In February 1959, Great Britain, Greece and Turkey conducted negotiations over the independence of Cyprus. Great Britain, as the colonial power, demanded to keep 3% of the Cypriot territory in order to establish Sovereign Base Areas (SBA). Greece and Turkey, in their capacity as "homelands", negotiated without any Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots being represented. Following these interest-based negotiations, Cyprus was given a political system that was both rigid and unsuited to local realities and Constitutional treaties were signed that impeded Enosis (union between Cyprus and Greece) and Taksim (partition on a linguistic and religious basis). These two insular extranationalisms were in fact the result of a concomitant interaction between the British colonial policy and the aggressive expression of Greek and Turkish nationalisms outside the national borders of Greece and Turkey, and have been made possible by the very position of the political Cypriot leaderships. Obtained from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 as a place d'armes in order to defend British interests, Cyprus underwent a deep social transformation under the British rule. Great Britain's ambiguous and opportunistic policies played on local dynamics to serve British strategic objectives. The aim of this research is to show how the British colonial heritage contributed to the ongoing conflict between the two main Cypriot communities.
