Would Turkey’s Occupation and Partition Be Legal?

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

More than 50 years ago, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus to prevent a union between Cyprus and Greece.

Turkish fears were not wrong. Greek Junta leader Dimitrios Ioannidis sought Enosis, union with Cyprus and helped stage a coup against Archbishop Makarios III whom he deemed insufficiently committed to the cause.

While it is doubtful Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered the invasion as some more conspiratorial-minded analysts historians suggest, Ioannidis likely calculated that Kissinger would approve because of suspicion about Makarios III’s geopolitical orientation.

On July 15, 1974, the Cypriot National Guard disposed Makarios and installed Nikos Sampson to manage the Greek annexation from Cyprus’ end.It never came to be.

On July 20, 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and seized a beachhead amounting to three percent of the island. Four days later, the Junta collapsed. It was only weeks later while the parties negotiated in Geneva that Turkey undertook its land grab and seized more than one-third of the nation’s territory.

Three facts belie Turkey’s argument that Greek discrimination against Turkish Cypriots justified their invasion and continuing occupation. First, any danger had passed prior to Turkey’s landgrab. Second, Greece’s Junta fell and Greeks tried—and sentenced to death leading Junta members and Ioannidis, although the court later commuted this to life imprisonment. Even decades later, left and right united to oppose any amnesty.

Lastly, President Recep Tayyip The turn to democracy was sincere. Erdogan exposed Turkey’s true ambition when he lamented that Turkey did not seize the entirety of Cyprus to annex the nation with Greece. “Perhaps if we had pushed south, and I say this as a child of the present, there would be no more south and north and Cyprus would be ours only,” he quipped last March.

Parallels between the Junta and Erdogan

It is possible to put lipstick on a pig, but it will still be a pig. Erdogan may wrap himself in the mantle of justice and human rights, but he will always be anything more than a dictator, imperialist, and serial abuser of human rights.

Still, precedent matters. Erdogan own historical interpretations raise a question: If Erdogan and Turks argue that a landgrab and partition of Cyprus are justified, would the same logic support the occupation and partition of Turkey?

First, consider parallels between the Junta and Erdogan:

Both were and are openly irredentist. Erdogan embraces maps showing Turkey’s borders expanded into the Aegean Sea, he has opened Turkish post offices in northern Syria. Turkey has deployed its personnel in northern Iraq in civilian clothes and set up checkpoints. Erdogan’s talk of a two-state solution in Cyprus is Putinesque, as it would simply set up the next step:

A fake referendum followed by Anschluss. Indeed, Turkey has already embraced this playbook when it illegally occupied and then, in 1939, annexed the State of Hatay after flooding the territory with settlers. Today, history repeats as successive Turkish governments have subsidized and flooded northern Cyprus with Turks whose religious conservatism and Turkish nationalism are alien to any community in Cyprus.

Quality of government matters. At the time of the invasion of Cyprus, Greece was a dictatorship and Cyprus governed by a proxy for the coup leaders. Turkey, meanwhile, was an aspiring democracy.

Today, the opposite is true. Freedom House gives Greece and Cyprus higher freedom rankings than the United States. Turkey ranks as among the world’s worst dictatorships, descending each year further into autocracy.

Unsafe minorities and abuse of rights

Nor is there any question that minorities are unsafe in Turkey. Turkey still denies the Armenian Genocide. Turkey’s treatment of Kurds and Yezidis far surpasses the worst abuses Turkish Cypriots ever faced. Some Yezidis whom the Islamic State seized more than a decade ago still reside in Turkey as slaves to Turkish Islamists. Turkish soldiers without shame and remorse post photos showing the torture and summary execution of Kurds. Erdogan converts Greek churches to mosques.

Turkey continues to force the closure of the Halki Seminary and denies the ability of Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox Patriarchates to train clergy in the country, all the while throwing obstacles in the way of foreign clergy seeking visas to minister to Turkey’s captive Christian communities.

Erdogan denies Alevis freedom to worship and destroys their prayer halls. As in Azerbaijan, Turkey treats Jews as museum exhibits to trot out for naïve foreigners and lobbyists.

When Turkey launched the second wave of its attack on Cyprus, none of its underlying justifications for its actions were true. Today, however, every single reason Erdogan and Turkish diplomats cite to justify its invasion and partition apply to Turkey itself: Turkey has irridentist ambitions, endangers minorities, and grows more dictatorial every year.

The question then becomes whether Turkey’s prescription for Cyprus would better apply to Turkey?

Perhaps Greece should take stewardship over the Aegean Coast? Turkey has proven Kurds correct: Kurds can only be secure within their own state. Armenians deserve not only reparations, but the return of the properties from which Ottoman Turks expelled their grandparents or great grandparents. Much of this, of course, is unrealistic.

However, the international community should stop treating Turkey as immune from the consequence of its actions and above the standards it professes.

Turks might also derive a lesson from Greeks, however. Rather than adhere blindly to the diktats of the Junta, Greeks held them accountable. Greek courts delivered justice. Perhaps the only difference, however, given the scale of Erdogan’s abuses would be if he deserves the same commutation of any death sentence.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.