Modern History of Cyprus - Greek Coup and Turkish Invasion

Greek Coup and Turkish Invasion

In July 1974, the President was overthrown by a coup carried out by the Cypriot National Guard. Turkey, after failed UN meetings, invaded Cyprus on July 20. It believed it was legitimately intervening to protect the Turkish Population and therefore had a mandate, however this invasion was in violation of the Zurich accords as it was an act of taksis, but it could be argued that said the accord was now null and void in light of the coup.

In a two-stage offensive, Turkish troops took control of 38% of the island, 200,000 Greek Cypriots fled the northern areas which were under occupation, whilst at the same time 60,000 Turkish Cypriots were transferred to these northern occupied areas by the United Nations and British SBA authorities after an agreed temporary population exchange by Turkish and Greek leaders. Since then, the southern part of the country has been under the control of the internationally recognised Cyprus government and the northern part occupied under a Turkish administration and the Turkish army. Turkey has further bolstered its claim to the area by actively engaging in demographic-engineering by relocating at least 40,000 Turkish civilians to the occupied part of the island through coercive measures, meaning that now only 45% of the Turkish population were actually born on Cyprus.