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Cyprus ARMED FORCES
By virtue of its strategic situation, Cyprus has been
invaded,
conquered, and colonized by foreign military powers that
successively dominated the region. Since the second
millennium B.C.
the island has been occupied by the Phoenicians,
Assyrians,
Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, crusaders, Genoese,
Venetians,
and Ottoman Turks. It was employed by the Arabs as a base
to launch
warfare against Byzantium, and by the crusaders in their
efforts to
wrest the Holy Land from Muslims. The Turkish Cypriot
community on
Cyprus originated in the some 50,000 Turkish occupation
forces and
discharged soldiers who remained on the island after the
defeat of
the Venetians in 1571. Britain used Cyprus as a base in
both world
wars and as a staging ground for the attack on Suez in
1956.
Incapable of repelling the many foreign powers that
have
overrun the island, the Cypriot people have inherited
little
military tradition of their own. In the twentieth century,
some
11,000 Cypriots fought as auxiliaries with the British
army during
World War I, and about 30,000 Cypriots served in the
Cyprus
Regiment and other British units during World War II. But
Cyprus
itself was not the scene of fighting in either war, and
Cypriot
recruits were demobilized at the close of hostilities.
After
independence in 1960, Cyprus remained a neutral country
and a
member of the Nonaligned Movement (WAM). It did not join
any
military alliance.
The intractability of the Cyprus problem nevertheless
imposed
on the island the presence of six separate military
forces. As of
the early 1990s, these forces included Turkish troops in
the north,
the Greek Army contingent in the south, the British in the
two
Sovereign Base Areas on the southern coast, and UNFICYP
manning the
buffer zone separating the two Cyprus communities. The
indigenous
Cypriot armed forces on the island consisted of the Greek
Cypriot
National Guard in the south and the Turkish Cypriot
Security Force
(Kibris Türk Emniyet Kuvvetleri) in the north.
In reunification negotiations, the Greek Cypriot
government
proposed demilitarization as the way to remove both
external and
internal security threats. Specificially, the government
foresaw
the withdrawal of all non-Cypriot military forces, the
disbanding
of Cypriot military forces under a timetable to be drawn
up in
advance of establishing a new federal government, and a
UN-controlled force to assist in internal security.
Turkish Cypriots, on the other hand, called for a
"balance"
between non-Cypriot and Cypriot forces on both sides of
the island.
Once a federal government was in place, non-Cypriot forces
on both
sides would be brought to the level needed for ensuring
the
fulfillment of guarantees.
Data as of January 1991
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