By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
The Archbishop probably did not comprehend what Kennedy had told him, since 17 months later, on 30 November 1963, in a letter to the three guarantor powers, he asked for drastic changes to the Zurich Constitution.
In 1979, the Cypriot ambassador Nikos Kranidiotis, one of President Makarios’ key advisors over the years, sent a letter to the former Foreign Minister of Greece Evangelos Averoff. It was a historic letter, in which he revealed what happened on the day of Makarios’ visit to the United States, on June 5, 1962, and more specifically, what was discussed in the meeting with President Kennedy. According to the letter, the American President referred to Makarios’ special relationship with Boston, his special homeland, where it is known Maκarios had studied theology in 1947, and added: “Cyprus occupies an exceptional position in the world. You, Your Beatitude, have made serious efforts to ensure that your country maintains this position and the healthy distance it has established as an independent country. Your struggles are well known. We recognise and admire you, Your Beatitude, as a courageous freedom fighter.”
It was impossible for Archbishop Makarios not to be impressed by Kennedy’s diplomatic courtesy. Two years after Independence, the President of the Republic of Cyprus was in the White House talking with perhaps the most beloved American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So, being a cunning Cypriot, he stretched it to the extent he thought he could manage. As Kranidiotis vividly describes in his letter, “at a moment of euphoria, near the end of breakfast, Maκarios, in his usual game-loving tone, addressing Kennedy, said ‘Mr. President, if I had known that you would have been elected President of the United States, I would not have signed the 1959 Agreements. With your intervention, things could have been much better.” Kennedy, who up to that moment had been smiling and pleasant, suddenly assumed a serious tone and replied, ‘No, Your Beatitude, you did very well to sign them. Under the circumstances that had developed, it was the best you could achieve. Besides, you must be aware that a lot of things take place between the lips of the President and the delegated institutions of the State'”….
What he understood
The Archbishop probably did not comprehend what Kennedy had told him, since 17 months later, on November 30, 1963, he wrote a letter to the three guarantor powers asking for drastic changes to the Zurich Constitution. His letter gave rise to and initiated developments that led to the bloody intercommunal troubles of 1963/64 with the simultaneous withdrawal of Turkish Cypriots from the government. That was the beginning of the Cyprus problem as an international problem which became much more complex and at the same time tragic for the Greek Cypriots after the Turkish invasion of 1974.
President Makarios was particularly beloved among Cypriots because everyone could identify with him. We are talking about a Cyprus of cunning peasants who managed to survive after 300 years of Ottoman rule and 82 years of British colonialism. They managed to do so with their main characteristics being ingenuity, cunning and amoralism, elements which were at the same, of course, the great disadvantages of Cypriot society. The Greek proverb, the one about the peasant’s rope, suits us a lot. The single rope, as is known, is not enough, but when it is double, there is enough with some leftover. This well-known paradox refers to proverbial Greek naivety, which usually excludes the simple and clear way of thinking and practice, resorting to efforts that require twice as much effort, which usually do not lead to solutions but to new dead ends.
Discussions with the USA
The Americans, after the disappointment of 2004, have for a decade now entered into a new dialogue with Cyprus, the parameters of which were set by current US President Joe Biden when he visited Nicosia (May 21, 2014) as Vice President. At the core of this project was the view at the time of natural gas as a catalyst for upgrading the Eastern Mediterranean into a sea of peace and cooperation. It was towards this direction that American and European giants specialising in gas and oil extraction came to Cyprus. Cyprus by design could be the link in an energy arc between Egypt-Israel, Lebanon-Turkey and Greece, acting as an honest broker. To do this, of course, it needed serious and honest leadership.
Unfortunately, it did not have it. Makarios and his political DNA have survived and survive in all the leaders of this country, with one thing in common: They exhaust themselves on the small things, they expend themselves in personal ambitions and interests. They cannot see the big picture. The one that serves everyone’s interests. To be fair, Turkey also contributes to this. The politicians in Ankara have never been ‘large’ with a small community like the G/Cs since they have always managed to scare and terrorise them, thus facilitating their resort to an easy nationalism and especially a search for protectors and even patrons. Thus weakening some voices of reason over time, such as those of politicians Glafcos Clerides and George Vassiliou, who could at least see a little beyond their noses.
