20 July 2024

Reminders half a century
later of the Turkish invasion
of Cyprus on 20 July 1974

Two refugee boys from Northern Cyprus huddled in a tent … today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. It is difficult to grasp that, after 50 years, a member state of the European still remains divided and part occupied, and that Nicosia, a European capital city, remains divided.

The memory of the invasion of Cyprus is still sharp in my mind. A few months later, I joined the staff of The Irish Times, and Cyprus later became one of the places I wrote about on a regular basis when I was a journalist on the Foreign Desk.

I first visited Cyprus earlier in 1987, 13 years after the invasion, and the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply. I stayed in Limassol at the end of the summer season that year, but travelled throughout the island, visiting Paphos, Larnaca. Ayia Napa, the RAF base at Akrotiri, Mount Olympos, the Troodos Mountains above Nicosia, and the grave of Archbishop Makarios in a tomb he had designed himself on Throni Hill, 3 km from Kykko Monastery.

Archbishop Makarios was the spiritual and political head of his people, and in the late 1950s he was a firm supporter of both enosis or full union with Greece and the armed guerrillas in EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) led by George Grivas.

After Cypriot independence, Archbishop Makarios became President of Cyprus in 1960. He believed Cyprus was too close to Turkey and that enosis was a dangerous demand. Turkey was much closer than Greece, with the Turkish coast a mere 40 miles away. But relations between both Athens and Ankara deteriorated, and EOKA B was formed to continue fighting for enosis, with daily kidnappings and murders.

The Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority remained polarised, and the colonels who had seized power in Athens in 1967 were determined to force enosis on Cyprus.

The presidential palace was attacked by Soviet-made tanks on 16 July 1974 and set on fire. The coup plotters claimed the president had been killed, but he survived the fourth attempt to murder him by escaping by the back door of the palace with his bodyguards.

He was spirited away to safety in Paphos, where he was born. From there, a British helicopter took him to the RAF base at Akrotiri and he was then flown to London and New York, where he addressed the UN Security Council on 19 July.

Meanwhile, the new Turkish prime minister Bülent Ecevit – a translator of TS Eliot into Turkish – warned the regime in Athens that unless the junta immediately climbed down and Cyprus reverted to the previous state of affairs, including restoration of Archbishop Makarios, Turkish military would intervene.

The colonels installed Nikos Sampson, a former EOKA hitman, as an acting, puppet president. Sampson had once been a reporter for the Cyprus Times but was also a target spotter for EOKA, and had spent time in Wandsworth Prison.

Cyprus had a ¬sizeable Turkish Cypriot minority, and the Turkish Cypriot leader was Rauf Denktash, a London-trained lawyer. Turkey began Operation Attila shortly after daybreak on 20 July 1974, with an air and sea assault, and Turkish ¬paratroopers were dropped to reinforce the Turkish Cypriot militia in the northern sector of Nicosia.

The fighting dragged on for almost a month, and reliable sources estimate between 4,500 and 6,000 Greek Cypriots were killed, wounded or missing, believed dead, and between 1,500 to 3,800 dead Turkish Cypriots. The refugee figures estimated 200,000 Greek Cypriots moved south and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots moved north.

There were countless broken ceasefires and failed rounds of peace talks in Geneva. In the last hours of the fighting, a Turkish tank attack captured Famagusta, the only deep-water port in Cyprus. The Ledra Palace on the Green Line in Nicosia became part of the buffer zone UN troops Canadians tried to establish between combatants.

Sampson resigned on 23 July and the presidency passed to Glafkos Klerides. Archbishop Makarios remained in London for five months. Meanwhile, the military policies and oppressive actions of the regime eventually brought down the colonels’ junta in Athens, and democracy was restored.

Archbishop Makarios secured international recognition for his administration as the legitimate government of the whole island, he returned to Cyprus and was restored as President on 7 December 1974. He was still in office when he died on 3 August 1977 aged 64.

