notwithstanding Georgadjis' substantial involvement, it was the British who encouraged Archbishop Makarios to put forward his famous `Thirteen Points' to amend the constitution. It was this, as my book makes clear (providing archival evidence) that lit the fuse.

I also disagree fundamentally with Varnava in his assertion that Greek and Turkish Cypriots cannot both obtain justice. If his idea of a compromise is the Annan plan, then tant pis, since this plan allowed the thousands of illegal Turkish settlers to vote, deprived Cypriots of several rights under the European Convention of Human Rights, denied the right of return of thousands of Greek Cypriots, legalised the pressure of thousands of illegal settlers, permitted foreign interference in the affairs of Cyprus, enhanced Turkey's `right' to intervene militarily, obliged Cyprus and Greece to support Turkey's EU application willy-nilly, and undermined the EU and ignored previous UN resolutions. Britain and the US's private agenda of creating a weak and potentially failed state took precedence over the public one of a unified state.

In short, Varnava's review does not take into account the fact that Britain and the US fanned the darkest and most extreme flames of Cyprus. This is inexcusable, since even a first year student could see that it was Britain's dividing tactics, together with the use of black propaganda that helped the extremists on both sides.

In sum, Varnava's own book, British Imperialism in Cyprus, 1878 - 1915, needs to be taken with a sack of salt.

As my interest in the Cyprus problem and the Greek-Turkish-Cypriot relations recently began to arise, I was so anxious in finding sources that would give me a fairly good background on the area's history and information on the latest progress. And all that from an as distant and objective point of view as possible. Mallinson has managed to keep same distance from both sides and, moreover, be somewhat bitter when it comes to his fellow Englishmen. The language is quite simple, depleted of any diplomatic jargon (as opposed to Lord Hannay's " Cyprus, The Search for A Solution"). His extensive research and the interviews with key-figures concerning the issue, make "Cyprus: A modern history" one of the best books available.