AFTER four-and-a-half years and 450 hours of meetings at which 155 people gave testimony the much talked-about Cyprus File was finally completed. To be more precise, a draft report has been completed and will be finalised only after it has been studied by the political parties which can make changes to it if they so wish. The final version will then be the subject of a plenum debate, before it is ratified and stored in the legislature’s store-room.
While the members of the committee which prepared the report devoted many hours to this project, the report does not seem to shed any new light on the 1964-74 period that led to the coup and Turkish invasion. If anything, it merely repeats the official version of history we have read about in newspapers for more than 30 years – Cyprus was the victim of conspiracies by the US which wanted the Archbishop Makarios out of the way because he was considered an obstacle to its plans.
The obsession with conspiracy theories is evident throughout the report, which claims that many events were planned and pre-determined and that individuals in Cyprus helped implement them. For example, there had been plans for a coup against Makarios long before he had sent the letter demanding the withdrawal of the Greek officers from Cyprus while Turkey’s invasion plans existed for years.
Predictably, the myth of Makarios’ infallibility is preserved by the report. In the decade leading up to the invasion, according to the Cyprus File, Makarios had not put a foot wrong. His constant, diplomatic flirting with the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, his delusions about his ability to out-manoeuvre a big power like the US, his brinkmanship in his dealings with the Greek Junta do not get a mention in the report. Nor do his authoritarian rule, tolerance and, at times, encouragement of clandestine armed gangs and refusal to bring the Turkish Cypriot community on side.
But these factors were not important to the deputies who drafted the Cyprus file. They did not identify any bad decisions, miscalculations or errors of judgement by Makarios. Perhaps we should not be too harsh on deputies as they are politicians, with pre-conceived ideas fashioned by their political affiliations – their parties faithfully supported Makarios and always applauded his misguided anti-Western line.
They are not historians who could approach the subject with detachment and an open mind, something that is blatantly obvious in their report. Under the circumstances it is impossible to agree with the committee chairman’s assertion that the material collected for the Cyprus file, would allow “our people to finally know the reasons that led to the betrayal and destruction of 1974”.
