A dark room

entered the walled Turkish Cypriot neighborhood in the fortress of Famagusta. The leading figures of Cyprus, along with common folk and Greek army officers had gathered in the church of Panagia Evaggelistria in Pallouriotissa to bid farewell to the three dead men. Three of this book’s protagonists were there. The president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, led the funeral service. The man who succeeded him for eight disastrous days, Nikos Sampson, was also there, and delivered the eulogy. Another eulogy,one which stirred the crowd, was delivered by a Major of the Greek Army who was stationed in Cyprus. His name was Dimitris Ioannidis. He addressed one of the dead officers, who was a friend of his, and said, obviously moved: “You fell for the freedom of Cyprus, which is Greek.” Then he called out passionately “IMMORTAL DEAD!” and concluded: “Your memory will remain eternal and your sacrifice will not be in vain. We, your fellow officers and your soldiers, pledge to avenge your senseless loss and complete the work you started.” Another Greek officer, who was in Cyprus on a mission, was also present at the funeral and described the Major’s speech as “unfettered, emotionally charged, and full of threats against everyone, but chiefly against the Turks.” He asked the man sitting next to him if the speaker was of a sound mind. Saturday, 20 July 1974, 8:00 am. The first Turkish soldiers have established a beachhead in Pente Mili, in Kyrenia. Turkish aircraft were bombing Cyprus. In the large meeting room in the third floor of the Greek Pentagon, a War Council was in session. Everyone was there: the President, the Prime Minister, the various commanders of the Armed Forces, but the man calling the shots was Dimitris Ioannidis—now a brigadier general—who had overthrown Makarios and had replaced him with Sampson. The Turkish landing had begun three hours earlier, but the “Greek guns” remained silent. The invisible dictator had been blinded by “assurances” and refused to order “fire at will.” The War Council had already been in session for over an hour, when a staff officer informed him that the Turks were bombing the entire island. He jumped up, furious, and said: “It seems that events have overtaken us. The cities are being bombed.” He banged his hand on the table and shouted: “We declare war!” Around that same time, Henry Kissinger was on the phone with Richard Nixon to brief him: “If the Greeks don’t declare war until morning, I think we’re going to be okay.” In the end, war was never declared. In one of those strange games that history plays on men, the person who ten years earlier had spoken passionately about “Cyprus, which is Greek” and had pledged to take revenge on Turkey, had opened the back door for the Turkish invasion in Cyprus. Inside of three stunning days, the dictator lost all control of the situation and was overthrown. The story you will read in the pages of this book has many protagonists, some of them on the stage, some of them behind the curtain. Dimitrios Ioannidis was acting behind the scenes—from 1967 until his downfall on 23 July 1974. In the great “dark room” were much was decided he played the leading role. Contrary to the dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, he preferred to go about in military uniform, didn’t associate with the powerful players of Greek finance, and made his decisions behind closed doors until the end. It was there that he met with CIA agents, there that he plotted and schemed with his fellow officers to overthrow Papadopoulos and Makarios, and it was there that he made his plans to realize his long-held dream: the union of Cyprus and Greece. How was it possible that a brigadier general, the commander of the Greek Military Police (ESA), came to wield so much power and rule over the country during the summer of 1974?