Eventually, in 1931, desire for an equivalent Enosis boiled over in a spontaneous island-wide rebellion against British rule that left Government House in flames and required the descent of bombers, cruisers and marines to quell. In Cyprus, popular unrest did not materialise for another half-century.
But in the 19th century, distant four hundred miles from Greece, it remained unaffected by the national awakening that produced, first Greek independence itself, then successive risings against Ottoman rule in Crete and its union with Greece before the First World War. Coveted as a naval platform for British power in the Middle East, the new colony had from antiquity been Greek in population and culture, with a Turkish minority introduced after Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. In 1878 the island was acquired by Britain from the Ottoman Empire as a side-payment for the Turkish recovery of three Armenian provinces ceded to Russia, and restored thanks to Disraeli at the Conference of Berlin. The origins of this situation date back over a century, to the era of high Victorian imperialism. From its territory are further subtracted – not leased, but held in eminent domain – military enclaves three times the size of Guantánamo, under the control of a fellow member of the EU, the United Kingdom. Behind tanks and artillery, a population of settlers has been planted that is relatively more numerous than the settlers on the West Bank, without a flicker of protest from the Council or Commission. This is an EU member-state a large part of which is under long-standing occupation by a foreign army. Not, however, for reasons Brussels cares to dwell on.
The furthest east of all the EU’s new acquisitions, even if the most prosperous and democratic, has been a tribulation to its establishment, one that neither fits the uplifting narrative of the deliverance of captive nations from Communism, nor furthers the strategic aims of Union diplomacy, indeed impedes them.Ĭyprus is, in truth, an anomaly in the new Europe. Enlargement, widely regarded as the greatest single achievement of the European Union since the end of the Cold War, and occasion for more or less unqualified self-congratulation, has left one inconspicuous thorn in the palm of Brussels.
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