Cyprus: Island of Tension

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The jumpy island of Cyprus, where Turkish and Greek Cypriots have been savaging each other for the past fortnight, last week showed a faint relaxation of tension. British armored cars, with Union Jacks covering their hoods, patrolled the no man's land between the Greek and Turkish sectors in the capital city of Nicosia. Irregulars of both sides slowly evacuated their rooftop positions to squads of British troops. Everyone held his breath when three Greek monks were slain by Turks. But it was reportedly not a political killing: the Turks were said to have been seeking revenge because a dog belonging to the monastery had attacked their goats. Emotions are kept on edge by a proliferation of atrocity photos—the picture of a Greek bakery employee with his head smashed in was countered by the photo of a Turkish mother and her three children lying slaughtered in a bathtub.

Greece and Turkey still could find no common ground for agreement. Britain, as the third guarantor of the constitution, and the former colonial owner of Cyprus, was the only power with freedom of action. London exercised it wisely. Commonwealth Relations Secretary Duncan Sandys flew to Nicosia for a series of harried interviews with President Makarios, Vice President Kuchuk and the ambassadors from Greece and Turkey. The negotiations nearly collapsed when Makarios announced that Cyprus' treaties with Britain, Greece and Turkey were invalid, which seemed simply the first step in a unilateral attempt to scrap the constitution itself. Yet Sandys managed to prevail.

At week's end Makarios' government announced that, together with the governments of Britain, Greece and Turkey, it had agreed to hold a London conference on the crisis this month, and added that representatives of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities would participate.

It seems likely that Makarios will get some revisions of the constitution, which even the British concede is unwieldy and perhaps unfairly weighted with veto powers for the Turkish minority. But even a more workable constitution may not guarantee peace. Zekia Bey, a Turkish Cypriot on the Supreme Court, said sadly: "I don't think there can ever be any hope of coexistence between Greek and Turk here. It has now been established that to become a political leader in Cyprus you must have the right qualification—you must have killed someone. The greatest difficulty is that we can't trust them, and I think they can't trust us."