(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A coup d'état in Nicosia, a revolt in Maidan Square, and enemy responses-Separating myths from facts [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-03 On July 15, 1974, the Greek military regime overthrew the President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios. Turkey used the coup as a pretext and invaded Cyprus allegedly to prevent Greece from annexing the island, to restore the constitutional order upset by the coup, and to protect the Turkish Cypriot community. The Turks dubbed their invasion “a peace operation.” A few decades later, in 2014, in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people revolted against their government in Maidan Square. Ukraine's pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych flew to Russia. Putin branded the revolt a “coup” by the United States and the West. He used it as a pretext to invade and annex Crimea and incite a separatist movement and armed conflict in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. The two areas, collectively known as the Donbas, proclaimed independence from Ukraine in May 2014. On February 21, 2022, the Kremlin recognized the two states' independence; the following day, Russian military forces advanced into the separatist territories. Putin called Russia's attack “a special peace operation,” not an invasion. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched an all-out attack to capture Ukraine. The intervention in Crimea, Russia claimed before it embarked on its invasion, would be a "humanitarian mission" to protect ethnic Russians. “If Russia were to use force, it would be “in full compliance with international law,” Putin stated. Referring to his plan to seize the Donbas, he declared: “We must do everything to help these people to protect their rights and independently determine their own destiny.” None of the reasons Turkey and Russia gave to explain their invasions were true, and they were merely excuses to justify and cover up their aggression. The Russian invaders invented excuses to justify their attacks, just like the Turks did. Greece's military government, which was in power because it enjoyed the support of the Nixon-Kissinger government, orchestrated the coup against Makarios with the help of units of the Cypriot national guard. But, nine days later, on July 24, the coupists lost power, and the President of the Cypriot House of Representatives, a moderate and friendly toward the Turkish Cypriots politician, Glafkos Clerides, became acting president and restored legitimacy on the island. Yet, three weeks later, on August 14, the Turks unleashed another attack and expanded their occupation from six percent to thirty-seven percent of the territory of the Republic. The August invasion proved that Turkey did not invade to restore the constitutional order and "protect" the Turkish Cypriots, as Ankara alleged, but to implement its long-standing plans of grabbing part of Cyprus's territory and setting the island under its military control. Nihat Erim's plans in 1956 constitute the blueprint of Turkey's strategy in Cyprus. These plans called for population exchanges and the partitioning of Cyprus. In the late 60s, the Turks changed their goals and pursued partition through a loose confederation which would have made them masters in the north and partners in the south; and given Turkey legal rights on the entire island. The Turks alleged the Treaty of Guarantee (1960), which made Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom guarantors of the Cypriot state, gave them the right to intervene to restore the constitutional order upset by the coup; a fictitious claim because the Treaty did not allow military “force.” It only authorized “action.” Had the Treaty allowed force, it would have been void because only the U.N. Security Council could approve it. But even if we accept Turkey had the right to use military force unilaterally, the sole purpose of such action, according to article 4 of the Treaty, should be “the reestablishing of the state affairs,” upset by the coup, not to occupy and colonize northern Cyprus, as Turkey did. Despite Turkey's claims, the unilateral declaration of independence made by the "TRNC" in 1983 in areas occupied by the Turkish Army is further evidence that it didn't invade to restore Cyprus' status quo ante. “The human rights record of Turkey during and after the occupation shows clearly that the brief Greek coup d'état was just a pretext for Turkey to invade Cyprus,” wrote Uzay Bulut, the gutsy Turkish journalist who is not afraid to tell the truth. “You don't torture, rape, or forcibly displace innocent civilians after seizing their property if your only aim is to restore the constitutional order and to protect people there,” she continued. The Greek military regime carried out the coup to depose President Makarios