Turkey occupied over one-third of the island, although the Turkish Cypriot community is less than one-fifth of the population, and a puppet state was set when the Turkish-occupied sector declared itself the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus in 1975. The name was changed to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983.



When I had visited Cyprus in 1987, the memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw. I visited both Greece and Turkey constantly in the years that followed, and continued to follow Cypriot politics closely.

After the Turkish invasion of the rock islet of Imia in the Aegean in 1996, I spent some days with the Greek navy in the sea around Rhodes, Kos, Kalimnos and other, smaller islands, and was taken to see Imia for myself despite Turkish threats to both Greek and international journalists, and was interviewed for a Greek television news channel. During those tense weeks and month, Greeks were reminded of the invasion of Cyprus and were in their fears that Turkish aggression is an ever-present threat.

That year, I also took part in a high-level conference organised by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Hellenic Centre in London on the Cypriot ambitions for EU membership, and analysed these hopes in a feature in The Irish Times.

On visits to Greek military headquarters in Athens, I noticed how the names of senior figures involved in the colonels’ regime and in plotting the failed coup in Cyprus had been wiped off the honour boards, their spaces left blank as an indication of the ignominy in which they are held.

The memories of the Turkish invasion were still raw then and continued to hurt deeply when I returned to Cyprus in 2000, spending Orthodox Holy Week and the Easter season on a working visit in Nicosia. I climbed the viewing platforms, crossed the Green Line at the Ledra Palace, visited churches, mosques and a Sufi tekke, met politicians, journalists, econmists, bankers, business leaders, and elderly men who had fought in EOKA, and spoke to UN peacekeepers. I also interviewed Clive Handford, the Anglican Bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf. In a personal touch, they prayed for me in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral in Nicosia, as I prepared for my ordination a few weeks later.

I wrote features in The Irish Times on Cypriot politics and economics, and an ‘Irishman’s Diary’ on the Irish links with Cyprus, including Sir Garnet Wolseley from Dublin who was the first British High Commissioner of Cyprus, and the Anglican chaplain in Ayia Napa, the Revd Robin Brookes, a former Rector of Drumcondra. I wrote features too on Church life in Cyprus for the Church of Ireland Gazette and diocesan magazines.

The following year, I reported on the election in Cyprus in 2001 for The Irish Times, and I interviewed Dr George Vassiliou, a former President of Cyprus (1988-1993) who was the Chief Negotiator for Cyprus during the talks on accession to the EU from 1998 to 2003.

During that Easter working visit to Cyprus in 2000, I bought a limited edition prints that were hanging on the walls and on the stairs of my home in Knocklyon, Dublin, for many year.

One is a bright, colourful picture of a bride preparing for her wedding. The other is a print showing two small boys, probably brothers, the older boy protecting his younger brother, who may have been blinded. They are Greek Cypriot refugees from Northern Cyprus, huddled in a tent after fleeing the Turkish invasion in 1974.

At the time I bought this print in Nicosia, I was hurt and broken as it reminded me of my own two sons back in Dublin, and I fretted and prayed about their future.

After framing the print, I came across a copy of the original photograph of the two boys who inspired this print or painting. It is still heart-breaking. I wonder whatever happened to these boys, who must now be in their 60s, and I still pray for them.

But the plight of the refugees in the Mediterranean still lives with us, and that image continue to remind me to speak up today for the refugees and to condemn our poor response to their plight and needs.

A bride prepares for her wedding in Cyprus … a limited edition print bought in Nicosia in 2000 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)



Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024:
72, Saturday 20 July 2024

The monument to ‘Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’ by Emilio García Ortiz on the banks of the River Guadalquivir in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church and tomorrow is the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (20 July) recalls Saint Margaret of Antioch, a fourth century martyr, and Bartolomé de las Casas (1566), Apostle to the Indies. In the Orthodox Church, today is the Feast of the Miraculous Prophet Elias (Elijah).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

By the banks of the River Guadalquivir in Seville, close to the monument to Bartolomé de las Casas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 12: 14-21 (NRSVA):

14 But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

15 When Jesus became aware of this, he departed. Many crowds followed him, and he cured all of them, 16 and he ordered them not to make him known. 17 This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

18 ‘Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
19 He will not wrangle or cry aloud,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
20 He will not break a bruised reed
or quench a smouldering wick
until he brings justice to victory.
21 And in his name the Gentiles will hope.’

