From Workers Vanguard No.50, 2 August 1974
Though the final resolution of the current Cyprus crisis is still in doubt, it is clear that its origins lie in the declining political fortunes of the rightist military junta in Athens and an unstable stand-off between ethnic Greek and Turkish elements on the island. Acting through the 650 Greek officers who command the Cyprus National Guard, General Ioannidis hoped for a dramatic success with the coup July 15 in Nicosia, one which would drape the junta in the mantle of Hellenic nationalism and rally all true Greeks to its side.
However, unluckily for him and for the short-lived Greek Cypriot junta headed by one-time terrorist Nikos Sampson, subsequent events demonstrated the direct dependence of all of the principals in the Cyprus drama on the imperialist powers, chiefly the U.S. It is true that Henry Kissinger’s room to maneuver in the Near East is being daily reduced as the various interested parties demand concrete results instead of diplomatic razzle-dazzle. But it has certainly not escaped the notice of Kremlin bureaucrats that out of the confusion have emerged governments in Greece and Cyprus which are precisely what Washington ordered.
The ousting of the “red bishop” Makarios on Cyprus, now replaced by the respectable conservative Clerides, and the painless elimination of the bungling Greek junta (long an international embarrassment to the U.S.) in favor of a civilian cabinet headed by the reactionary Caramanlis and responsible to the military, in the person of President/General Gizikis, did not simply fall from the skies. The Manchester Guardian Weekly (27 July) reports that Kissinger engineered the installation of Clerides as one of the secret conditions for Turkey’s signature of a ceasefire; and the Economist (27 July) notes that it was the U.S.’ halt on delivery of military supplies (some aircraft were held up in Spain) which convinced the Greek army to back off from a direct confrontation with Turkey in Thrace and toss the ball back to the politicians. Cyprus, as the international diplomatic and military activity during the current crisis has demonstrated, is not just another island. Strategically situated in the eastern Mediterranean, it lies at the juncture of the interests of several great and not-so-great powers. (The island has been referred to as the largest unsinkable aircraft carrier in the region.) NATO naval presence in the Israel-Egypt arena, Russian access to its Syrian naval resupply facilities and the ability to supervise the flow of oil from the Arabian peninsula were all directly affected by the Greek coup on the island. Even the now toothless British lion, usually groveling servile before U.S. foreign policy, managed a growl in its own behalf in the face of an initial Washington “tilt” toward Sampson and the junta.
To this complex international situation must be added the difficult ethnic composition of the Cypriot population. Although temporary ceasefires have been prettified in the 1960 constitution and other imposing-sounding documents, in reality Greek and Turkish communities on the island remain deeply hostile and far more integrated into the social life of their respective mother countries than into any kind of binational Cyprus. None of the solutions available under present social-economic conditions can possibly satisfy the aspirations of both majority and minority. Enosis (union with Greece), “double enosis“ (partition between Greece and Turkey), ceding sections of Thrace to Turkey in exchange for incorporating Cyprus into Greece and even the continuation of some sort of federated independent Cyprus would involve destructive forced mass population transfers and would contain within them the seeds of further bloody communal and national wars.
“The Cyprus Problem” cannot be solved under capitalism, that is under social and economic conditions which necessarily set one nationality against another; only through the establishment of a proletarian state power and laying the basis for a socialist economy, in which the fruits of labor would be used for the benefit of all, is there any hope of social justice for such interpenetrated peoples.
In modern times Cyprus has always had a Greek majority, although when it was under the sway of the Ottoman Empire this majority was occasionally subjected to bloody purges by the Turkish overlords. Falling under British rule in the latter part of the nineteenth century, it provided fertile grounds for the classical colonial policy of divide and rule. Turks thus tended to favor British rule, while pro-enosis forces dominated among the Greeks.
This situation ended in 1959 when the pro-enosis Greek guerrilla forces (EOKA) led by the former World War II fascist collaborator Colonel Grivas and Archbishop Makarios managed to exert sufficient pressure by their terrorist actions to force Greece, Turkey and Britain to look for a new arrangement. The result was the independence of Cyprus, guaranteed by these three powers, under the patchwork constitution of 1960, which simply codified the existing stalemate.
The constitution elaborated a complex dual government structure according to which all important legislative acts were subject to veto by either ethnic grouping. Positions in the administrative apparatus, National Guard, constabulary and public services were to be distributed to each ethnic group by prearranged and arbitrary percentages, as were ministerial posts in the government. These arrangements granted the Turkish minority a substantially greater proportional representation in the government (30–40 percent) than its share of the island population.
