Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| 1974 Cypriot coup d'état | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Cyprus problem | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
Pro-government militias |
 Greece | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Makarios III Vassos Lyssarides Pantelakis Pantatzis |
 Brigadier General Michalis Georgitsis[1] Colonel Konstantinos Kombokis [2] Athanasios Sklavenitis Nikos Sampson | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1,617 Cypriots missing, 300 civilians among them killed[3] |
Andreas Kestas – 20 years old, member of the Special Reserve Force, from Limassol. Haralambos Kirillou – 19 years old, member of the Special Reserve Force, from Chloraka. Nikos Solomou – 21 years old, member of the Special Reserve Force, from Pachyammos. Philipos Kritiotis – 20 years old, National Guard, from Stato-Agios Fotios. | ||||||
A military coup d'état was executed by the Cypriot National Guard on 15 July 1974 with Greek support. The coup plotters removed the sitting President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, from office and installed pro-Enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson.[4][5][6] The Sampson regime was described as a puppet state, whose ultimate aim was the annexation of the island by Greece;[7][8][9] in the short term, the coupists proclaimed the establishment of the "Hellenic Republic of Cyprus".[10][11] The coup was viewed as illegal by the United Nations and led immediately to the Turkish invasion and formation of Northern Cyprus as part of the Republic of Cyprus.
The Republic of Cyprus was established in 1960 with the London and Zurich Agreements, and the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were the two founding communities. However, following constitutional amendments that were proposed by Makarios III and rejected by Turkish Cypriots,[12] intercommunal violence erupted throughout the island, the Turkish Cypriot representation in the government ended partially due to forced prevention and partially due to willing withdrawal, and Turkish Cypriots started living in enclaves.[13]
Greece had established a national policy of enosis to achieve the island's union with Greece since the 1950s.[14] After 1964, the Greek government tried to control Makarios' policies, and following his unwillingness to obey Athens, attempted to destabilize his government. While the Greek policy shifted to a more cooperative one after 1967, when an extremist military junta took power in Greece, it supported the far-right EOKA-B group against Makarios.[15] Dimitrios Ioannidis, the de facto leader of the junta, believed that Makarios was no longer a true supporter of enosis, and suspected him of being a communist sympathizer.[5] Between 1971 and 1974, five plans were prepared by the Greek government to overthrow Makarios' government.[16]
The coup was ordered by Dimitrios Ioannidis, the shadow leader of the Greek junta, and Greek officers led the Cypriot National Guard to capture the Presidential Palace in Nicosia.[17] The building was almost entirely burned down.[18] Makarios narrowly escaped death in the attack owing to the efforts of his presidential guard, Haralambos Kirillou a then 19 years old, member of the Special Reserve Force, from Chloraka and Nikos Solomou, a 21 years old, member of the Special Reserve Force, from Pachyammos who took part in an operation to rescue Makarios on 15 July 1974. Owing to this operation, he fled the presidential palace from its back door and went to Paphos, where the British managed to retrieve him in the afternoon of 16 July and flew him from Akrotiri to Malta in a Royal Air Force transport plane, and from there to London the next morning.[5][19][4] On 19 July, he attended a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York and gave a speech, in which he stated that Cyprus had been invaded by Greece.[20]
The newly established regime has been described as an extremist puppet regime of the Greek junta.[21][22][23] On 15 July, between 8 am and 9 am, the coup leaders proclaimed their victory on the state channel Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, saying "The national guard intervened in order to solve the problematical situation. [...]. Makarios is dead." However, before his flight, Makarios announced that he was alive from a private broadcast in Paphos. The new government heavily censored the press and stopped left-wing newspapers being printed. Only right-wing newspapers Machi, Ethniki and Agon continued publishing, and their style was very propagandistic. Sampson did not openly announce his intention of enosis in the days following the coup, but instead focused on suppressing any support for Makarios and heavy propaganda to vilify his government.[24]
In response, Rauf Denktaş, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, stated that he believed that the events were among Greek Cypriots and called for Turkish Cypriots not to go out, as well as for UNFICYP to take extensive security measures for Turkish Cypriots.[25] The Cypriot National Guard made no attempts to enter the Turkish Cypriot enclaves, but raided Greek and Turkish Cypriot homes alike in mixed villages to confiscate weapons. The Turkish government brought claims that ammunition was being carried to Cyprus by Olympic Air to the attention of UNFICYP.[26] Whether the Turkish Cypriots suffered as a direct result of the coup remains controversial, but Sampson was seen as an untrustworthy figure due to his pro-enosis policies and brutal role against Turkish Cypriots in 1963.[17]
Following the coup, the newly established junta started a crackdown on Makarios supporters, resulting in a number of deaths and a "significant number", according to Frank Hoffmeister, being detained. The number of deaths from the coup remains a disputed issue,[17] as the Republic of Cyprus lists the deaths due to the coup among the missing due to the Turkish invasion. According to Haralambos Athanasopulos, at least 500 Greek Cypriots have been placed on the list of 1617 Greek Cypriot missing people and their deaths blamed on the Turks and Turkish Cypriots.[3] According to Milliyet on 19 July 1974, violent clashes had broken out in Paphos, and even excluding Paphos, the death toll due to Greek Cypriot infighting was about 300 civilians and 30 Greek soldiers, whose bodies were brought to Athens.[26]
Archbishop Makarios III, overthrown by the Greek junta in the 1974 coup, opposed immediate Enosis (union between Cyprus and Greece). Makarios described the coup which replaced him as "an invasion of Cyprus by Greece" in his speech to the UN Security Council and stated that there were "no prospects" of success in the talks aimed at resolving the situation between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, as long as the leaders of the coup, sponsored and supported by Greece, were in power.[27]
In response to the coup, on 20 July 1974 Turkey invaded the island saying that the action was compliant with the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee.[28][29] Sampson resigned, the military regime that had appointed him collapsed, and Makarios returned.