The monument by Emilio García Ortiz on the banks of the River Guadalquivir in Seville hails ‘Fray Bartolomé de las Casas’ as a founding figure in the concept of Universal Human Rights (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s reflection:

The conspiracy to destroy Jesus unjustly is contrasted in this morning’s Gospel reading contrasts with his proclamation of justice to the Gentiles and his promise of a victorious justice that brings hope to the nations.

As I walked along the banks of the River Guadalquivir in Seville one afternoon, taking time to watch the rowers on the river between the Torre del Oro at the Puerta de Jerez and the Puente de Isabel II, I took time to admire two sculptures close to the Triana Bridge that are moving reminders of tolerance and intolerance in Seville.

The ‘Monument to Tolerance’ by Eduardo Chillida, accompanied by a poetic text by Elie Wiesel, recalls the mutual tolerance that was often found in Seville until the ‘Catholic Monarchs,’ Ferdinand and Isabel, and the Spanish Inquisition expelled all Jews from Spain in 1492.

On the other side of the pedestrian steps up to the bridge, a sculpture by Emilio García Ortiz in 1984 commemorates Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), a Dominican friar and missionary bishop from Seville who is celebrated in the calendar of Common Worship today. He is revered as a ‘Universal son of Seville’ and a father-figure in the development of international human rights.

The sculpture stands on the bank of the Guadalquivir River, across from Triana, where Fray Bartolomé de las Casas was born, to mark the fifth centenary of his birth, and shows Fray Bartolomé as Bishop of Chiapas with some Indians and some Spanish soldiers.

The sculptor Emilio García Ortiz (1929-2013) was also born in Triana, and for many years he was Professor of Sculpture and Ceramics at the Faculty of Fine Arts in the University of Seville.

Bartolomé de las Casas was an historian and social reformer before becoming a Dominican friar. He was the first resident Bishop of Chiapas and the first official Protector of the Indians.

Bartolomé de las Casas was born in Seville on 11 November 1484. His father, Pedro de las Casas, a merchant, was descended from a family that had migrated from France to Seville. One biographer says, his family were of converso heritage, descended from Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity to escape the Inquisition.

Las Casas and his father migrated in 1502 with the expedition of Nicolás de Ovando to the island of Hispaniola – divided today between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There, Las Casas became a hacendado and slave owner, taking part in slave raids and military expeditions against the Taíno people of Hispaniola. When he was ordained a priest 1510, he was first priest ordained in the Americas.

A group of Dominican friars led by Pedro de Córdoba arrived in Santo Domingo in September 1510. Appalled by the injustices they saw, they decided to deny slave owners the right to confession.

Fray Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, preached a sermon in December 1511, implicating the colonists in the genocide of native people. The colonists, led by Diego Columbus, sent a complaint against the Dominicans to the King of Spain, and the Dominicans were recalled from Hispaniola.

Las Casa was a chaplain during the Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1513, when he took part in the massacre of Hatuey. He witnessed many atrocities and later wrote: ‘I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.’

But while Las Casas was studying a passage in Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 34: 18-22 as he prepared a Pentecost sermon in 1514, he became convinced that Spanish activities in the New World were illegal and a great injustice. He gave up his slaves and began preaching that other colonists should do the same. He soon realised he would have to take his campaign to Spain and arrived back in Seville in November 1515.

While King Ferdinand lay ill in Plasencia, Las Casas was provided with an introduction to the king by Diego de Deza, Archbishop of Seville, and they met on Christmas Eve 1515. However, King Ferdinand died on 25 January 1516.

