Cyprus - The Forbidden Zone

Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960 but full independence across the island would not last for long. In the summer of 1974, the Turkish military invaded northern Cyprus twice – first on 20 July and then on 14 August, committing ethno-religious cleansing and crimes against humanity in an attempt to terrorize the Greek Cypriots to push them southward.

Turkey “launched a full scale aggressive attack against Cyprus, a small non-aligned and virtually defenseless country, possessing no air force, no navy and no army except for a small national guard,” Zenon Rossides, the then-Cyprus representative to the United Nations, sent a letter on 6 December 1974 to the UN Secretary General. “Thus, Turkey’s overwhelming military machine embarked upon an armed attack including napalm bombing of open towns and villages, wreaking destruction, setting forests on fire and spreading indiscriminate death and human suffering to the civilian population of the island.”

To invade the island, Turkey used the coup organized by the then ruling Junta of Greece against Cypriot President Makarios. According to the website Kypros.org:

“The coup presented Turkey with the pretext she had long sought. Alleging a right of unilateral military intervention as guarantor of the 1960 Constitution, Turkey 5 days later invaded Cyprus…. Once in Cyprus, instead of restoring the state of affairs under the 1960 Constitution and protecting the human rights of all the people of Cyprus, as was her duty and alleged justification, Turkey, despite the coup having collapsed and democratic government having been restored in Greece, on 14 August 1974 massively extended her invasion to occupy 36.4% of Cyprus, driving out well over 170,000 Greek Cypriot refugees and moving her army to the aptly named ‘Attila line’. That Turkey committed atrocities in the course of her invasion is scarcely surprising in view of her record in the Balkans, in Syria, in Armenia and in Anatolia and her long-standing policies of population expulsion and transfer and of discrimination against non-Turkish ethnic groups.”

These atrocities include murders of Greek Cypriot civilians including children, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances of civilians, wholesale and repeated rapes, eviction and displacement of Greek Cypriots from their homes and land, looting, seizure and distribution of houses and business premises belonging to Greek Cypriots, forced labor of detainees, and cultural destruction of churches and graveyards, among others.