and negotiate with Turkey double enosis, a plan advocated by Dean Acheson in the 60s (Clerides, 1990) but vociferously opposed by the Cypriot president. Its aim was not to annex Cyprus to Greece, as the Turks promulgated, to justify their invasion, but to partition it between Greece and Turkey and bring the island into the NATO alliance. Following up in Acheson's footsteps, Kissinger actively promoted this goal. The Athens Junta did not plan to attack the Turkish Cypriots. The target of the coup was Makarios, and the conflict was between the Greeks. During the coup, the coupists did not harm a single Turkish Cypriot or fire a shot against the Turks. The Turkish Cypriots had nothing to fear. A document from the British National Archives, produced by William Mallinson (2010), a former British diplomat, shows that the British also believed the Turkish Cypriots were not in danger; and “that Turkey had no genuine pretext for military intervention.” Before the Turkish invasion, Claire Palley (2005) stated, there were “six and a half years of peace and relative normalization” on the island. It would be silly to believe that the Junta, which after the discovery of oil near Thasos in 1971, feared a Turkish attack in the Aegean, sought American protection, and appeased Turkey, would have carried an assault on the Turkish Cypriots and incited a war with Turkey. Turkey did not go to Cyprus to save the Turkish Cypriots, who were not in danger after all. Ankara invaded Cyprus to grab part of its territory, place the island under its military control and dominate the eastern Mediterranean. The following quote from the Strategic Depth (2001), a book written by Turkey’s former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, is self-explanatory and reveals Turkey’s imperialist aspirations: “Even if there was not one Muslim Turk over there [Cyprus], Turkey would have to maintain a Cyprus question.” Nor were the events at Maidan Square a coup orchestrated by the United States and the European Union, as Putin alleged, to justify his invasion of Crimea and later eastern Ukraine and Kyiv. It was a revolt carried out by the Ukrainian people, and Yanukovych fled the country because he lost his party's support and feared for his life. (McFaul, 2018). Yanukovych's refusal to sign a trade agreement that brought Ukraine closer to the European Union caused the insurrection. “Contrary to Putin's accusations, the Obama administration did not organize the Maidan protests,” McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Moscow, wrote. “Ukrainians did that alone. And we did not seek Yanukovych's overthrow; rather, we tried until the very last hours to forge a deal between the president and the protesters; even after Yanukovych had massacred dozens of his citizens, we were still negotiating with him,” he stressed. “American and European diplomats worked in tandem to try to defuse the stand. Our aim was not regime change, but a peaceful resolution to the crisis… Their efforts became more urgent after violence erupted between Ukrainian police and protesters on February 18, 2014,” McFaul noted. Putin's claims that he wished to prevent genocide against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, protect them from oppression, or denazify Ukraine were also untrue. The European Union's External Service exposed Russia's disinformation campaign: “To galvanize domestic support for Russia's military aggression, Russian state-controlled media have tirelessly sought to vilify Ukraine, falsely accusing it of genocide in eastern Ukraine, drawing groundless parallels with Nazism and World War Two , and fabricating stories aimed at striking a negative emotional chord with audiences.There are many instances of such fabricated stories, best illustrated by the famous example of a Russian television report accusing Ukrainian forces of crucifying a young boy in eastern Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict. Fact-checkers were quick to prove that the story was entirely made up . Similar stories continue to be produced.In reality, there is no evidence that Russian-speaking or ethnic Russian residents in eastern Ukraine face persecution – let alone genocide — at the hands of Ukrainian authorities. This has been confirmed in reports published by the Council of Europe , the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights , and the OSCE .” The Russians manufactured these tales to justify their invasion and cover up their crimes. Putins absurd genocide claims cannot hide his war crimes in Ukraine , wrote, Olexander Scherba for the Atlantic Council on February 12, 2022. The Turks concocted similar myths to destabilize Cyprus and justify a Turkish invasion. A notorious example of such incidents is the 1963 bathtub massacre in Nicosia. Nihat Ilhan, a Turkish doctor who was an officer in the Turkish Army in Cyprus, killed his wife and