From Nationalism to Partition 1950–1975

Abstract

The partition of Cyprus, both on a political and on a territorial level, was established throughout 1950–1975, in the context of the power struggle for the control of the island during the transitional period of decolonisation. The Greek and Turkish nationalisms that were introduced in Cyprus and the antagonism between Greece and Turkey defined the process of Cypriot independence and the conditions under which the British colonial regime was terminated. The geopolitical balance of power did not correspond to the emerging local dynamics and the domestic power struggles and was enforced by use of violence. Nationalisms, in addition to being ideologies of power, were also instruments of terrorism through which the terms of the partition—a partition that was completed with the intervention of the Greek and Turkish states—were imposed on the Cypriot people, both intra-communally and inter-communally.