Office of the Historian

158. Telegram From the Embassy in Cyprus to the Department of State1

Nicosia, November 6, 1974, 1410Z.

3905. For the Secretary from Ambassador. Subject: Turkey’s Partitionist Moves in Cyprus.

1.
Before your arrival in Ankara,2 we will be sending you for background current, detailed information on Turkish actions within its zone of occupation in Cyprus. From our vantage—and this will perhaps be relevant to your discussions—Turkey is moving in a direction contrary to its public statements which favor a Cyprus that is independent, sovereign, with a federal structure and territorial integrity.
2.
What we see happening ever more clearly day by day is a forced division of the island: military, ethnic, economic, and administrative. We are witnessing the creation of a mainland, not a Turkish Cypriot Government, as the Turkish Cypriots increasingly complain.
3.
I feel this bodes ill for future stability between Greece and Turkey and in the Eastern Mediterranean. The situation on Cyprus itself is already quite tense enough and will remain so for a long time to come because of the passions engendered by past summer’s events and reciprocal cruelties. If in addition there is focused on the line of rigid division and confrontation which the Turks are bringing into being on the island the inheritance of millenia of Greco-Turkish hostilities, I fear no Cyprus solution or stabilized relationship between Greece and Turkey will be durable.
4.
The contradiction between Turkish words and Turkish deeds leads us to feel that to a degree at least we are being trifled with. We wonder anew whether it is not the Turkish General Staff rather than civilian leadership which has the greater influence on Turkey’s action in Cyprus. Ambassador Macomber would be in the better position to comment on this.
Crawford
  1. Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Presidential Country Files for Middle East and South Asia, 1974–1977, Box 3, Cyprus Nodis to Secretary of State 4. Secret; Immediate; Nodis.↩
  2. Kissinger did not go to Ankara because of the October 17 Congressional vote to cut off military aid to Turkey.↩