My father's workplace was on Şehit İlhanlar Street, but I couldn't make a connection between them. That changed on the day we took my great aunt, who often suffered from knee pain, to see Dr. Nihat İlhan, sometimes accompanied by my mother or my aunt. On the way home, my great aunt remarked, "They say the doctor is irritable, but how could he not be? His three children and wife were murdered in Cyprus. May God never let anyone experience that." That's when I began to piece the story together.

What happened to the İlhan family was neither the first nor the last massacre carried out by the EOKA organization, which dreamed of Enosis in Cyprus. Starting in 1950, those dreaming of Enosis systematically targeted first the British and communists, and then the Turks, with acts of terror and massacres aimed at annexing the island to Greece.

Their initial goal was to expel the British from the island. The Turks, who made up 20% of the population, were deemed insignificant. They were unarmed and had no one to protect them. The attacks initially targeted government offices and the British, and then the Turks. When it became clear the British would not leave, Greece and the island's new archbishop, Makarios, agreed that a more organized struggle was needed to drive the British out. Fascist General Grivas was sent to the island with a group of soldiers and heavy weapons for this purpose. Some of our naive leftists almost portrayed Grivas and the EOKA as freedom fighters against the colonial British. If that were the case, wouldn't they need to ally with the Turks in their struggle against the British? By the time the Independent Republic of Cyprus was established in 1963, the British had left, and there were no colonial powers on the island, yet they still massacred the Turks.

General Grivas's Record

Grivas was one of the soldiers in the Greek army that occupied the Aegean region, spurred by British provocation during World War I. Having experienced the trauma known to Greeks as the "Asia Minor Catastrophe," Grivas now dreamed of annexing Cyprus to Greece. During World War II, he was also a collaborator who fought against the communist ELAS organization, which was struggling for independence while his country was under occupation. He even served the British at one point to break strikes on the island. His X2 organization brought death to the strikers and members of the communist AKEL party.

The establishment of the Independent Republic of Cyprus with two bases in 1963 spelled the end of EOKA and Makarios's dreams of Enosis. Grivas was sent back to the island, and the massacres resumed. In 1963, 1964, 1968, and 1974, when massacres occurred, Turkey repeatedly called on the two guarantor countries, Britain and Greece, to intervene together. Each time, these proposals were rejected. In 1974, the Colonels' Junta in Greece paved the way for a coup in Cyprus. Makarios, who had finally realized that Enosis was a dream, was assassinated, and EOKA militant and Küçükkaymaklı massacre perpetrator Sampson took over in a coup. Sampson's rise to power meant the de facto implementation of Enosis and death for the Turks.

When Ecevit's call for joint intervention went unanswered, there was only one option left: intervention in Cyprus.

For years, the Greek Cypriot side and Greece, which had supported Enosis, later began to advocate for the Independent Republic of Cyprus. Why did they expend so much effort to destroy the Independent Republic of Cyprus?