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TMT emerged
with Ankara’s support as a powerful force, and exercised a
crucial influence over the affairs of the Turkish-Cypriot
community. One of its founders was Rauf Denktash, the current
Turkish Cypriot political spokesman in occupied Cyprus.
The
decision to create TMT was taken at the highest levels of the
Turkish Menderes Government in Ankara. While facing mounting
pressure from public opinion, the Turkish Government decided to
use the Cyprus question as a diversion to keep the Turkish
military quiet, an ever present factor in Turkish politics: that
is how TMT was conceived. TMT fighters were trained, armed and
led by a small group of well-disciplined Turkish officers. It
established cells in towns and villages throughout Cyprus, and
it selected personnel who were to be sent to Turkey for military
training. It was also to become the organisational tool through
which the geo-political partitionist policy of Turkey was to be
enforced in Cyprus. It was a policy which aimed at segregating
the Turkish and Greek Cypriots from each other as a prelude to
the physical division of the island.
During the
course of 1957, TMT pressured the Turkish Cypriots into
withdrawing from any co-operative ties they had with the Greek
Cypriots and, on the whole, they were successful; this policy
later became known as the `from Turk to Turk policy’. Such
encouragement was entirely alien to the co-operation and quiet
existence which had always prevailed between Greek and Turkish
Cypriots, but was necessary to sow the seeds of partition. A
similar policy was followed in Istanbul, organised by the
Turkish National Student Federation, which had worked closely
with Kibris Turktur in its planning of the anti-Greek riots
there back in 1955.
In Cyprus
this crude policy of enforced segregation did not go unopposed
amongst the Turkish Cypriots. TMT’s answer to criticism was
however rapid and brutal. It assassinated prominent Turkish
Cypriots who dared to publicly voice opposition or advocated
co-operation between Greeks and Turks. The most widely known
such murders were those of Fazil Ondur, the chief editor of the
weekly newspaper Inkilapci, who was killed on 29 May 1959; and
Ahmet Yahaya, a committee member of the Turkish Cypriot Athletic
and Culture centre, who was killed on 5 June 1958. An attempt
was also made on the life of Arif Barudi on 3 July 1958, and
another one on Ahmet Sadi, the director of the Turkish office of
the Pancypriot Labour Federation who, soon after the attempt
against his life, left Cyprus to settle in England. The same
policy continues today with the assassination in July 1996 of
Kutlu Adali, the Turkish Cypriot journalist, who had the courage
to condemn the partitionist project of the Turkish military
establishment which leads the foreign policy of Ankara, and who
advocated closer co-operation between Greek and Turkish
Cypriots.
TMT’s
strategy was one of incitement in the hope of provoking
inter-ethnic conflict with the aim of securing the separation of
the two communities. It did so without any consideration to
likely casualties amongst innocent Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
The first such serious inter-communal fighting began in June
1958 and was the result of such incitement which the Turkish
authorities have subsequently been candid on a number of
occasions. Mr Emin Dirvana, a former Turkish diplomat, said: `I
was informed that on 7 June 1958 a bomb had been planted in the
Turkish press office in Nicosia by persons who, as was later
established, had nothing to do with the Greek Cypriots. The
Turks of Nicosia were then incited to be overwhelmed by holy
indignation and perpetrated acts similar to those committed on 6
and 7 September 1955 in Istanbul.’
In the ITN
documentary `Cyprus, Britain’s Grim Legacy’ the account
continues:
`The
explosion sparked off a night of riot in Nicosia. Turkish
Cypriots burned and looted Greek shops and homes. Soon came
counter attacks and the fighting spread around the island. A
friend of mine, whose name must still be kept secret, was to
confess to me that he had put this little bomb in the doorway in
order to create an atmosphere of tension so that people would
know that the Turkish Cypriots mattered.’
In fact,
nobody had ever claimed that the Turkish Cypriots did not
matter. This reveals the essence of the matter, that the Turkish
Cypriot leadership, first in Ottoman times and then during the
British administration, had always occupied a position of
political privilege as an ally of the occupying power. These
privileges were not something the leadership were willing to
give up. During early British rule, the alliance with the
Turkish minority became clear in the legislative council. It
worked on the principle that the British and Turkish members at
least equalled or outnumbered by one vote the Greeks.
The tactics
of TMT, to provoke ethnic conflict when none would otherwise
have arisen, were soon to be successful. On 12 June 1958,
following the press office bomb explosion, British security
forces rounded up eight Greek Cypriots from the village of
Kondemenos and subsequently released them near the Turkish
Cypriot village of Guenyeli, approximately seven miles from
where they were arrested, and a good distance from the nearest
Greek villages; the released Greek Cypriots were subsequently
massacred by Turkish Cypriots acting on the orders of TMT. These
were the first reported inter-communal killings. These killings
were carried out in the certain knowledge that Greek Cypriots
would also carry out revenge attacks.
