Talk:Cypriot intercommunal violence

Title and scope of the article, and original research

I've just been reading up some more on the history of this period, please correct me if I misunderstand something.

What's the basis for the article's name "Cyprus crisis (1955–64)", and the time period of 1955–64? The lead sentence is currently:

There was a period of political and violent conflict in Cyprus, also known as the Cyprus crisis and EOKA period, between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, between 1955 and 1964.

The given citation doesn't use the phrase "Cyprus crisis". It refers to "the EOKA period", as 1955–64. That doesn't seem right, as the many other sources I found, including Wikipedia, refer to the EOKA period as being 1955–59, a.k.a. the Cyprus Emergency.

I did a general Google search for "Cyprus crisis", and I couldn't find anything that referred to it as being the 1955-64 time period, other than links that pointed back to Wikipedia–including a rather dubious Google "knowledge panel" on the right side of the results that quotes the above sentence–which is generally a bad sign of original research on Wikipedia. I found references to a "Cyprus crisis" of 1963/64 (a.k.a. Bloody Christmas (1963)), a "Cyprus crisis" of 1967 (the battle in Ayios Theodhoros and Kophinou, and the withdrawal of Grivas, which doesn't seem to be covered except in this article, even though it's out of the date range), a "Cyprus crisis" of 1974 (the coup and invasion), and a financial crisis in 2013. But none naming the period of 1955–64 as "Cyprus crisis".

With a search for the time period itself, "1955–64" in Cyprus, I found no results referring to that time period as being a particular thing in itself, let alone naming it the "Cyprus crisis". There is one website called "Cyprus Critical History Archive: Reconsidering the culture of violence in Cyprus, 1955-64", which says that it intends to extend the period it covers to 1974 when it has the resources. There are practically no examples of that particular date range being mentioned in books. There are books with titles covering for example 1946–1959, 1955–1959, 1955–1974. But the idea that there is something called the "Cyprus crisis (1955–64)" seems to have been invented by Wikipedia editors...

Looking back at the article's history, it was originally called "Intercommunal violence during the Cyprus conflict", covering the period 1963–74. Then it had various names in 2007, including "Cypriot Civil War", "Cypriot Intercommunal Conflict", "Cyprus Intercommunal violence", finally settling on "Cypriot intercommunal violence". Until 26 April 2011, the infobox gave a "result" as the coup, the invasion, and partition in '74. Then the dates were jostled around with little explanation in May-June 2013, ending up with 1955–1964, without any sources. The "military conflict" infobox has generally presented it (whatever "it" is), as some type of battle, with "belligerents" including Greece and Turkey, and a count of the casualties, which has varied widely from time to time along with the dates. Since November 2015, the infobox grants a "victory" to the Greek Cypriots for the entire period, based on two sources that discuss only the "victory" of the taking of the villages in 1967, and a rather questionable interpretation of two other sources, both of which appear to refer only to the events of 1963–64, with one of them saying "The Greek-Cypriot 'victory' was not strategic but only Pyrrhic, and led to an early form of partition." None of them refer to a period of 1955–1964.

The article name was changed again by now-blocked editor Zoupan, on 23 September 2016, with the comment "moved page Cypriot intercommunal violence to Cypriot conflict (1955–64): as per AT", and the same day, "moved page Cypriot conflict (1955–64) to Cyprus crisis (1955–64)". I can't find any discussion on the article talk page, and there were no edits to the article for about a month before and after the move. Many links still point to "Cypriot intercommunal violence", including the one where it's the "main article" for Cyprus § Independence and inter-communal violence that covers 1960–1974 (though actually nothing is said about 1965–1973), and the one where it's the "main article" for Cyprus dispute § Constitutional breakdown and intercommunal talks, 1960–1974, again with mismatched dates.

An article covering a certain range of dates isn't a problem, if a rationale is defined, but I'm having some trouble seeing what it is, especially since it seems to have been arrived at through major changes in often undiscussed and unsourced edits. Most of the sources I've been reading, as well as the "Cyprus" and "Cyprus dispute" articles, make a strong distinction between the pre- and post-1960 conflicts. They seem to have a markedly different character, with 1955–59 (Cyprus Emergency and Cyprus dispute § EOKA campaign and creation of TMT, 1955–59) being largely EOKA vs. the British, in pursuit of enosis, while the fighting mainly in 1963–64 (Bloody Christmas (1963) and after) was, well, something else... lumping them together as one particular conflict, with one overall "victory" outcome–plus leaving out the 1967 crisis, EOKA B, etc.–is difficult to understand. Even if "victory" can be assigned to Greek Cypriots in both the EOKA campaign and the "Bloody Christmas" conflict, they were years apart, with different players and objectives involved, and different arguments to consider it so, or to dispute it. If you look at the List of wars involving Cyprus, it lists "Cyprus Emergency (1955–59)", and then "Cypriot intercommunal violence (1955–1967)", with overlapping and mismatched dates, combatants, and results.

