Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0103/01033.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 447 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01033}
$Pretitle{222}
$Title{Cyprus
Chapter 4B.   Political Dynamics}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Margarita Dobert}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{party
makarios
political
cyprus
greek
turkish
cypriot
enosis
church
cypriots}
$Date{1979}
$Log{}
Country:     Cyprus
Book:        Cyprus, A Country Study
Author:      Margarita Dobert
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1979

Chapter 4B.   Political Dynamics

     Many centuries of foreign domination have provided Cypriots little
experience in political participation beyond the village. The last foreign
rulers-the British-preempted decisionmaking power almost entirely. In a
society numbering fewer than 700,000 persons and lacking broad political
experience, it was not surprising that, during the first two decades of
self-rule, personal attributes and personal relationships were major
determinants of political allegiance. Political leaders operated on the basis
of loyal personal followings, and many political parties were known informally
by their founder's names.

Changing Alignments in Greek Cypriot Society

     Circumstances have produced three successive basic patterns of political
alignment within Greek Cypriot society since the struggle for enosis began.
The demand for enosis itself produced the first political cleavage insofar as
the Church of Cyprus, which became the foremost spokesman for enosis, excluded
the Communists, as atheists, from the struggle. After independence Makarios
managed to create a consensus, helped after 1963 by the intercommunal strife
that united Greek Cypriot society in the face of common danger. Under the
banner of his Patriotic Front, he brought together the vast majority of Greek
Cypriots including the Communists. But a new pattern of political alignment
became discernible, opposing the supporters of Makarios against a minority on
the extreme right who considered him a traitor to the cause of enosis. By the
time Makarios died the radical right had been discredited and had all but
disappeared. The death of the longtime leader set the stage for still another
alteration in the basic political alignment in the form of a gathering on the
right under the leadership of Clerides who posed a challenge to Kyprianou,
Makarios' successor.

The Church and the Communists in Opposition

     The Orthodox Church, represented on the island by the Church of Cyprus,
had been for four centuries not only the spiritual fountainhead of the Greek
Cypriot people but also a central and powerful institution concerned directly
in economic and political affairs. Under the Ottomans, the church hierarchy
had been used as an administrative device for governing the Orthodox Christian
Cypriots, providing them a degree of autonomy, just as had been done with
other non-Muslim minorities elsewhere in the empire. The archbishop
represented Cypriot Christians at the sultan's court in Istanbul (see The
Ottoman Era, ch. 1; The Church of Cyprus, ch. 2).

     In the process of secularizing the island's public institutions, the
British administrators inevitably weakened the church's position. They took
away the right of the church to appoint teachers in schools as well as its
right to collect taxes. Inevitably friction developed between the church and
the colonial authorities, and in the early 1900s the church hierarchy became
intensively involved in the intermittent agitation for enosis. The attachment
of Greek Cypriots to their church, viewed as the prime advocate of cultural
and national aspirations, was thus further cemented.

     By becoming the foremost spokesman for enosis, the church preempted
leftist forces from becoming identified with the struggle. Rightist forces
were summarized under the term ethnikofron, which literally meant believing
in the national idea. For nationalist Greek Cypriots that was synonymous with
believing in the tradition of Greco-Christian culture, in the unbreakable
unity of church and state, and in union with Greece. Being Christian meant
being Greek. When George Grivas organized EOKA in the mid-1950s he excluded
all leftists, whom he labeled as atheists and pro-Soviet, and right-wing
forces came to monopolize the enosis movement. At the same time the growth of
a communist party pushed the middle-of-the-roaders toward the right, thus
polarizing society between church and communism.

     In a country where the church played the predominant political role, the
Communists were the only organized force proposing secular solutions to social
problems. Communist efforts on Cyprus went back to 1924 when a handful of
intellectuals in Limassol established the Communist Party of Cyprus
(Kommunistikon Komma Kyprou-KKK). KKK support came predominantly from labor,
and the party began organizing leftist trade unions in the early 1930s-an
effort in which it was without competition inasmuch as Cyprus had at that
time no socialist party. The British made no effort to interfere with the
rise of such unions, and they quickly expanded, offering loans, establishing
coffeeshops and football teams for workers, giving scholarships, and
occasionally medical treatment outside the island. However, the Communists
managed to gain recruits among a broader range of groups, including urban
intellectuals and small farmers.

     The KKK was banned in 1933, but a new political party, the Progressive
Party of the Working People (Anorthotikon Komma Ergazomenou Laou-AKEL),
founded in 1941, effectively succeeded the KKK in 1945 as the communist party
of Cyprus. In 1946 AKEL won municipal elections in four out of six major
towns. Proscribed during the 1955-59 emergency period, it was legalized again
in 1959. Makarios, in an electoral pact, offered AKEL five unopposed seats out
of thirty-five Greek Cypriot seats in the Legislative Assembly.

     The Communists had never publicly denounced enosis and might have
welcomed it at one time with a democratic or communist Greece. But because the
enosis issue had been appropriated by the church, they supported the goal of
self-government for Cyprus instead, to be gained by nonviolent means.

Politics of the Makarios Years

     The commitment to enosis among many Greek Cypriots declined in the early
years after independence. As first president of the republic, Makarios
advocated politics he saw as feasible and realistic, and in his view, for the
time being at least, enosis did not fall in that category. The advantages of
independence became discernible to a growing number of persons. Jobs became
available for many, including EOKA members, and the economy flourished. A
prospering middle class realized that it enjoyed a living standard higher
than that in Greece. Racked by civil strife and communist agitation, Greece
seemed too weak to protect the island against a possible Turkish intervention.
After 1967 the government installed by the colonels in Athens did not appeal
to democrats and liberals. Greek Cypriots continued to see themselves as
Greeks, but no longer necessarily as part of a Greek state.

     While the drive for enosis subsided as a mobilizing force, the
difficulties of creating a nation out of a bifurcated society took center
stage. Makarios failed to draw the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities
together but, helped by his unusual position and special gifts, he managed to
create a consensus among the Greek Cypriots. Although the authority of the
Church of Cyprus diminished somewhat with the rise of new secular
institutions, Makarios, as its head, nevertheless embodied the traditional
authority of Cypriot Hellenism and, as elected president, had legitimate
political authority. Coupled with this were an extraordinary charisma and a
mastery of diplomacy that his enemies saw as deviousness or prevarication. For
whatever reason, Makarios was able to win allegiance along a wide political
spectrum. The only opposition to him was from the extreme right.

     In the first general elections held on July 31, 1960, thirty of the
thirty-five seats allotted to Greek Cypriots wen