Cyprus 1974: Conflict in The Mediterranean: No Control, No Conspiracy

On 15 July 1974, Archbishop Makarios III, the democratically elected president of Cyprus, narrowly escaped death when the Cyprus National Guard shelled the presidential palace in Nicosia. Makarios and his bodyguards fled just as the assault was delayed by a broken tank. The coup was backed by the Greek military dictatorship, or Junta, which had taken power in 1967 and saw Makarios as a communist sympathizer. The Junta’s leader, Dimitrios Ioannidis, assumed that the CIA and the West would su...