Former Greek Cypriot Leader Glafcos Clerides pointing out
that the Greek Cypriot administration had lost many opportunities and made big
mistakes in the past said if there was no Greek Coup D’etat Turkey would never
intervene in Cyprus.
Greek Cypriot daily Alithia published Clerides’ interview
given to Greek daily ELEFTEROTÝPÝA. According to daily, Clerides responding to
the question whether Cyprus would be in a better condition if federation was
accepted during negotiations in Geneva said: "If I said yes this would have no
meaning . Makarios’ view was not to accept a federation based on geography.
Furthermore, Yorgo Mavros representing Greece was against a geographical
federation. Karamanlis was supporting this but could not take this
responsibility alone."
Responding to question whether a worse situation could be
prevented if Makarios had accepted a geographical federation in 1974, Clerides
said, "Yes, a conciliation was necessary in order to prevent a worse
situation. The mistake was that we did not make a correct evaluation of what
would have happened is we had said no."
Responding to question whether there were lost
opportunities in the Cyprus issue Clerides said " the expression lost
opportunities might be wrong. From time to time, some initiatives were made
and if we could positively responded to these we could have achieved the
settlement of the Cyprus issue."
Question, "What were the tragic mistakes"
Response: "Our problem is to take decisions and support
views exceeding our power. Other mistake is not to take lessons from our
mistakes. For the period 1960-74 we made the following big mistakes as the
leadership: we wanted to violate agreements a at a period when there were no
international support. Our alliance with Non-aligned and Warsaw Pact countries
were fruitless. We could not correctly evaluate the Greece’s Helen Policy that
Greece was not at the level of a face-to-face conflict with Turkey and we did
not have the necessary capability to protect Cyprus if Turkey had used its
intervention right . When we look today’s situation we made a mistake in 1973
by not conciliating. The biggest mistake was the coup d’etat in 1974. This
resulted with Turkeys attack. If there were no Greek coup d’etat, Turkey would
never intervene. We could prevent the second intervention by accepting the
federation however, we did not have the political courage to decide this".