three children in the heart of the Turkish quarter of Nicosia. (Yennaris, 2003). The murderer vanished, taken away by the Turkish authorities. Turkish officials lied about the killer’s identity, staged the scene, and blamed Greeks for the crime. The 1963 “bathtub massacre” in Nicosia has been used by Turkish nationalists to generate hostility and mistrust within Turkish Cypriot community against Greeks and to justify Turkish military invasion of Cyprus. But what’s the truth behind it? Bulut tweeted, on January 2, 2021. https://twitter.com/bulutuzay_/status/1345323719124791303 General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, a retired Turkish army officer, said in a televised interview in 2010 that Turkish authorities burned a mosque during the Cyprus conflict . The Turks did so “to increase animosity toward Greeks on Cyprus.” “It was a rule of war to engage in acts of sabotage made to look as if they were carried out by the enemy,” he explained. “If a lie is repeated often, it becomes the truth. The Turkish propaganda for Cyprus is perhaps one of the longest and most systematic propaganda ever conducted in world history,” Bulut explained on another occasion. Turkey and Russia referred to their respective invasions as “peaceful” operations. However, as the world witnessed, both invasions were far from peaceful. Turkish-Cypriot journalist and owner of the Turkish-Cypriot newspaper Africa, Sener Levent, commented on Turkey's ludicrous portrayal of its aggression in Cyprus in the summer of 1974 and its 2018 attack on the Kurds in Afrin: “Turkey comes up with such egregious names for its war operations. The one in Cyprus was called a 'peace operation.' The one in Syria is now 'the olive branch operation.' We did see the peace operation. It was bombs and not flowers of peace that rained from jets. Your heroic pilot even bombed a mental hospital in Nicosia. I saw a dead body trapped between the two floors of a hotel bombed in Maraş [the Cypriot town of Varosha]. Was that the symbol of the peace operation? Captives who were executed by firing squads... Women who were raped... And a soldier who cut the ears off his victims... Those were the symbols of peace, right?” “Now it is the ‘olive branch operation.’ But from the skies, seeds of death and not olive beans are raining on Afrin.” Turkey’s “Peace Operations” (By Uzay Bulut) ‹ New Eastern Politics The London Sunday Times, on January 23, 1977, published excerpts of a report of what the European Commission on Human Rights found, stating: “It amounts to a massive indictment of the Ankara government for the murder, rape, and looting by its army in Cyprus during and after the Turkish invasion of the summer of 1974.” UN investigators “have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture, and horrific sexual violence,” The Guardian reported on September 23, 2022. The investigators were “struck by the large number of executions in the areas that [they] visited” and the frequent “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats… The investigators had also received “consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture, which were carried out during unlawful confinement”… In the settlements of Bucha, Hostomel and Borodianka, occupied for about a month by Russian troops, Ukrainian investigators found dozens of mass graves where the bodies of civilians, tortured and murdered, had been buried… Some of the victims had told the investigators they were transferred to Russia and held for weeks in prisons. Others had “disappeared” after such transfers. “Interlocutors described beatings, electric shocks, and forced nudity, as well as other types of violations in such detention facilities…” Investigators had also documented cases of sexual and gender-based violence… “There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes,” “In the cases, we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from four to 82 years.” The commission had documented a wide range of crimes against children, including children who were “raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined”. In April, forensic doctors told the Guardian they had found evidence that some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces. “We already have a few cases which suggest that these women had been raped before being shot to death,” Vladyslav Perovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor who has carried out dozens of autopsies on people from Bucha, Irpin and Borodianka, told the Guardian. According to evidence, cluster munitions were unleashed in areas where there were no military personnel and no military infrastructure.” So much about Turkey’s and Russia’s “peace operations.” Regrettably, like in any other war, the recipients of aggression also committed‌ atrocities. Retreating Greek Cypriot irregulars and Ukrainian forces engaged in offenses. However, these