The Cyprus Conspiracy:America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion
Ian Craig, Brendan O’Malley
$29.95
ISBN: 1860644392
I.B.Tauris Publishers
The Cyprus Conspiracy:
America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion
Ian Craig, Brendan O’Malley
$29.95
ISBN: 1860644392
I.B.Tauris Publishers
History / Cyprus
In The Cyprus Conspiracy two noted British journalists delve into the international intrigue that led to the Turkish invasion and the still persisting illegal occupation and de facto division of Cyprus. While the free part of Cyprus continues to prosper in freedom and democracy, having one of the most rapidly developing economies in the world and one of the world’s most stable democracies, the part of Cyprus that is still cut off from the rest of the island by Turkish occupation troops in violation of UN resolutions and international agreements, remains unfree and impoverished. As divided as Berlin before the Wall came down, Cyprus is still bristling with tens of thousands of Turkish troops, while nearly a quarter of a million of Greek-Cypriots, having been brutally expelled from their homes in a barbarous act of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish military in 1974, are still prevented by the Turkish goverment, in violation of every legal and humanistic international standard, from returning to their homes in the North. The Turkish speaking Cypriots in the occupied North also suffer by not being allowed by the Turkish military to join in freedom and prosperity their Greek brothers in a united, democratic, and prospering Cyprus. Henry Kissinger claimed he could do nothing to stop the Turkish invasion and the consequent ethnic cleansing of the North by NATO ally Turkey, because of the Watergate crisis. But The Cyprus Conspiracy provides crucial evidence that this was no failure of American foreign policy but the realization of a longstanding plan. Brendan O’Malley and Ian Craig document what they consider the strategic reasons why the island was divided: Saving its top-secret defense and spying facilities from a (rather unreasonably) feared communist take-over or British defense spending cuts. Cyprus had become invaluable as a strategic base to Washington, and was viewed as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and monitoring station for both Central Asia for Soviet nuclear missile activity and the Middle East for potential military threats. The international cast of characters in this tragic tale of international intrigue, cold war politics, and ethnic cleansing, includes Anthony Eden, Dwight d. Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, as well as EOKA’s George Grivas and the current leaders of the halves of this uniquely divided island, Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Dnktash. Featuring a personal interview with Henry Kissinger conducted for this book in the spring of 1999, The Cyprus Conspiracy makes an important contribution to our understanding the so-called intractable Cyprus problem as a function of great-power politics and Turkish expansionist aggression. This understanding combined with an awareness of current developments--such as the impending accession of free Cyprus to the European Union and the expected European pressure on Turkey to show its European face by putting an end to human rights abuses and by ending the illegal occupation and resettlement of the island, thus allowing the island to reunite and the ethnically cleansed Greek-Cypriots to return to their homes in the North—contributes to the case for the restoration of legality in the North and its peaceful reunification and reintegration with the rest of the island. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and within the context of the growing influence of a United Europe and the opportunity presented by the current rapprochement between Greece and Turkey, the reunification of Cyprus—always hoped for—appears to be a distinct possibility.
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