The Cyprus Conspiracy: America, Espionage and the Turkish Invasion

285 Pages·2001·0.93 MB·English

by  Brendan O'Malley

Cyprus pb prelims 2/5/01 12:12 Page 1
‘As this definitive history shows, our betrayal of the people of Cyprus –
Turkish and Greek – remains a shameful episode in British post-colonial
history and America’s conduct of the Cold War.’
John Torode, Hampstead and Highgate Express
‘…[T]his book offers much that is new for historians interested in
Cyprus and the interplay of NATO and UN policy-making.’
Constantine Buhayer,Anglo-Hellenic Review
‘This well written and well researched account of events provides the
understanding of the situation and the causes which led to the esca-
lation of the crisis in 1974.’
Konstantinos Kotzias, Contemporary Review
‘O’Malley and Craig show how powerful and penetrating journalism can
be by producing a book of high quality and academic value. This book
fills a gap in the literature about Cyprus and the Cyprus problem, and
will also be of interest to those working on the eastern Mediterranean,
and on US and British foreign policy in the region.’
Mediterranean Politics
‘This extremely well researched book by Brendan O’Malley and Ian
Craig adds to our understanding of how this small country could
become drenched in so much bloodshed and interethnic strife.’
Kevin Ovenden, Socialist Review
‘The Cyprus Conspiracydelivers new and damning detail on how the big
powers (including good old “ethical” Britain) taught Greek Cypriots
and Turkish Cypriots not to live together.’
Guardian
‘A marvellous new book…It is a fascinating story of international
intrigue, espionage and intelligence, brilliantly and graphically told and
it will open a lot of eyes of people who, until now, had no inkling –
until today – about the real and intriguing reason behind the partition
of Cyprus.’
Chris Moncrieff, House
‘It is recommended reading for those seeking to understand one of the
most lengthy and bitter conflicts in Europe from a historical context as
well as an illustration of the supremacy of realpolitik at the height of
the Cold War.’
Journal of Peace Research
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To my mother, Marie,
and to the memory of my father, John
Brendan O’Malley
To my parents,
Jack and Olwen
Ian Craig
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THE CYPRUS
CONSPIRACY
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
America, Espionage
and the
Turkish Invasion
Brendan O’Malley
and Ian Craig
I.B.Tauris Publishers
LONDON • NEW YORK
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Paperback edition published in 2001 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by
St Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
First published in 1999 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.
Reprinted in 2000. Second reprint in 2001.
Copyright © Brendan O’Malley & Ian Craig, 1999, 2000, 2001
The right of Brendan O’Malley and Ian Craig to be identified as
the authors of this work has been asserted by the authors in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book,
or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1 86064 737 5 paperback
ISBN 1 86064 439 2 hardback
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Goudy by Dexter Haven, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Introduction ix
Chronology xiii
Maps xvi
1 Strategic Prize: Britain’s Vital Military Base 1
2 The Enemy Within: The Rise of the Enosis Campaign 8
3 The Secret Alliance: Eden Stokes Turkish Violence 17
4 Military Crackdown: Harding Gets Tough 24
5 Hamstrung at Suez: Grivas Sabotages Military Preparations 32
6 Macmillan’s Pact: Eisenhower Deal Frees Makarios 45
7 Sounding the Retreat: NATO Allowed to Mediate 52
8 North Atlantic Agenda: Eisenhower Rejects the Macmillan Plan 60
9 Pax Americana: The Settlement Secures NATO Ties 68
10 A Sham Independence: The Unsinkable Aircraft-carrier 77
11 Constitutional Collapse: The Bloodbath Begins 87
12 America’s Secret Option: A Limited Invasion 94
13 A Crude Partition: The British Defend Turkish Enclaves 101
14 The NATO Plot: Plans to Split Cyprus 113
15 Fallen Allies: Grivas Risks War 120
16 The ‘Red Priest’: Assassination Target 131
17 Crisis of Trust: Spying Bases at Risk 140
18 The Invisible Hand: The Greek Colonels Oust Makarios 151
19 Searching Questions: Kissinger and Callaghan are Cross-examined 156
20 Warnings of a Coup: The CIA Knew in Advance 161
21 Washington Stalls: Britain Sends a Task-force 169
22 America’s Veto: Kissinger Blocks Military Deterrent 176
23 The Turkish Landing: Britain on the Brink of War 187
24 A Creeping Invasion: Talks at Geneva 199
25 The Road to War: Kissinger Over-rules Callaghan 206
26 To the Attila Line: US Pressure Contains the Advances 216
27 Sabotaged by Congress: The Bitter Legacy Lives On 222
Appendix Interview with Henry Kissinger 232
Notes on the Text 238
Bibliography 258
Index 261
v
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Maps 1 Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, 1974.
2 Cyprus’s strategic position during the Cold War.
3 Island of Cyprus, 1974.
Plates 1 In the 1950s, Britain tried to crush the Cypriot uprising.
2 Archbishop Makarios in 1959 with EOKA leader George Grivas.
3 A blood-stained bath preserved in the Museum of Barbarism, Nicosia.
4 George Ball, US Acting Secretary of State.
5 A Turkish soldier and a Greek-Cypriot girl during the invasion of 1974.
6 Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.
7 British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan.
8 Glafkos Clerides, president of the Republic of Cyprus today and acting
president in 1974.
9 Rauf Denktash, Turkish-Cypriot leader in 1974 and now president of the
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
10 Henry Kissinger with Brendan O’Malley, spring 1999.
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PREFACE
The trigger for our search for the real story behind the Cyprus crisis – which has
