Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20July 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.BBC: Turkey urges fresh Cyprus talks (2006-01-24) The aim of the coup was the union (enosis) of Cyprus with Greece, and the Hellenic Republic of Cyprus to be declared.Strategic review, Volume 5 (1977), United States Strategic Institute, p. 48 .Allcock, John B. Border and territorial disputes (1992), Longman Group, p. 55 .

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. 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.

Background

Ottoman and British rule

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.Smith, M. "Explaining Partition: Reconsidering the role of the security dilemma in the Cyprus crisis of 1974." Diss. University of New Hampshire, 2009. ProQuest 15 October 2010, 52

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.Sedat Laciner, Mehmet Ozcan and Ihsan Bal, USAK Yearbook of International Politics and Law, USAK Books, 2008, p. 444.

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.Vassilis Fouskas, Heinz A. Richter, Cyprus and Europe: The Long Way Back, Bibliopolis, 2003, pp. 77, 81, 164. 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.James S. Corum, Bad Strategies: How Major Powers Fail in Counterinsurgency, Zenith Imprint, 2008, , pp. 109–110.

1950s In the early 1950s, a Greek nationalist group was formed called the Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA, or "National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters").The Cyprus Revolt: An Account of the Struggle for Union with Greece , by Nancy Crawshaw (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978), pp. 114–129. 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.Roni Alasor, Sifreli Mesaj: "Trene bindir!",

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.The Outbreak of Communal Strife, 1958 The Guardian, London. TMT also blew up the offices of the Turkish press office in Nicosia in a false flag operation to attach blame to Greek Cypriots.Arif Hasan Tahsin, The rise of Dektash to power, 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".

1960–1963

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.

Resentment also rose within the Greek Cypriot community because Turkish Cypriots had been given a larger share of governmental posts than the size of their population warranted. In accordance with the constitution 30% of civil service jobs were allocated to the Turkish community despite being only 18.3% of the population.Cyprus: A Country Study" U.S Library of Congress. Ed. Eric Solsten. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991. Web. 1 October 2010 Additionally, the position of vice president was reserved for the Turkish population, and both the president and vice president were given veto power over crucial issues.Borowiec, Andrew. Cyprus: A Troubled Island. Westport: Praeger. 2000. 47

1963–1974

In December 1963, the President of the Republic Makarios proposed thirteen constitutional amendments after the government was blocked by Turkish Cypriot legislators. Frustrated by these impasses and believing that the constitution prevented enosis, the Greek Cypriot leadership believed that the rights given to Turkish Cypriots under the 1960 constitution were too extensive and had designed the Akritas plan, which was aimed at reforming the constitution in favour of Greek Cypriots, persuading the international community about the correctness of the changes and violently subjugating Turkish Cypriots in a few days should they not accept the plan.Eric Solsten, ed. Cyprus: A Country Study , Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1991. The amendments would have involved the Turkish community giving up many of their protections as a minority, including adjusting ethnic quotas in the government and revoking the presidential and vice-presidential veto power.

These amendments were rejected by the Turkish side and the Turkish representation left the government, although there is some dispute over whether they left in protest or were forced out by the National Guard. The 1960 constitution fell apart and communal violence erupted on 21 December 1963, when two Turkish Cypriots were killed at an incident involving the Greek Cypriot police. Both President Makarios and Vice President Küçük issued calls for peace, but these were ignored. Greece, Turkey, and the UK – the guarantors of the Zürich and London Agreements that had led to Cyprus' independence – wanted to send a NATO force to the island under the command of General Peter Young.

Within a week of the violence flaring up, the Turkish army contingent had moved out of its barracks and seized the most strategic position on the island across the Nicosia–Kyrenia road, the historic jugular vein of the island. They retained control of that road until 1974, at which time it acted as a crucial link in Turkey's military invasion. From 1963 up to the point of the Turkish invasion of 20 July 1974, Greek Cypriots who wanted to use the road could only do so if accompanied by a UN convoy.