military base

In late 1965, the UN General Assembly formally called on all states to ‘respect the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus’ – the high point of Makarios’s efforts to secure the international position of the republic, free from interference by outside powers. Embarrassed to vote openly against the resolution, as too brazen an indication of their intentions, Britain and America made their displeasure clear by abstaining, along with their numerous clientele.

The reality is that Britain had both the means and the obligation to stop the Turkish assault on Cyprus. After first ensuring Turkish hostility to the Greek majority, it had imposed a Treaty of Guarantee on the island, depriving it of true independence, for its own selfish ends: the retention of large military enclaves at its sovereign disposal. Now, when called on to abide by the treaty, it crossed its arms and gave free passage to the modern Attila, claiming that it was helpless – a nuclear power – to do otherwise.

It only remained for the British... to name their price for putting the seal of the proprietor on a transaction so satisfactory to them. What London required were sovereign military enclaves on Cyprus – little ‘Gibraltars’, as Macmillan put it. There was less euphemism on the ground. ‘We should open our mouths wide,’ wrote the key British official in Nicosia. The area gulped down was forty times the size of Gibraltar, and when the final treaties establishing the new state and its constitution were signed, more pages were devoted to British bases in Cyprus than to all its other provisions combined – a juridical unicum.