Makarios at the time thought that Kennedy’s kind words could be transmuted into support for changing the Zurich Agreements. Instead of solving the Cyprus problem, Anastasiades attempted to use natural gas, the extraction of which was guaranteed by the Americans despite Turkey’s outcries and its casus belli, to supposedly further blackmail Turkey into accepting the G/C positions on the Cyprus problem. Instead of taking advantage of the prospect of an energy arc, he trivialised the American analysis and went for opportunistic trilaterals with Israel and Egypt (who were not on good terms with Ankara) because he thought he could isolate Turkey from the Eastern Mediterranean! What did he achieve? He killed the prospect of Cyprus becoming part of the gas exploitation business in the region with a turnover of more than 1 trillion dollars, since he failed to realise the obvious: that the multinational drilling companies could not ignore Turkey’s geopolitical pull and the breadth of its market, so Cypriot natural gas was doomed to remain in the depths of the Mediterranean. In the end, Nicos Anastasiades found a way out through the passports. Through a 7 billion dollar business that mainly served Russian and Chinese investors of dubious quality, which turned out to be highly profitable for very small number of politicians, lawyers and accountants, and not the Cypriot people. Unfortunately, Nicos Anastasiades was satisfied with the prosperity of numbers, of some friends, relatives and cronies, and not necessarily of the citizens.
With Europe too
Anastasiades’ pivot (initiated, it is true, during the presidency of Tassos Papadopoulos who, after Milosevic, started to see Cyprus through the logic of offshore companies and European passports), with the unconditional contribution of incumbent President Nikos Christodoulides, was based on the groundless argument that the West, after the bail-ins, is the enemy. In this way, he gradually tied the country completely to Russia’s camp, which under Christofias provided us with a loan at a huge interest rate to save us and made Cyprus the black sheep of the European Union. At some point in time, in Cyprus they used to yell ‘Makarios in Moscow’. Nicos Anastasiades not only went to Moscow but settled in Moscow, as he had companies and offices in the Russian capital and at any time he could even talk to Putin and Lavrov. If Makarios was described as the Castro of the Mediterranean, who was Anastasiades, really?
The one who passionately claimed to be the authentic successor of Makarios certainly was not Anastasiades but Tassos Papadopoulos. Cyprus applied to become a member of the European Union, with accession being, as we promised, the catalyst for a solution that would lead to the reunification of our country with a simultaneous removal of the invasion’s ramifications. That was the big picture. In the end, Tassos Papadopoulos attempted to make the EU part of the balances of the Cyprus problem. Europe, in other words, was the superpower, which we had fooled with various lies in order to get in, as the late Archbishop Chrysostomos II said, and now we were going to move to Plan B, that is, Europe forcing Turkey to accept the solution we wanted. In short, Tassos took the game-loving style of Makarios with Kennedy and turned it into a scientific practice, enraging Günter Verheugen. When Europe did not accept the mission we had assigned it, then the Europeans “became liars and hypocrites and, above all, turkophiles.”
Dialogue with the USA
Today, the launch of the strategic dialogue with the US after the Blinken-Kombos meeting opens a channel of perspective and cooperation with the West. It is the most logical thing to do, as long as we understand what it is we seek and, above all, what the big picture looks like.
Dialogue with the US today is unfortunately not as focused on matters of natural gas and peaceful cooperation as it was in the 2014-15 period. That was Cyprus’ moment. Today, any discussions and upgrading of relations should be situated in a broader context, having as a guiding principle the war in Gaza, the new geopolitical balances resulting from the war in Ukraine, the stance of Iran and its representatives such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, and above all Israel’s need – an Israel surrounded on all sides – to have a safe way out and a base nearby. In the very background of this picture, if Cyprus does not get wrapped up in new adventures, e.g. with Hezbollah, it can hope to take a step forward and play a fitting role in the peace scenarios that may emerge.
That said, we hope and pray that the recent agreement between the Republic of Cyprus and the United States will be seen within the bigger picture. For the moment, we do not see it. There is a euphoria within the government that the United States is standing by Cyprus against anyone who wants to threaten or, more importantly, blackmail it into making “unacceptable concessions” on the Cyprus problem. Our logic always remains simplistic or even naive and is consistent with that of 2004, when we joined the EU. It is the same one adopted by Nicos Anastasiades in 2015 believing that the Americans would extract natural gas so that he could blackmail the Turks. He thought all that, believing he could also do his business with the Russians at the same time. It all points to the political DNA of Makarios who thought he could play irresponsibly even with his friends and allies.
AKEL
We completely disagree with AKEL’s position which, on the occasion of the launch of the strategic dialogue, spoke of the “subjugation of our country by the US”, which, it said, “does not make it a pillar of security, but the opposite”.
Cyprus is not a superpower to practice politics ad hoc and according to its own interests. Not even Turkey, with its 80 million citizens, has succeeded in playing this game. It is, in short, an advantage for our country to be considered a consistent and predictable ally in the camp to which we belong and have always belonged. First and foremost as a member of the West and of our European family. As long as we know what we want. Had this been understood by President Makarios in 1960 we probably would not have experienced the ordeals that we did. Had this been understood by Tassos Papadopoulos in 2004 and Nicos Anastasiades in 2017, it is very likely that we would have been living in a peaceful and secure European Cyprus today. Will Nikos Christodoulides repeat the same mistakes? For now he is trapped in the small picture.
Source: PRESIDENT MAKARIOS’ DNA AND THE DIALOGUE WITH THE AMERICANS
