Polycarpos Yorgadjis, a man who ran his ministry as if he were still in EOKA and who attracted to himself attributions of the most intricate plotting, used the constitutional breakdown over tax collection as an excuse for getting Makarios’s authority for building up a “secret army” of ex-EOKA men. There were also other freelance gangs of armed irregulars on the Greek side.
On Nov. 30, 1963, President Makarios wrote to Vice President Dr. Fazıl Küçük proposing 13 amendments to the constitution which, he said, would “remove obstacles to the smooth functioning and devel-opment of the state.” He did so apparently with the knowledge and encouragement of the British high commissioner, Sir Arthur Clarke, whether personally or officially is not clear: The full story of this r...
(b) Taxes: Since a majority vote of Turkish deputies in the House was needed to pass tax legislation, Turkish Cypriots sought to use this as leverage to force compliance over the 70:30 ratio, over legislation for separate municipalities and a more generous approach towards the grant of subsidies to the Turkish Communal Chamber.
As a result the colonial income tax law expired whereupon Makarios ordered that existing taxes should continue to be collected. In December 1961 the government at last came out with its own pro-posals, but whereas the Greeks wanted a permanent law, the Turks wanted it to be renewable annually, which would enable them to use their bargaining power each session. Since there was again deadlock, the personal income tax was abandoned by the House and the Greek Cyp...
A first reaction to this document must be that for a nation of 556,000, this was a very elaborate and very rigid constitution. It runs to 199 articles and of these the 48 “basic” ones were to remain unalterable in perpetuity.
The remainder could in practice only be altered by mutual agreement of the two communities. Drafted with the help of a Swiss constitutional adviser, the constitution was of the consociational variety which gives the preservation of the ethnic balance higher priority than majority rule.
Moreover the constitution, thus heavily freighted, was screwed into the international system by the accompanying treaties. Under the Treaty of Guarantee with Britain, Greece and Turkey, the Republic of Cyprus undertakes to uphold its own independence and its own con-st...
Cyprus gained her sovereign independence by virtue of a consti-tution and three treaties — the Treaty of Guarantee, the Treaty of Al-liance and the Treaty of Establishment, all of which came into force on the same day — Aug. 16, 1960.
They were interrelated so that, for example, the 48 “basic articles” of the Constitution were incorporated into the Treaty of Guarantee while the two Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance were in turn men-tioned to “have constitutional force” in Article 181 of the constitution.
The third treaty, the Treaty of Establishment, makes it clear that the boundaries of the Republic of Cyprus do not coincide with those of the island, in that Britain retains absolute sovereignty over two en-claves, totaling 99 square miles which contain the...
The island of Cyprus has been attempting to resolve its internal and external political associations for the past 52 years.
The roots of the Cyprus problem can be traced back to the 1950s, when Greek Cypriot and Greek aspirations to achieve enosis (the island’s union with Greece) took the form of a terrorist campaign against Turkish Cypriots as well as British colonial rule. Despite at-tempts by Greece to exploit the issue in the UN, the UN General As-sembly has not upheld Greek demands designed to achieve annexation under the guise of self-determination, but urged negotiations among the parties concerned. So when Britain gave Cyprus independence in 1960, a series of sui generis agreements had to be reached, designed to compromise the conflicting interests of the Turkish and Greek ...