The whole house of cards, which in any case was operative only on the condition that both Greece and Turkey accepted the stand-off, fell apart at the first test. Makarios, the first and (to date) only president of Cyprus, attempted almost immediately to “amend” the constitution by abrogating all veto rights, reneging on the required percentages in public employment and in particular on the specified 40 percent Turkish makeup of the armed forces. The Greek majority was naturally outraged at the “preferential hiring” provisions of the constitution. The Turkish minority, on the other hand, opposed any amendments since it rightly suspected that this would only be a first step toward enosis.
The squabbling soon degenerated into the civil war of 1963–64 which led to the reintroduction of British troops as mediators of Cypriot affairs and to a period of several years of terror and counter-terror against the populations of both communities. The fruits of this period (ending in 1967) were the creation of rigid Turkish enclaves and the addition of yet another military contingent, the UN “peace-keeping” force. At present there are six different armies on the island!
Since independence the largest political force on the island has been the Communist Party (AKEL—Progressive Party of the Working People), which controls a labor federation enrolling half the organized workforce. AKEL received 40 percent of the vote in the last elections and routinely wins all the seats it contests (only 9 out of a total of 35 last time); it could undoubtedly win double as many. In general the Stalinists have given backhanded support to enosis and sought a deal with Makarios.
The Archbishop, in turn, has always been more pragmatic than the now-deceased Grivas, who was a committed anti-communist ideologue. While personally a conservative, Makarios was willing to cooperate with the “reds” provided they did not contest his fragile hegemony over the island’s political structure.
The affair between AKEL and the Archbishop was transformed into a marriage as a result of the 1967 colonels’ coup in Athens. From that time until last week, union with Greece would have meant, in practical terms, sending AKEL and labor leaders straight into the jails of the junta’s torturers. The Stalinists were understandably less than enthusiastic about this prospect. Sensing a similar mood in the Greek Cypriot community, Makarios switched from support for enosis to tacitly advocating independence for Cyprus. Apparently his political sense was accurate, for 97.5 percent of the ethnic Greek voters cast their ballots for him in the last presidential elections.
It is ironical that Makarios’ more recent difficulties stem from his earlier pro-enosis position. It was he who in 1964 invited Grivas to return to the island along with the 650 Greek officers who took over control of the National Guard in contravention of the 1960 constitution. The “unspeakable Nikos Sampson” (New York Times, 20 July) was actually a staunch supporter of the Archbishop until 1971. Thus the basis of the coup was laid by the Archbishop, and by its consistent support for him the AKEL also bears responsibility for it.
True to their traditions the Stalinists responded to the officers’ coup by once again swearing undying loyalty to the head of the Greek Orthodox Church on Cyprus: “AKEL strongly and angrily condemns the fascist coup staged in Cyprus from outside and urges the people to offer resistance and to rally around the President of the Republic, Archbishop Makarios, who was elected by the people,” read a report in the American CP’s Daily World (17 July). The report “forgot” to mention that only Greek Cypriots voted for the president (ethnic Turks elect the vice president). The Stalinists also neglected to call for a policy of revolutionary defeatism upon the invasion of the Turkish troops (which turned the Cyprus fighting into a Greek–Turkish war in which the working class must oppose both sides). But most of all they “forgot” to mention the need for working-class independence from the bourgeoisie.
As against the Stalinist program of collaboration with “progressive,” “left,” “anti-imperialist” or even, as in Cyprus, with quite conservative bourgeois forces, Marxists must put forward the program of proletarian struggle against all sections of the class enemy. This does not mean we rule out specific, purely tactical agreements for united action against a common enemy. Thus in the first days following the Cyprus coup, up to the point of the Turkish invasion, there was a basis for united action—namely calling for the overthrow of the junta—which could have embraced the majority of the island’s population, both Turkish and Greek. But not for a minute would this have meant abandoning a policy of political opposition to Makarios and to the Greek and Turkish bourgeois nationalists.
For a historical moment the interests of democracy were flatly counterposed to nationalism among the dominant people on the island. This was seen in the reported instances of pro-Makarios Greeks who were saved by ethnic Turks from the initial National Guard onslaught, and notably in a first-ever united Greek and Turkish Cypriot demonstration against the junta, in London on July 16. At that time the basis existed for a vast popular uprising which would very quickly have become transformed into a battle on class lines within the Greek community. But the condition for successfully preparing this struggle is that the Marxist party not sacrifice its independent proletarian perspective. The absence of revolutionary leadership—to seize and lead forward this exceptional chance for class struggle across national lines against the reactionary coup—led straight to the renewed national antagonism and communal violence. By shamelessly aligning itself with Makarios, personification of the ethnically polarized status quo, the Stalinists bear direct responsibility for the degeneration of a historic opportunity for class unity into a resurgence of bloody national hatreds among the masses.
