Back

THE MOST important document there is about the Cyprus problem is the ‘Akritas’ plan. It is incontrovertible testimony as to how the Cyprus problem was created in the form it has had for the last 42 years. Nobody should be allowed to talk about the Cyprus problem if he has not read the ‘Akritas’ plan.

Of course, most Greek Cypriots are completely in the dark about the history of their country’s troubles, something which constantly pushes them into making new mistakes. I would bet my life that among the hundreds of clueless and uneducated characters who appear in the media every day as journalists – supposedly to inform the public – you will not find 10 who would have read this document, which is the key to understanding the Cyprus problem. This bitter truth alone explains why we Greek Cypriots are rooted to a primitive level of politics.

In reality, the Cyprus problem was brought into being by this idiotic and nationally catastrophic plan. A plan, which, in Demetris Christofias’ phraseology, would have been describe as treasonous. It is a glowing monument of political stupidity and irresponsibility. The very same man who had signed the Treaty of Establishment for this state and his ministers, as soon as this state came into being, began plotting its dissolution. And for this purpose they set up an illegal organisation. Only in the minds of a Makarios, a Papadopoulos, a Yiorkadjis, a Kyprianou and a Lyssarides could such paranoid politics have found fertile ground.

The gist of this insane plan is included in the following few lines:

Stage 1: Create of the impression among international public opinion, that the Cyprus issue had not been solved correctly and condemn of the Treaty of Guarantee, “the first target of our attack”.

Stage 2: Seek amendment of negative elements of the agreements by all means. “We can even justify unilateral action.”

Stage 3: “Following the above action, the Treaty of Guarantee (right of interventions) is rendered legally and substantively unenforceable”.

Stage 4: “With Cyprus freed (from the treaties of Alliance and Guarantee) the people would be enabled to express and implement their desire.”

Stage 5: “Lawful confrontation by the forces of the state (police and friendly military troops) of any intervention from within or from outside because then we would be completely independent.”

This plan was not put together by people who had escaped from a mental hospital, as some may think. Its writers made it obvious that they knew very well they were playing with fire. The only parts of the document which are written in block capitals are those informing the recipients that leaking of it was tantamount to “high treason” and urging members of the organisation of their obligation to “destroy by fire”, once it had been read. They were obviously concerned that the Turks might have got wind of it.

This was the great plan, with which Mr Papadopoulos – the deputy chief of Akritas – and his fellow-fighters destroyed the Cyprus Republic, which, as he discovered 40 years later, by his own admission, was a “blessed solution”, even better than joining the EU. The achievement of Papadopoulos’ and his organisation’s national activities was truly impressive.

Within a few days, they had created the enclave between Nicosia and Kyrenia, in which they compressed a large number of the Turkish Cypriots. They laid the foundations of partition. Ten years later, the enclave was used by the Turkish invasion force as a bridgehead for its landing in Cyprus and, expanded by the troops, it evolved in the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’.

And now that readers know who had written, in Greek, the pro-Turkish Akritas plan, they should – to use Papadopoulos’ immortal words – “judge for themselves if this helped the Hellenism of Cyprus or our case…”