Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974 in an operation that progressed in two phases over the following month. Taking place upon a background of intercommunal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and in response to a Greek junta-sponsored Cypriot coup d'état five days earlier, it led to the Turkish capture and occupation of the northern part of the island.
The coup was ordered by the military junta in Greece and staged by the Cypriot National Guard in conjunction with EOKA B. It deposed the Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios III and installed Nikos Sampson. The aim of the coup was the union (enosis) of Cyprus with Greece, and the Hellenic Republic of Cyprus to be declared.
Turkish forces landed in Cyprus on 20 July and captured 3% of the island before a ceasefire was declared. The Greek military junta collapsed and was replaced by a civilian government. Following the breakdown of peace talks, Turkish forces enlarged their original beachhead in August 1974 resulting in the capture of approximately 36% of the island. The ceasefire line from August 1974 became the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus and is commonly referred to as the Green Line.
Around 150,000 people (amounting to more than one-quarter of the total population of Cyprus, and to one-third of its Greek Cypriot population) were displaced from the northern part of the island, where Greek Cypriots had constituted 80% of the population. Over the course of the next year, roughly 60,000 Turkish Cypriots, amounting to half the Turkish Cypriot population, were moved from the south to the north after the Third Vienna Agreement and with the aid of the UNFICYP.
The invasion and its aftermath is considered a case of ethnic cleansing, described by some sources as "matched by that of Palestine in 1948 and since". In addition, Turkey subsequently supplemented the Turkish Cypriot population through the resettlement of settlers from Turkey, a process that some scholars characterize as a form of settler colonialism, albeit in a hybrid and non-classical form.
The Turkish invasion ended in the partition of Cyprus along the UN-monitored Green Line, which still divides Cyprus, and the formation of a de facto Autonomous Turkish Cypriot Administration in the north. In 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared independence, although Turkey is the only country that recognises it. The international community considers the TRNC's territory as Turkish-occupied territory of the Republic of Cyprus. The occupation is viewed as illegal under international law, amounting to illegal occupation of European Union territory since Cyprus became a member.
In 1571 the mostly Greek-populated island of Cyprus was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, during the Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573). After 300 years of Ottoman rule the island and its population was leased to Britain by the Cyprus Convention, an agreement reached during the Congress of Berlin in 1878 between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire. On 5 November 1914, in response to the Ottoman Empire's entry into the First World War on the side of the Central Powers, the United Kingdom formally declared Cyprus (together with Egypt and Sudan) a protectorate of the British Empire and later a Crown colony, known as British Cyprus. Article 20 of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 marked the end of the Turkish claim to the island. Article 21 of the treaty gave Turkish nationals ordinarily resident in Cyprus the choice of leaving the island within 2 years or to remain as British subjects.
At this time the population of Cyprus was composed of both Greeks and Turks, who identified themselves with their respective homeland. Greek and Turkish Cypriots lived quietly side by side for many years.
Formal education was perhaps the most important as it affected Cypriots during childhood and youth; education has been a main vehicle of transferring inter-communal hostility.
British colonial policies, such as the known principle of "divide and rule", promoted ethnic polarisation as a strategy to reduce the threat to colonial control. For example, when Greek Cypriots rebelled in the 1950s, the Colonial Office expanded the size of the Auxiliary Police and in September 1955, established the Special Mobile Reserve which was made up exclusively of Turkish Cypriots, to combat EOKA.
In the early 1950s, a Greek nationalist group was formed called the Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA, or "National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters"). Their objective was to break free from the British first, and then to integrate the island with Greece. EOKA wished to remove all obstacles from their path to independence, or union with Greece.
The first secret talks for EOKA, as a nationalist organisation established to integrate the island with Greece, were started under the chairmanship of Archbishop Makarios III in Athens on 2 July 1952. In the aftermath of these meetings a "Council of Revolution" was established on 7 March 1953. In early 1954 secret weaponry shipments to Cyprus started with the knowledge of the Greek government. Lt. Georgios Grivas "Digenis", formerly an officer in the Greek army, covertly disembarked on the island on 9 November 1954 and EOKA's campaign against the British forces began to grow.
The first Turk to be killed by EOKA on 21 June 1955 was a policeman. EOKA also killed Greek Cypriot leftist members of the KKK (Cyprus Communist Party). After the September 1955 Istanbul Pogrom, EOKA started its activity against Turkish Cypriots.
A year later EOKA revived its attempts to achieve the union of Cyprus with Greece. Turkish Cypriots were recruited into the police by the British forces to fight against Greek Cypriots, but EOKA initially did not want to open up a second front against Turkish Cypriots. However, in January 1957, EOKA forces began targeting and killing Turkish Cypriot police deliberately to provoke Turkish Cypriot riots in Nicosia, which diverted the British army's attention away from their positions in the mountains. In the riots, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed, which was presented by the Greek Cypriot leadership as an act of Turkish aggression.
The Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT, Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı) was formed initially as a local initiative to prevent the union with Greece which was viewed by Turkish Cypriots as an existential threat due to the exodus of Cretan Turks from Crete once the union with Greece was achieved. It was later supported and organised directly by the Turkish government, and the TMT declared war on the Greek Cypriot rebels as well.
On 12 June 1958, eight Greek Cypriot men from Kondemenos village, who were arrested by the British police as part of an armed group suspected of preparing an attack against the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Skylloura, were killed by the TMT near the Turkish Cypriot populated village of Gönyeli, after being dropped off there by the British authorities. TMT also blew up the offices of the Turkish press office in Nicosia in a false flag operation to attach blame to Greek Cypriots. It also began a string of assassinations of prominent Turkish Cypriot supporters of independence. The following year, after the conclusion of the independence agreements on Cyprus, the Turkish Navy sent a ship to Cyprus fully loaded with arms for the TMT. The ship was stopped and the crew was caught red-handed in the infamous "Deniz incident".
British rule lasted until the middle of August 1960, when the island was declared an independent state on the basis of the London and Zürich Agreements of the previous year.
The 1960 Constitution of the Cyprus Republic proved unworkable, however, lasting only three years. Greek Cypriots wanted to end the separate Turkish Cypriot municipal councils permitted by the British in 1958, made subject to review under the 1960 agreements. For many Greek Cypriots these municipalities were the first stage on the way to the partition they feared. The Greek Cypriots wanted enosis, integration with Greece, while Turkish Cypriots wanted taksim, partition between Greece and Turkey.