Cyprus 1974: The Greek coup

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

On 15 July 1974, the Greek military dictatorship in Athens sponsored a coup on the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, aiming to overthrow its selected president and unite the island with Greece.

Days later, Turkey invaded the island, taking a third of it and displacing many thousands of its inhabitants.

The writer Bekir Azgun grew up in the village of Potamia, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots had once lived together in harmony. He speaks to Maria Margaronis about the day of the coup and reflects on the gradual separation of the island's two communities, beginning with the Greek Cypriot anticolonial struggle against Britain in the 1950s and culminating in the Turkish invasion and partition.

No outside power acted to stop this conflict between two NATO members. Cyprus, strategically positioned near the Middle East, remains divided to this day.

Archive by kind permission of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.

Music by Michalis Terlikkas.

(Photo: The new de facto President of Cyprus, Nikos Sampson, holds a press conference after the military coup d'état which deposed Archbishop Makarios. Credit: Harry Dempster/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	He is Brian Cox.
0:02.8	Hello.
0:03.3	And he understands science.
0:05.3	I'm Robin Ince and I don't understand it quite so much.
0:09.0	Could it tell us something about the nature of matter?
0:11.3	Nope.
0:12.0	Okay, good.
0:14.2	Together we'll be joined by a collection of experts and non-expert guests.
0:18.6	What's going on?
0:19.8	Don't worry.
0:21.7	Taking a look at some of the most wonderful things
0:24.4	in the scientific world.
0:25.9	Science with Funny Bits, The Infinite Monkey Cage on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Maria Margaronis. I'm taking you back to July
0:46.0	1974 when the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus was split in two.
0:51.0	Be Kiras Gun, a Turkish Cypriot from the village of Potamia, has just come home from studying abroad.
0:58.0	On the 15th of July, I was carrying hay with my father to our house in the village and as we were emptying
1:09.3	the hay from the tractor I realized that nearly all of the women in the village were crying.
1:19.5	I said to my father what could have happened and he said most probably the
1:25.6	priest or the village has died so he said we'll stop at the coffee house and
1:31.8	see if the priest is that so that we could attend to the funeral.
1:37.0	As soon as I entered the coffee house, the radio was on saying the link that Priyke al-A-Lahel or Macarius in the cross.
1:46.0	Greek Cypriot nation, Macarius is dead.
	...

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