After the coup fell, Turkey invaded the island again and took control of the north and divided Cyprus along what became known as the Green Line, cutting off about a third of the total territory. The Turkish Cypriots established an independent government for what they called the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus (TFSC), with Rauf Denktaş as president. In 1983 they would proclaim the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on the northern part of the island, which remains a de facto puppet state.[30]
[...] culminating in the 1974 coup aimed at the annexation of Cyprus to Greece
From early 1950s onward Greece has favored union with Cyprus through a policy of enosis
The process reached a critical threshold in 1974 when a botched nationalist coup instigated by the Greek junta against the Cypriot government was used as a pretext by Turkey to invade and occupy the northern part of the island. Greece and ...
| National | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
A military coup d'état was executed by the Cypriot National Guard on 15 July 1974 with Greek support. The coup plotters removed the sitting President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, from office and installed pro-Enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. The Sampson regime was described as a puppet state, whose ultimate aim was the annexation of the island by Greece; in the short term, the coupists proclaimed the establishment of the "Hellenic Republic of Cyprus". The coup was viewed as illegal by the United Nations and led immediately to the Turkish invasion and formation of Northern Cyprus as part of the Republic of Cyprus.
The 1980 Turkish coup d'état (Turkish: 12 Eylül darbesi, lit. '12 September coup d'état'), headed by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren, was the third coup d'état in the history of the Republic of Turkey, the previous having been the 1960 coup and the 1971 coup by memorandum. During the Cold War era, Turkey saw political violence (1976–1980) between the far-left, the far-right (Grey Wolves), the Islamist militant groups, and the state. The violence saw a sharp downturn for a period after the coup, which was welcomed by some for restoring order by quickly executing 50 people and arresting 500,000, of which hundreds would die in prison. For the next three years the Turkish Armed Forces ruled the country through the National Security Council, before democracy was restored with the 1983 Turkish general election. This period saw an intensification of the Turkish nationalism of the state, including banning the Kurdish language. The 1983 elections was won by center-right/liberal Motherland Party led by Turgut Özal, who himself was half-Kurdish and led Turkey until his death in 1993. Turkey partially returned to democracy in 1983 and fully in 1989. The Kurdish language ban was lifted in 1991.
The 1970 Cambodian coup d'état (Khmer: រដ្ឋប្រហារឆ្នាំ១៩៧០, French: Coup d'État de 1970) was the removal of the Cambodian Chief of State, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, after a vote in the National Assembly on 18 March 1970. Emergency powers were subsequently invoked by the Prime Minister Lon Nol, who became effective head of state, and led ultimately to the removal of Queen Sisowath Kossamak and the proclamation of the Khmer Republic later that year. It is generally seen as a turning point in the Cambodian Civil War. No longer a monarchy, Cambodia was semi-officially called "État du Cambodge" (State of Cambodia) in the intervening six months after the coup, until the republic was proclaimed. It also marked the change of Cambodia involvement in the Vietnam War, as Lon Nol issued an ultimatum to North Vietnamese forces to leave Cambodia.
On 4 August 1983, a coup d'état was launched in the Republic of Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) in an event sometimes referred to as the August revolution (French: Révolution d'août) or Burkinabé revolution. It was carried out by radical elements of the army led by Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré, against the regime of Major Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo. Ouédraogo had been brought to power in a 1982 coup with the Conseil de Salut du Peuple (CSP), a body composed of military officials of different ideological backgrounds. The CSP chose Sankara as Prime Minister of Upper Volta in January 1983. As his tenure progressed, Ouédraogo found himself unable to reconcile the conservative and radical factions of the CSP, whose disagreements were leading to a political stalemate. On 16 May he purged his government of pro-Libyan and anti-French elements, disbanded the CSP, and had Sankara and several other important officials arrested. This move sparked discontent among Sankara's supporters. Sankara was eventually released while one officer, Compaoré, began to organise military resistance to the government. Tensions continued to increase until 4 August when Compaoré launched a coup, leading 250 paratroopers in a march on the capital, Ouagadougou. Sankara attempted to broker a political compromise with Ouédraogo, but Compaoré's troops seized the city before this was done and captured Ouédraogo. Sankara became the new president of Upper Volta and created the Conseil National de la Revolution (CNR), a new governing body consisting mostly of populist junior officers.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
