Containing the Crisis: II The UN Period

During Unficyp’s first three months tension in Cyprus was generally high, and there were many incidents. Demonstrations were held; arguments often broke out over the interpretation of local agreements; the control by one community of a key route tended to create a flashpoint; and exchanges of fire took place regularly, casualties being incurred. Nicosia was particularly tense, not least because there was ‘always a reaction’ by its people ‘to any incident however trivial anywhere on the island’.1 In the Tyllirian region on the north-west coast, where there were a number of adjoining Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot villages (Kokkina being one of the latter), economic and strategic factors gave rise to difficult problems. The mixed village of Ayios Theodhoros, between Limassol and Larnaca, was ‘a constant source of trouble’,2 as was the nearby Turkish Cypriot village of Kophinou, which lay at the junction of the Limassol-Lamaca road with that to Nicosia.3 And there was much Greek Cypriot chagrin over their opponent’s hold on the road going north from Nicosia through the Kyrenia Pass to the town of that name. Nonetheless, there was no indiscriminate fighting of the sort with which the crisis had opened in the previous December, and just one serious clash between the organized forces of the two sides.