At first, Las Casas argued that Black slaves should be brought from Africa to relieve the suffering Indians. But he later rejected this idea too, and also became an advocate for Africans in the colonies. He also proposed fortifying the northern coast of Venezuela, establishing ten royal forts to protect the Indians and starting up a system of trade in gold and pearls.

When he arrived in Puerto Rico in January 1521, he heard the Spaniards of the islands had launched a raid into the very heart of the territory that he wanted to colonise peacefully.

He entered the Dominican monastery of Santa Cruz in Santo Domingo as a novice in 1522 and took vows as a Dominican friar in 1523. He worked throughout Hispaniola, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico, and came into conflict with the Franciscan orders and their approaches to the mass conversion of the Indians.

As a direct result of the debates between the Dominicans and Franciscans and spurred on by Las Casas’s treatise, Pope Paul III promulgated the Bull Sublimis Deus, which stated the Indians were rational beings who should be brought peacefully to the faith.

Las Casas returned to Guatemala in 1537 with two mission principles: to preach the Gospel to all and treat them as equals, and conversion must be voluntary and based on knowledge and understanding of the Faith.

Las Casas then spent a year in Mexico, before returning to Spain in 1540, where he secured official support for his Guatemalan mission and continued his struggle against the colonists’ mistreatment of the Indians. He presented a narrative of atrocities against the natives of the Indies and argued for new laws and legal protections.

Before Las Casas returned to Spain, he was also appointed as Bishop of Chiapas. He was consecrated in the Dominican Church of San Pablo on 30 March 1544, and took possession of his new diocese when he returned in 1545.

As a bishop, Las Casas was embroiled in frequent conflicts and in a pastoral letter on 20 March 1545, he refused absolution to slave owners, even on their death bed, unless all their slaves had been set free and their property returned to them. He also threatened to excommunicate anyone who mistreated Indians within his diocese.

He became so unpopular among the Spanish colonists that he had to leave his diocese, never to return. He left for Europe in December 1546, arriving in Lisbon in April 1547 and in Spain in November 1547.

In 1548, the Crown decreed that all copies of his Confesionario be burnt. But he publicly defended his views on slavery, mission, war and the rights of Indians in a formal, public debate in Valladolid in 1550-1551. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that the Indians were less than human and required Spanish masters in order to become civilized. But Las Casas maintained that they were fully human and that forcefully subjugating them was unjustifiable.

Las Casas spent the rest of his life working closely with the imperial court in matters relating to the Indies, working on behalf of the natives of the Indies, with many of them asking him to speak directly to the Emperor on their behalf.

He had to defend himself repeatedly against accusations of treason, and was denounced to the Spanish Inquisition. His extensive writings, including A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias, chronicle the first decades of the colonisation of the West Indies and describe the atrocities committed by the colonisers against the indigenous peoples.

He died in Madrid on 18 July 1566.

Although he failed to save the indigenous peoples of the Western Indies, his efforts improved the legal status of the native people, and increased focus on the ethics of colonialism. Las Casas is often considered to be one of the first advocates of the universal human rights.

Sadly, the monument is fenced off to deter repeated graffiti and attacks by vandals who do not value the monumental and cultural legacy of Seville.

The ‘Monument to Tolerance’ by Eduardo Chillida on the banks of the River Guadalquivir in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 20 July 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Advocacy, human, environmental and territorial rights programme in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Diocesan Officer for human, environmental and territorial rights in the Anglican Diocese of Brasilia.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 20 July 2024) invites us to pray reflecting on words in Saint John’s Gospel:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10: 10).

The Collect:

Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord God, whose Son is the true vine and the source of life,
ever giving himself that the world may live:
may we so receive within ourselves
the power of his death and passion
that, in his saving cup,
we may share his glory and be made perfect in his love;
for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Generous God,
you give us gifts and make them grow:
though our faith is small as mustard seed,
make it grow to your glory
and the flourishing of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity VIII:

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Rowing on the River Guadalquivir in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

An icon of the Prophet Elijah in a hilltop chapel near Georgioupoli in Crete … he is commemorated in the calendar of the Orthodox Church today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)