AH: Prevent Cyprus from being Divided

As the title says. POD of 1957-onwards

Make it remain a British Crown Colony with increasing Independence ie devolved government - from the 1960s but remaining a British Protectorate to this day

Have a general falling out between the mainland Greeks and the Cypriots which results in only a small Minority of Greek Cypriots being in favour of Enosis - this butterflys away the creation of EOKA

A weaker Cypriot Orthodox church would certainly help in this regard

A stronger post war Britain would also help
 
Forced deportation of all Turks from the northern part of the country. Then there's no reason for a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to form. Turkey protests, but then the world says in response- "They're not even doing as bad to the Turkish Cypriots what you do to the Armenians and Kurds". 1.5 million Greeks were forcible removed from Turkey in the 1920s, and the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955 killed or forced to flee thousands. When Turkey has as bad a record on human rights and minorities, it makes it hard for them to protest how you treat Turkish minorities in your own country.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
Forced deportation of all Turks from the northern part of the country. Then there's no reason for a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to form. Turkey protests, but then the world says in response- "They're not even doing as bad to the Turkish Cypriots what you do to the Armenians and Kurds". 1.5 million Greeks were forcible removed from Turkey in the 1920s, and the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955 killed or forced to flee thousands. When Turkey has as bad a record on human rights and minorities, it makes it hard for them to protest how you treat Turkish minorities in your own country.

You are talking here about ethnic cleansing.
 
A pretty easy way would be for Junta in Greece to be expelled before 1973, if this happens there will be no invasion of Cyprus, there are many ways to do this the best one is if the counter-coup of King Constantine of Greece succeeds....
 
Forced deportation of all Turks from the northern part of the country. Then there's no reason for a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to form. Turkey protests, but then the world says in response- "They're not even doing as bad to the Turkish Cypriots what you do to the Armenians and Kurds". 1.5 million Greeks were forcible removed from Turkey in the 1920s, and the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955 killed or forced to flee thousands. When Turkey has as bad a record on human rights and minorities, it makes it hard for them to protest how you treat Turkish minorities in your own country.

You do know that pissing off Turkey was a bad idea for the West at the time, as they were part of NATO ("southern flank") and had control of the Straits? And the Armenian Genocide had fallen into semi-obscurity at the time, as Armenia was part of the Soviet Union...
It was really from the 1960s where it started to become more prominent, starting with the building of a memorial in 1967, in the aftermath of the demonstrations in Yerevan in 1965 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the genocide...

A pretty easy way would be for Junta in Greece to be expelled before 1973, if this happens there will be no invasion of Cyprus, there are many ways to do this the best one is if the counter-coup of King Constantine of Greece succeeds....

Another way is if the US doesn't support the putchists in 1967 in the first place...
Georgios Papandreou was essentially a bog-standard social democratic politician, not a communist, but the US didn't care about that...
Talk about hypocrisy, when they were OK with bog-standard social democrats in other European nations!:mad:

But then again, the US and NATO didn't really care too much about democracy...
 
Having Cyprus part of the Turkish Republic, or at least independent early on without a colonial period. In many ways, British rule most definitely worsened things as part of their "divide and rule" strategy. For what it's worth, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were more related to each other before British rule than after, so in that sense apart from language and religion (and even then most Cypriots were familiar with both languages, and just like on the Mainland you had a bunch of funky stuff, like Greek-speaking Muslims and Turkish-speaking upright members of the Church of Cyprus) the division of Cypriots into Greek and Turkish Cypriots was largely a construct of colonialism. And that's before we get into the Maronites, the Armenians, and the Latin community, all due to Cyprus's peculiar position in the Middle East.
 
Having Cyprus part of the Turkish Republic, or at least independent early on without a colonial period. In many ways, British rule most definitely worsened things as part of their "divide and rule" strategy. For what it's worth, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were more related to each other before British rule than after, so in that sense apart from language and religion (and even then most Cypriots were familiar with both languages, and just like on the Mainland you had a bunch of funky stuff, like Greek-speaking Muslims and Turkish-speaking upright members of the Church of Cyprus) the division of Cypriots into Greek and Turkish Cypriots was largely a construct of colonialism. And that's before we get into the Maronites, the Armenians, and the Latin community, all due to Cyprus's peculiar position in the Middle East.

And now who's talking about ethnic cleansing? Giving Cyprus to Turkey creates the opposite of what I described, now it's Turks kicking out Greeks. And yes, that's what will happened. It's what happened in the 1920s through the 1960s.
 
Anything that prevents enosis from being more than a fringe element in politics means no Turkish invasion. It wasn't that the Turks were so upset about the status of the Turkish minority, they probably had it better than Greeks/Armenians/Kurds in Turkey although they were generally the poorer group, but rather that the Turks did not want to see Greece expand and have Cyprus as an integral part of Greece.

Absent enosis, absent the Greek Cypriots doing what the Turks did to the Armenians and Greeks in the recent past, there won't be a Turkish invasion. No matter how you slice it, the attempt to join Cyprus to greece was a spectacular combination of stupidity and hubris on the part of the Cypriot Greeks and the Greek junta.
 
The Soviets take Cyprus prior to WWII's end and as OTL allow the British to weaken the Greek Communists but intervene to assist in evacuating the Greek Reds to Cyprus both for Propoganda re Humanitarianism and Solidarity/Socialist Brotherhood but also to secure and cement Cyprus as a Soviet Asset/Autonomous Oblast or SSR.
 