left the island divided to this day – was an unguarded remark made by James
Callaghan. Sipping a glass of wine on the terrace of the House of Commons,
Callaghan, who was Foreign Secretary in 1974, spoke emotionally of his role
in the dramatic events to a fellow MP: ‘It was the most frightening moment of
my career,’ he said. ‘We nearly went to war with Turkey. But the Americans
stopped us.’
Our curiosity aroused, we asked Callaghan to elaborate, but he insisted on
seeing our questions in advance and, when he saw them, declined to be inter-
viewed. Harold Wilson and then Defence Secretary Roy Mason also declined.
That set us off on a long hunt for the truth. We wanted to know why Greece
staged a coup against Cyprus and tried to assassinate its President, why Turkey
retaliated with a full-scale invasion, and why Britain sent a military task force
but took no action – when all three powers were supposed to be guarantors of
Cyprus’s independence.
The more we looked into it, the more complex the Cyprus jigsaw became,
and at every important turn there was the hand of the CIA or the US State
Department.
Our investigation involved deep research through top secret files, released
in Britain and America, including Defence, Foreign Office and Colonial Office
papers, Cabinet minutes, State Department and CIA papers, and interviews
with a number of those closest to the crisis. History records that Cyprus was
divided because of a Greek-inspired coup and a Turkish invasion. We discovered
that the truth was considerably more complex. It was a conspiracy by America,
as Britain stood by, to divide the island. And the reason, ignored by previous
studies of the Cyprus crisis, was the island’s strategic value as a military and intel-
ligence base as well as America’s considerable military interests in Turkey. These
swamped all other considerations as far as America was concerned. In fact they
have done so in all British and American policy over Cyprus in the past 50 years.
This book explodes the myth that Cyprus is divided today purely because of
ethnic hatred. It reveals an astonishing international plot, developed from a
blueprint evolved first under British rule, then by US President Johnson’s officials,
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the goals of which were finally realised in 1974 even as the Watergate scandal
reached its climax.
There are many people, too numerous to mention, who have helped us with
this investigation, but we would like to offer our special thanks to the staff of the
Public Records Office at Kew, the British Library in London, Colindale and
Leeds and the House of Commons library, whose service and resources were
invaluable to our research; to former US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger,
the Cypriot leaders on both sides including Glafkos Clerides, Rauf Denktash,
the late Ezekias Pappiannou, Vassos Lyssarides and Kenan Attakol, and
Callaghan’s former political aide Lord McNally, who allowed us to interview
them; to the press offices of the Cypriot Government in Nicosia, the Turkish
Republic of North Cyprus and the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall; to elec-
tronic intelligence experts Professor Jeffrey Richelson and Professor Desmond
Ball, and investigative journalist Duncan Campbell; and to distinguished
Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand for their help.
Brendan O’Malley
Ian Craig
London, March 1999
viii
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INTRODUCTION
There is one legacy of the Cold War which continues to haunt the West: a
European country that remains cut in two, its capital split like Berlin before the
Wall came down, with a corridor of no-man’s land preventing 200,000 refugees
from returning to their homes. To visitors it is a popular holiday island, but away
from the resorts it is bristling with troops, military hardware and electronic spying
bases. Situated at the strategically crucial meeting point of three continents, it
is for its size one of the most heavily armed countries in the world, with more
foreign agents per head of population than anywhere else.
It is 25 years since the Greek military dictators in Athens staged a coup in
Cyprus, dramatically ousting its Greek-Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios,
and Turkey retaliated by seizing more than a third of the island in a two-phase
invasion.
Greek Cypriots have long believed the Americans were to blame for failing
to prevent the bloody events of 1974, which left the island ‘ethnically cleansed’
long before the phrase was ever conjured up. In Washington, congressmen
demanded to know why their country, as the main supplier of arms to the two
NATO partners, had allowed one country to usurp democracy in a friendly state
and the other to occupy a major slice of its territory, bringing both of them to
the brink of a disastrous war.
In London, MPs cross-examined Foreign Secretary James Callaghan on why
Britain, as a guarantor of Cyprus’s independence, with a major air base, numerous
spying facilities and thousands of troops on the island, took no military action
to prevent the crisis erupting. But no-one could cut through the shroud of secrecy
that descended on the subject.
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger fought long and hard to prevent key
officials releasing documents or answering questions on the period, and in his
memoirs, Years of Upheaval, he was uncharacteristically reticent. He said, ‘I must
leave a full discussion of the Cyprus episode to another occasion’.1 Callaghan
was similarly evasive when pressed on Britain’s role, leaving MPs to conclude:
‘The full truth will never be known unless, and until, all official papers of the
period can be seen’.2Only this year did Kissinger return to the subject more fully
in his latest memoirs, Years of Renewal. Late in the production of this book, he
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