crimes paled compared to the barbarity of the Turkish and Russian troops, and the perpetrators carried them out mainly for revenge. Had it not been for the invasions, these atrocities would not have happened. Tiny Cyprus, just forty miles south of Turkey, which had an army as large as the entire Greek Cypriot population, could not have threatened or started an attack on Turkey or the Turkish Cypriots, who made up 18% of the people on the island. Non-nuclear Ukraine could not have been a threat to nuclear and much bigger Russia or the Russian speakers in Ukraine. Although the Greeks and Ukrainians were the majority in their respective countries, they were in the minority within the greater geographical area. They were the ones who needed protection, and history has proven this. The fundamental goal of both invasions was to grab territory from weaker neighbors. The Turks continue to occupy and colonize northern Cyprus and attack other countries to resurrect the Ottoman Empire . They created their state in north Cyprus, which only Turkey recognizes. Putin aims to rebuild the tsarist Russian Empire. Cyprus and Ukraine have vast quantities of gas in their exclusive economic zones, which the invaders want to steal. U.S. and Western support for Ukraine mustn’t crumble. Weakening their resolve to support Ukraine would cause its defeat and be disastrous to the interests of the West and the United States. It would send the wrong message to the world’s aggressors that the United States and its allies are not serious or not strong enough to defend the rule of law, a paramount U.S. interest. To quote the late Sir David Hunt, a British diplomat: “For a peace-loving country which has no expansionist desires, there can be no greater national interest than the support of the system which has preserved world peace and stability in the last forty years.” (Sir David Hunt, in Koumoulides, ed., 1986.) Turkey’s actions in Cyprus do not differ from Russia’s in Ukraine. The United States and the West cannot treat the Turkish invaders and occupiers of northern Cyprus differently from the Russian ones if they want the world to believe that they are genuinely committed to the rule of law. Gene Rossides (2014), who served in both the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, wrote: “Toleration of Turkey’s occupation of 37.3 percent of Cyprus weakens the legal, moral, political, and diplomatic positions of the United States in the Middle East and throughout the world.” The rule of law must apply equally to our friends and foes to be credible. President Eisenhower said in 1956: “There can be no peace without law, and there can be no law if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us and another for our friends.” Today, apart from occupying northern Cyprus and making threats to annex it and to open the tourist suburb of Varosha to investors, in violation of U.N. resolutions that demand Ankara returns the city to its original owners, the Greek- Cypriots, Turkey also threatens war on Greece , an indispensable U.S. and NATO ally that currently contributes significantly to the American effort in Ukraine. Since Turkey closed the Straits, which helped Russia, a fact missed by our administration, the Strategic Port of Alexandroupolis in Greece has become a vital artery for supplying Ukraine. The U.S. uploads weapons and other supplies to the Greek port and, from there, trucks or sends them via rail through Bulgaria and Romania into Ukraine. Erdogan recently even vowed to unleash a rocket attack on Athens, a city of over four million civilians. He also wants to eliminate the Kurds in Syria who helped the U.S. defeat ISIS and, in the war, lost 11,000 fighters. He falsely accuses Finland and Sweden, two of the most progressive and democratic states in Europe, of harboring terrorists when Turkey does this. David Phillips, the director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, in his book An Uncertain Ally: Turkey Under Erdoğans Dictatorship (2017), provides a detailed account of the Turkish regime’s connections with terrorists and other criminal entities. Erdogan is blocking Sweden and Finland NATO membership . He is cozy with Putin and says Turkey plans to buy more Russian defense systems (S-400 missiles). He plays a double game in the war in Ukraine and minimizes the impact of Western sanctions on Russia. Ankara targets Armenia and encourages Azerbaijan’s aggression. It has troops in Iraq illegally. Turkey’s mercenaries undermine the stability and security of Libya. At home, Erdoğan’s regime is tearing Turkey’s democratic norms apart, violating human rights , and imprisoning journalists and political opponents. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/3/2149527/-A-coup-d-tat-in-Nicosia-a-revolt-in-Maidan-Square-and-enemy-responses-Separating-myths-from-facts Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/