A Trotskyist party in Cyprus would have called for the formation of an ethnically united workers militia based on the unions, and for democratic and transitional demands which could have transcended communal conflicts by uniting the working people in struggle against capitalism. Important among these demands would have been a call for expropriation of the large landowners (including, notably, the Greek Orthodox Church). It would have put forward the perspective of a workers government based on soviets. In contrast, by giving political support to Makarios, AKEL was simply paving the way for a return to the ethnic politics which have polarized Cyprus on national lines for centuries.
Following the Turkish invasion it was necessary to take a revolutionary defeatist position in Cyprus, against both armies in the field. Certainly no support could be given to the Cyprus National Guard and Greek troops who, if victorious, would have rounded up several thousand leftists and butchered them. But while the Turkish invasion opened up the situation and led to the downfall of the Greek junta, proletarian revolutionists could give no support to it as well. Otherwise they would have been endorsing the nationalist atrocities committed by the Turkish forces and giving support to Ankara’s goal of, at a minimum, establishing a military foothold and at best forcing a partition of the island. The correct call was to demand the immediate withdrawal of all outside armed forces from Cyprus.
Although the recent events may have strengthened the moderately liberal government in Turkey vis-à-vis the military, the fundamental impact of the Cyprus crisis will be felt in Greece. In Athens it has already led to the stepping down of the reactionary junta that has ruled the country with an iron fist for the last seven years. The military has, however, not disappeared from the political scene, as witness the fact that the junta’s “President,” General Gizikis, continued in office. We can now expect to witness a period of increasing class struggle and leftist militancy in Greece. The bourgeoisie is clearly worried about this, which is one reason why they have kept a tight lid on Athens both during and after the first night of the new regime. As the 27 July Economist commented apprehensively, “Nobody knows, when the repression of a dictatorship is lifted, what forces have been growing unseen below it: who has secretly prepared the best organization, who commands the biggest army of the streets, whose slogans will appeal most to unpractised ears.”
There are several similarities to Portugal in the Greek situation following the installation of the Caramanlis government. But there are also important differences. For one thing, there is no apparent leftist sector of the armed forces, and the Communist Party (the KKE) is badly split, with the stronger group, the “internal party,” being estranged from Moscow and social-democratic in orientation (similar to the Carrillo CP in Spain or the Australian CP, both of which have experienced splits by pro-Moscow loyalists.) Another important factor is the long history of Greek Trotskyism, which after World War II was quite strong. Today both the “United Secretariat” of Ernest Mandel and the “International Committee” of Gerry Healy have Greek sections.
The struggle for political independence of the working class is certainly as crucial in Greece as it is in Cyprus. The absence of a Makarios-like figure and leftist officers in the army may in fact make it difficult for the Stalinists to find someone to sell out to; Caramanlis seems determined to include no one to the left of timid liberals in his cabinet. This will not, however, prevent the reformists from trying. And judging from press accounts of Athens crowds cheering a general’s car following the junta’s appointment of the civilian cabinet, there are still widespread democratic illusions among the masses which must be dispelled.
The key weapon for confronting these illusions and polarizing the masses along class lines is the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. In the struggle to build a Trotskyist party in Greece, the key to taking the struggle forward, it will be necessary to raise demands which demonstrate clearly that the demokratia expected of Caramanlis and Gizikis is a sham. We call therefore for immediate elections to a constituent assembly; no amnesty for Ioannidis and the criminals of the military junta—try them by elected people’s tribunals; immediate withdrawal of all outside (including Greek) troops from Cyprus; Greece out of NATO, U.S. bases out of Greece; restore all democratic rights, including the right to strike and for the labor/socialist press to be published and distributed—annul the ban on the KKE; expropriate the bourgeoisie, down with Caramanlis—toward a workers government.
If a revolutionary Trotskyist organization is not crystallized to struggle for such a program, and if ostensible Marxists content themselves with tailing after the masses, not only will great opportunities be lost and the way be opened for the Stalinists to reconsolidate their former hold on Greek workers. In addition, with a popular civilian government in power and much of the population in uniform as the result of the mobilization of reserves, the generals and reactionary politicians could well attempt a confrontation with Turkey over Cyprus. With nationalist passions on the island already inflamed by the recent days of communal fighting, this could lead to mass murder on both sides. Thus as long as bourgeois law-and-order is not threatened by a united mobilization of the workers against capital, the fall of the Greek junta can actually lead to an intensification of nationalist conflicts on Cyprus.