Turkish President Kemal Ataturk, a consummate leader, appreciated the importance of an acute sense of timing in pursuit of larger national objectives. Encouraged by chauvinists among his Turkish compatriots before he signed the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 with France and Britain, Ataturk easily could have demanded and fought for control over the Ottoman province of Mosul—located in modern Iraq—and its oil. Turkish irredentism would have been satisfied by such claims, and Ataturk’s already heightened post-World War I popularity would have soared. At that time, Ataturk's standing in the minds and hearts of Turks was not unassailable. There were strong opposition politicians, reluctant traditionalists, and envious comrades he had to fear and win over on his way to becoming an icon. But Ataturk resisted short-term political rewards in order to seek stronger ties with Europe. He knew that the larger aim of modernizing Turkey could only be achieved with Western backing; winning that support meant sacrificing some parts of what could be construed as the new Turkey’s national interest. It also demonstrated an acute strategic sense of what would prove most sustainable in those tumultuous and quixotic months after the end of World War I before the conclusion of a permanent peace.

In contemporary North Cyprus, Rauf Denktash, president of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC), which is recognized only by Turkey, has for three decades pursued a set of more and more carefully refined goals for himself and his people. Over those decades, his acutely tuned tactical senses, combined with a sharp notion of timing, have greatly strengthened an originally weak bargaining hand. Resistance and delay, plus incrementally escalating demands, have buttressed Turkish Cypriot identity, altered the long-running debate over the future of the Cypriot isle, and produced unquestioned political and economic support for Denktash and his policies within both the Turkish Cypriot enclave and Turkey. His adroit gamesmanship and deft timing have produced many gains for the Turkish-speaking section of Cyprus. But has he now missed his best opportunities? Has the master’s grip on timing slipped, and has he therefore forfeited the mantle of leadership? Do massive protests in early 2003 in North Cyprus indicate that Denktash has lost his last best chance to create a recognized polity alongside Greek-speaking South Cyprus? Moreover, has he diminished his and North Cyprus’s utility to the Turkish motherland?

An Island Adrift

Cyprus, fought over even before Alexander the Great’s era, was an outlying province of Venice from the late 15th century through the late 16th century, when Ottoman forces laid siege to Nicosia and Famagusta. The Ottoman Empire controlled the island until 1878, when it ceded Cyprus to Britain, an annexation formalized in 1914. Greek Orthodoxy, strong under Ottoman rule, flourished under the Empire. So did a local version of Islam; both Greek and Turkish languages persisted under the Crown, while English became the tongue of those of both backgrounds who sought preferment in their professions or in the British administrative service on the island. Most important of all, Turkish and Greek Cypriots shared the same land. Segregation was not the rule, although farming villages were often monolingual. Yet Turkish Cypriots lived in the Paphos region in the southwest, along the south coast in the cities such as Limassol, and throughout Nicosia when it was a single municipality. Under British rule, educated Cypriots received their secondary education in an English-medium institution, had the ability to speak Greek even if they were of Turkish-speaking descent (Greek speakers were far more numerous on the island), and sought further training in London as much as in Athens and more than in Istanbul or Ankara. The common language, the common law, an inkling of representative democracy, and perceived Europeanness were all fundamental to a 20th century Cypriot intimation of proto-nationhood.

Cyprus under British rule also remained predominantly agricultural. Belonging started in the villages, where the Church in the 20th century grew unusually powerful. Enosis (union with Greece) became first a spiritual dream and later a political strategy of the Church and military rulers in Greece itself. It provided one path to post-imperial independence and a sure method of freeing Greek-speaking Cyprus from the long-held fear of being recaptured by post-Ottoman Turkey. Achieving those objectives would also boost the power of the Orthodox Church; beginning in the 1950s, future Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios III, a temporal and religious leader, sought to control the political and economic future of the island. Makarios saw himself as a freedom fighter, but he was a power-maximizer for the Hellenic cause, the Church, and himself.

After India gained independence in 1948, the dismantling of the British Empire proceeded apace. But Britain opted for a studied withdrawal from the administration of the island by 1960, after five years of Greek Cypriot and Greek mainland agitation, violence fomented by EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) and attacks by EOKA against Turkish Cypriots.

The Republic of Cyprus came into being with provisions for a permanent Greek-speaking president, Makarios, and a Turkish-speaking vice-president. In order to preserve its language, culture, heritage, and political saliency, the Turkish Cypriot minority was intended to have a veto over legislation and budgets. According to the 1960 independence agreement, Britain, Greece, and Turkey were guarantors of the new constitution, so as to protect the rights of the minority from being trampled upon. Enosis was specifically forbidden.

This carefully constructed, imposed, quasi-democratic arrangement never worked. By late 1963, it was fully evident that Greek Cypriot leadership wanted to subject Turkish Cypriots to the will of the Greek-speaking majority. The drive for enosis continued. The presidency became more powerful. Ethnic cleansing became more prevalent during early 1964. The United Nations was compelled to send its first peacekeeping mission to Cyprus in that year in order to protect Turkish Cypriots who had gathered in Turkish-speaking enclaves north of what became the Green Line across the northern half of the island.

Squaring the Circle

The people of Cyprus were more or less already separated (where once they had been integrated) when Nicos Sampson, a guerrilla fighter and publisher, forcibly ousted Makarios in 1974 with help from a mainland Greece-backed military operation. Turkish troops, no longer restrained by US pleas and promises, crossed the waters from the Turkish mainland to prevent Cyprus from joining Greece and to protect their fellow Muslims and Turkish-speakers from being swept up into the Greek maw. Ultimately, about 18 percent of the islanders came to control nearly 38 percent of the land of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, backed by 35,000 Turkish soldiers. Greek speakers from the North fled south; the remaining Turkish speakers in the South went north. The Green Line demarcated Greek Cypriot- and Turkish-controlled territory. Only very occasional border incidents have since challenged the mostly peaceful de facto partition of the island.