Turkey
rushed to put forward a formal protest to Britain the day
following the press office bomb, alleging that the Cyprus
administration had failed to give the Turkish minority adequate
protection. `Cyprus, partition or death, was the slogan
constantly repeated by Turkish leaders and the armed
paramilitaries. The claim was that Turkish Cypriots could not
think of themselves as being integrated into Cypriot society.
The fact that they already were, necessitated a strategy of
tension and forced separation.
The
principle of partition was not based on the realities of Cypriot
society at the time, but on Turkey’s perceived security
requirements alone. In the Summer of 1958, in the mixed suburb
of Omorphita in Nicosia, TMT evicted 700 Greeks from their
homes. By the end of July 1958 a much clearer line had been
drawn between the Greek and Turkish quarters. The reluctance of
British authorities to deal even-handedly with the violence
became clearer when the partisan decisions made by the Courts at
the time is taken into account. Whereas Turks arrested for
participating in the riots were released, Greeks received
custodial sentences for minor offences.
Sixteen
Turks were, for example, arrested by the British authorities for
complicity in the Nicosia riots, but they were released on
condition that they stayed in at night. A Turkish policeman,
sergeant Tuna, was charged with possessing a bomb and ammunition
for which the mandatory penalty was clearly the death penalty.
He was released and left immediately for Turkey. The only
official piece of evidence that Turkish policeman were involved
in bomb attacks had conveniently `disappeared’. By contrast, two
Greeks who pulled down a Union Jack were each given 18 months
prison sentences, whilst those subsequently involved with the
possession of fire arms were hanged. In hindsight, it is hardly
surprising that Greek Cypriots saw a conspiracy against their
struggle for self-determination from British and Turkish Cypriot
sources.
The riots
in Nicosia caused by the bomb in the Turkish press office,
resulted in the deaths of 56 Greek and 53 Turkish Cypriots. The
higher number of Greek casualties demonstrates that the Turkish
Cypriots (who of course were outnumbered in Cyprus 5:1 by Greek
Cypriots) had, on the orders of TMT, pre-arranged strongholds
and were thus able to fight from a much stronger position than
their numerical inferiority would suggest. Clearly, by the end
of 1958 the Greek Cypriot demand for self-determination was
still unacceptable to both Britain and Turkey, although a new
compromise needed to be worked out.
The
London-Zurich agreements of 1959 finally set up the Republic of
Cyprus with Archbishop Makarios III being duly elected its first
President, and Dr Fazil Kutcuk its Turkish Cypriot Vice
President, by their respective communities in December 1959. The
Republic of Cyprus officially came into being on 16 August 1960.
Under the
terms of the 1960 constitution, there was to be a fixed ratio of
70 Greek Cypriot employees for every 30 Turkish Cypriots
employed by government agencies. The Turkish Cypriot leadership
demanded that this parity of employment be attained within five
months of independence. The public service commission pointed to
the numerous difficulties of drawing 30% of the civil service
including the police force from just 18% of the population. As a
result, numerous posts remained unfulfilled in the search for
suitably qualified Turkish Cypriot candidates.
Since a
majority vote of the Turkish Cypriot deputies in the house was
needed to pass tax legislation, the Turkish Cypriots used it as
a bargaining tool to force compliance over the 70:30 ratio and
various other issues which had as their objective the continued
segregation of the two ethnic groups. For example, colonial laws
had to be extended eight times while both communities discussed
legislation relating to separate municipalities. This provision
had been the greatest victory for Turkey in this settlement. The
President offered the Turks compensating safeguards, but was not
prepared to implement provisions which opened the way to
partition. Deadlock inevitably resulted again and again in a
number of other areas.
Already by
the end of the 1961 the Turkish language press was calling for
intervention by the powers, meaning the UK and the US. In
essence, there was a fundamental belief on the part of the
Turkish Cypriots in the eventual intervention of Turkey to
establish the partition of Cyprus. This belief underpinned their
unco-operative attitude towards the Greek Cypriots and, not
surprisingly, created the cycle of mistrust amongst Turkish
Cypriots which culminated in the crisis of 1963. Indeed, one of
the starkest indications of the Turkish Cypriot mistrust were
the brutal political murders of Ayhan Hikmet and Ahmet Gurkhan
in 1962 by TMT. Both Hikmet and Gurkhan were publishers who
advocated closer association and co-operation between Greek and
Turkish Cypriots. TMT was again in action to ensure that the
genuine voice of the Turkish Cypriots was silenced, and this
applied not only to journalists and publishers, but to many
political activists and ordinary people too. |