Ryan

Donor
The Soviets take Cyprus prior to WWII's end and as OTL allow the British to weaken the Greek Communists but intervene to assist in evacuating the Greek Reds to Cyprus both for Propoganda re Humanitarianism and Solidarity/Socialist Brotherhood but also to secure and cement Cyprus as a Soviet Asset/Autonomous Oblast or SSR.

what? :confused:

how do the soviets get (what was at the time) British territory?
 
The Soviets take Cyprus prior to WWII's end and as OTL allow the British to weaken the Greek Communists but intervene to assist in evacuating the Greek Reds to Cyprus both for Propoganda re Humanitarianism and Solidarity/Socialist Brotherhood but also to secure and cement Cyprus as a Soviet Asset/Autonomous Oblast or SSR.

Greece going Communist is much more likely then that, and even then Greece would probably be more aligned with Marshal Tito.
 
what? :confused:

how do the soviets get (what was at the time) British territory?

Agree, not plausible for the Soviets to be in the Mediterranean. It would require going through the Straights. Something Turkey is not going to let happen. At all. Not to mention that the British aren't going to surrender to the Soviets. My only thought is the poster of that suggestion was under the impression that Cyprus had been occupied by the Germans during WWII.
 
You don't even need to have them not split, as you should easily be able to merge it together afterwards with minimal changes if your goal is merely a united Cyprus.

When Cyprus joined the EU, two weeks before that vote there was a referendum vote to merge the island that the EU presumed and had great expectations of happening given this was still in the point of time when Turkey joining the EU was a realistic prospect with the Cypriot issue being one of the main problems hindering it.

However things didn't work out as intended as while the Northern Cypriots voted yes, the Southern ones said no so it didn't proceed. This was made worse by the EU leaders subsequently not vetoing Cypriot accession given one of the main benefits and assumptions they had wasn't being fulfilled (in addition to the economic fudging they knew was occurring). Every important political member of EU organizations from Council members to the President himself later said this was a horrible decision on their part (even before the economic crisis in '08) and if they could go back in time they would have changed it.

Thus you can have the EU have bigger balls and be willing to stand firm. I personally don't doubt that if Cyprus had their ascension rejected, they would have subsequently had another referendum where the island was successfully merged. Economic costs from integration and achieving economic parity weren't really an issue holding it back either as the EU was offering to subsidize it so that wasn't an excuse for the Southern Cypriots either.
 
You don't even need to have them not split, as you should easily be able to merge it together afterwards with minimal changes if your goal is merely a united Cyprus.

When Cyprus joined the EU, two weeks before that vote there was a referendum vote to merge the island that the EU presumed and had great expectations of happening given this was still in the point of time when Turkey joining the EU was a realistic prospect with the Cypriot issue being one of the main problems hindering it.

However things didn't work out as intended as while the Northern Cypriots voted yes, the Southern ones said no so it didn't proceed. This was made worse by the EU leaders subsequently not vetoing Cypriot accession given one of the main benefits and assumptions they had wasn't being fulfilled (in addition to the economic fudging they knew was occurring). Every important political member of EU organizations from Council members to the President himself later said this was a horrible decision on their part (even before the economic crisis in '08) and if they could go back in time they would have changed it.

Thus you can have the EU have bigger balls and be willing to stand firm. I personally don't doubt that if Cyprus had their ascension rejected, they would have subsequently had another referendum where the island was successfully merged. Economic costs from integration and achieving economic parity weren't really an issue holding it back either as the EU was offering to subsidize it so that wasn't an excuse for the Southern Cypriots either.

You think joining the EU and the EU having bigger balls is going to make the Greek Cypriots vote yes? Have you been following how the Greeks in Greece have been voting regarding financial and fiscal matters, bailouts, and austerity? Not exactly people who are known for voting sensibly. And that's not a bash on Greeks, it's ALL human beings. Democracy sucks in case you didn't know it. That's why most countries try to limit what actually goes to a popular vote. The US puts NO issue to a popular referendum for instance, though individual states do.
 
You think joining the EU and the EU having bigger balls is going to make the Greek Cypriots vote yes? Have you been following how the Greeks in Greece have been voting regarding financial and fiscal matters, bailouts, and austerity? Not exactly people who are known for voting sensibly. And that's not a bash on Greeks, it's ALL human beings. Democracy sucks in case you didn't know it. That's why most countries try to limit what actually goes to a popular vote. The US puts NO issue to a popular referendum for instance, though individual states do.

Yes I have, but it seems you've only listened to a few opinion pieces. What the Greeks are going through currently is austerity taken to the extreme trying to pay off debt which is unsustainable. All those bail-outs aren't for helping the Greeks, the vast majority of it goes right back to the debtors so they're receiving no benefit from it to allow their economy to grow.

The Greeks have high debt, a stagnant and depressed economy, a horrible unemployment rate with there going be to long term problems regardless of if the economy improves due to obscene young adult unemployment and long-term unemployment overallr, living standards have been slashed ruthlessly and they're being forced into a policy that we know from economic theory decades old simply doesn't work because more and more austerity is not the solution.

They have made poor decisions in the past and their bureaucracy can be improved but that doesn't excuse the current practices it's being forced to take which won't actually help them work their way out of the problem which was what the entire Greek election saga was about.

Regardless of that, the Cypriots will vote for the EU as this is during 2004 and it's seen as absolutely essential for their future economic prosperity so they'd be forced to get over their discriminatory attitude towards to Northern Cypriots. They have nothing to remotely tempt the EU with either as between a choice of half of Cyprus vs Turkey there is no comparison.
 
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