I'm concerned about original research, with Wikipedia inventing a named historical period, and characterizing it as one specific military conflict, with neither the name nor the identified period in general use by reliable sources, and which is now being quoted by other articles and "lists of wars", and by external publications. --IamNotU (talk) 18:26, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

References

Definitely OR, I concur with you @IamNotU:. Most literature I have read divides the timeline as follow:

1. Cyprus emergency (1955-59)
2. the period 1960-63 when Cyprus was a "normal" state, with a constitution and a government.
3. The period 63 to 74 (from Bloody Christmas (1963) to Turkish invasion or peace operation according to some). During this time, many TC fleed their homes, GCs were in control.
4. 1974 when GCs faced a major defeat be Turkey
5. 1974 to present day---->legthy talks.

I can not remember any author talking of a period 1955-64. Seems really strange. Cinadon36 (talk) 18:42, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks a lot for raising this, @IamNotU:, this was something I had been concerned about for a long time with regards to this article, just haven't had the time and the energy to bring it up. The current framework of the article is entirely inaccurate and OR. It is not at all accurate to represent the conflict between EOKA and the British forces (and TMT from 1958 onwards) in 1955-59 and the intercommunal violence/civil war in 1963-64 as one single extended crisis. They were entirely different conflicts. EOKA per se was disbanded in 1959 anyway. There were four armed conflicts within the Cyprus dispute: 1955-59, 1963-64 (can be further dissociated into Bloody Christmas and Battle of Tylliria), 1967 and 1974. All four should have separate articles and not be combined. The persecution that the Turkish Cypriots faced in the period 1963-74 is covered as a general phenomenon in the article Turkish Cypriot enclaves. --GGT (talk) 21:33, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Cinadon36 and GGT, thanks for the comments. Those seem to be the main divisions that I've come across as well. I think it's still not a bad idea to have an article about "Cypriot intercommunal violence" (the former name), as a general subject. There are numerous articles with links to the old redirects, that are referring to it in that way. I imagine that it wouldn't have a limited date range, nor a "military conflict" infobox. I'd hope that it would take advantage of the many sources out there that provide background and analysis of the subject, and how it affected peoples' lives, and not be a "wall of shame" battleground over a list of disputed atrocities... well, I can dream anyway... I'm still not able to find any discussion about why it was renamed in September 2016. I'd suggest moving it back.

I'd also suggest creating "Cyprus crisis of 1963–64". Some other articles link to this one as "main article" for that period. It would cover for example the constitutional breakdown, the "Bloody Christmas" conflict, the introduction of the UN force, the Battle of Tylliria, etc. There could also be "Cyprus crisis of 1967", covering that. Those would make more sense for the "list of wars" articles, and some parts of this article could be moved there.

Other articles link to this one as "main article" for the period 1960-1974. I'm not sure where to re-link those, if anywhere, but having them link to this 1955–64 article currently is quite wrong anyway. It's probably not necessary to create separate articles for the time periods 1960–63 and 1963–74, since those are going to be subsections of Cyprus, Cyprus dispute, History of Cyprus since 1878, etc. --IamNotU (talk) 23:22, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

@IamNotU: I am for it. Cyprus crisis of 1963–64 should be a very important article of WikiProject Cyprus. 06:24, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input about this... Considering the above discussion, I've now moved the article back to its previous name, and created a redirect for Cyprus crisis of 1963–64 that points to that section in this article for now, and one for Cyprus crisis of 1967 also to its corresponding section. I went through the hundreds of incoming links from other articles and several templates to this one, under both names. Fyi, the majority of them were clearly intending to link to the crisis of 1963–64. A few were intending to link to the Cyprus Emergency (1955–59), while some were referencing the concept of intercommunal violence generally. Not a single one seemed to be discussing a combined period of 1955–64. I've now changed all the incoming links accordingly. There are no more incoming links to "Cyprus crisis (1955–64)", and I've nominated the redirect for deletion, as it could be confusing to see it in the search suggestions. I re-wrote the introduction to this article and removed the "military conflict" infobox that combined the two conflicts into one, and tried to clean up the "list of wars" articles. --IamNotU (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merge from: Civilian casualties and displacements during the Cyprus conflict

The article Civilian casualties and displacements during the Cyprus conflict used to be called "Turkish Cypriot Genocide", but got its current title after being corrected and balanced out. There have been some complaints on Talk:Civilian casualties and displacements during the Cyprus conflict that it ignores some of the topics covered on Cypriot intercommunal violence. They overlap completely in time, and it would save some contextualizing if they were merged. Civilian casualties are an important part of the history of violence, and both articles are short enough that the resulting article would be of reasonable length. -- Beland (talk) 19:46, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

As I noted on this edit summary, the two articles have entirely different scopes. This article covers the period between 1955 and 1967, whilst the other one covers the period between 1963 and 1975 (it could be argued that this should be extended as far back as 1958 as well). The conflict in 1974 is not normally regarded as part of the intercommunal violence. The proposed merger tag has thus been removed. --GGT (talk) 17:50, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

1954 Editorial

I am trying to find the source of the statement: "In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise"" I have never heard such a sentiment. First time I run into this. The reference given is not of the editorial itself, but to a book. It is a significant claim and goes against all we know. Need more backing. Murat (talk) 23:31, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

In fact willingness of support of UK initially by Turkish Cypriots was due to the openly stated aim of the Greeks, especially EOKA, that Cyprus belonged to Greece only. They clearly did not plan on any Turkish presence on the island in the future.