What if Greece Intervene in the Turkish invasion to Cyprus?

ThomasTheviking

Ahab said:
What if Greece Intervene in the Turkish invasion to Cyprus?
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I am afraid that it would be difficult for the Greeks to project some sort of military might, even closely resembling what Turket employed during the invasion.

It would be more interested if the UK got involved. I read at wiki that the British wanted to conduct a pre-emptive operation against Turkey to prevent the invasion, but that Kissinger vetoed it....If he hadn't what would then have happened?
 
Cook

Cook

Banned
Ahab said:
What if Greece Intervene in the Turkish invasion to Cyprus?
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NATO’s southern command collapses.

Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO, Cyprus is not. Had Greece, or Britain in Thomas’s scenario, intervened directly in the war in Cyprus the alliance would have faced a crisis. It is a collective defence alliance against aggression on member states; for one member to go to war against another would present the alliance itself with a possibly existential crisis.
 

chris N

The only possibility that might hve caused the Turks to hesitate would be in Britain deployed massive military forces to Cyprus signaling to both Greece and Turkey that enough was enough. However, I do not believe that Britian had the military forces available to it to do that.
 

ThomasTheviking

chris N said:
The only possibility that might hve caused the Turks to hesitate would be in Britain deployed massive military forces to Cyprus signaling to both Greece and Turkey that enough was enough. However, I do not believe that Britian had the military forces available to it to do that.
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Well today the UK have bases on Cyprus and some military presence. These bases were established in 1960, so it would be somewhat easy for the UK to beef up its' presence there. I don't think that we will see the British going to war against Turkey...simply strenghtening their presence to around 5- 10.000 men with aircraft and support, as well as some Royal Navy might just work as a pre-emptive approach aginst Turkey.....especially if they start doing some "extended exercises" around potential Turkish drop-zones and landing sites.
 

ThomasTheviking

Cook said:
What were Britain’s defence obligations to Cyprus at the time?
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None as far as I am aware. But he UK had a strong interest in Cyprus, the Island having been a British possesion until 1960, besides the UK having bases on the Island. This the British wanted to keep, in order to have a strong position in the Eastern Mediterreanean.
 

Ahab

if greece does declar war, how the war would have looked like? Turky will control allof cyprus? what would be the agean theater? an invision into East macadonia? Limnos? Lesvos? Chios? Kos? Samos? Rhodes ?
 
Simon

Simon

Cook said:
What were Britain’s defence obligations to Cyprus at the time?
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Under the Treaty of Guarantee 1960 Britain along with Greece and Turkey was required to guarantee the independence of Cyprus, up to and including unilateral military action to either keep or re-establish the state of affairs set up by the various treaties. So ThomasTheViking's idea of British intervention is entirely plausible as long as you come up with a point of departure to give them the political will to intervene.
 

Swiftbread

If Greece stupidly decides to intervene alone they will be humiliated but if the British decide to poke around then I only see a few skirmishes before some sort of peace is made. I'm not sure what the peace deal would entail though. The Americans won't be happy with either scenario because of the discord within NATO. I wonder what the Soviets would make of the events?
 
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