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Kingdom and Turkey, taking note of the undertakings by the Republic of Cyprus embodied in Article 1, recognise and guarantee the independence, territorial integrity and security of the Republic of Cyprus, and also the provisions of the basic articles of its Constitution". As for the ability of the States endowed with the right to intervene individually or jointly on the island in case the current order was challenged/questioned, Article 3 reads: "In so far as common or concerted action may prove impossible, each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs established by the present Treaty". Following the coup d'état of the junta in Athens on 15 July 1974, with the support of the Greek cypriots partisans aiming to achieve Enosis, Turkey landed in Cyprus on 20 July under the "Cyprus Peace Operation" , the purpose of which was to save Turk Cypriots and prevent any further attacks against them and the annexation of the island by Greece, in violation of the international treaties. Turkey had previously sent a request to Britain for a joint intervention. However, as Britain did not express the expected intention, Ankara decided to intervene on an individual basis in line with the Treaty of Guarantee. The international community recognised the legitimacy of the Turkish intervention on several key occasions. In the meantime, the Greek - Cypriots National Guardsmen and EOKA-B continued attacks against units of the Turkish population. Hundreds of Turkish Cypriots were assassinated, and entire villages were destroyed. The night of 20 July 1974, Turkey accepted a cease-fire voted for by the UN's Council of Security. The Turkish intervention resulted in the collapse of the junta in Greece and its Cyprus antenna, as well as the Nikos Sampson government. After the armistice decision, Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Greece and England attended the first Geneva Conference on 25 July 1974. The conference ended on 30 July and the following decisions, in line with Turkey's demands, were accepted and declared: "A security zone will be established in the island; Turkish regions invaded by Greeks and Cypriot Greeks shall be evacuated immediately, military and civilian captives shall be exchanged, a constitutional government shall be established, and when peace is ensured, there will be two autonomous administrations in the Republic of Cyprus, namely the Cypriot Turkish community and the Cypriot Greek community". With this agreement, it was hoped that the attacks by the National Guardsmen and EOKA-B on the Cypriot Turkish community would end. However, the National Guardsmen and EOKA-B did not evacuate the regions they had occupied and refused to release their captives when the 2nd Geneva Conference began on 8 August. Whereas Turkish Cypriots evacuated Greek villages around Limasol and Larnaka, the Greek-Cypriot forces continued attacking Turkish villages. In addition, at the 2nd Conference in Geneva, Cypriot Greek and Greek delegates denied the issues that the Greek Foreign Minister had consented to at the 1st Conference. Greeks - Cypriot Greeks brought unacceptable recommendations during the talks, with the objective of dragging the issue. They tried to destabilise the existing power balance by strategically involving certain states, whether related or not to the Cyprus issue, thus giving time to Greece to prepare forces and send them to Cyprus. Turkey saw that it was impossible to agree with the Greeks and Cypriot Greeks' coalition and decided to complete the campaign, that was suspended during the cease-fire agreement. The operation began on 14 August and ended on 16 August. Turkish forces reached Magosa at one end, Lefke at the other and thereby determined today's borders of the Turkish-Cypriot state. A special committee was established by the British Parliament to examine the Cyprus Turkish Peace Operation. The report it submitted in 1976 read: "The places that the Turkish forces reached during the 1st Peace Campaign was not sufficient to defend, therefore, the 2nd Peace Operation was inevitable". In addition, Lord Neval himself said: "Had not the Turkish intervention taken place in 1974, there would have remained no Turks on the island". The Muratağa, Atlılar and Sandallar massacres that were revealed after the Peace Operation is proof that it was a very appropriate decision. THE CREATION OF THE TURKISH FEDERATED STATE The Autonomous Turkish Administration Assembly of Cyprus convened on 13 February 1975, in order to establish the Turkish wings of the federal units necessary for a federation based on equity and adaptation of a multi-partial democratic parliamentary system. The Assembly unanimously proclaimed the Turkish Federated Republic of Cyprus, and decided upon the establishment of a Constitutional Assembly with the participation of the representatives of all institutions and agencies of the Turkish community to pen the State Constitution and the election law. At the Vienna meeting in 1975, the parties reached an agreement on voluntary migration of Turks from Southern Cyprus and Greeks from Northern Cyprus. This population exchange was completed from 8 to 10 September 1975. In the years following the exchange of population, the autonomous Turkish Administration Assembly of Cyprus which acknowledge that a solution through international negotiations with the Greeks and their compatriots in Cyprus could not be found, proclaimed the Turkish Federated Republic of Cyprus (TRNC) on 15 November 1975. Rauf Denktas read its "declaration of independence". The UN's Security Council demanded the renunciation to the above Republic to be proclaimed through the adoption of resolution 541 of 17 November 1983. With this resolution, the Security Council was in contradiction with its own principle of "right of self determina-tion". Neither Turkey nor The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus accepted, in consequence, the resolution of the Security Council. The 9th of June 1985, Rauf Denktaş was elected first president of the Turkish Federated Republic of Cyprus with 70% of the Turkish-Cypriot's votes, and is still in charge today. PURSUING THE NEGOTIATIONS The international negotiations under the UN's initiatives were pursued the day after the proclamation of the TRNC. At the creation of TRNC, the Turkish part had left the door open to a federal solution, based on bi-regionalism and bi-community, in accordance with the agreement of the 1977-79 Summit. During the negotiations conducted in that sense, the "draft for a settlement on the Cyprus issue" prepared by the UN's Secretary-General and submitted in New-York on 17 January 1985 was accepted by the Cypriot Turks on 26 March 1986, but instead was rejected by the Cypriot Greeks. The European Community and Cyprus then signed the protocol of the costumes union of 22 March 1987 following 18 months of negotiations. In January 1988, it was decided that the customs agreement will be effective for the whole island. In the meantime, the 1990 New York summit between both parties ended in failure. The same year, the UN Council of Security, through resolution No. 649, invited both parties to seek a mutually acceptable solution. Furthermore, the resolution established that a solution should include the principle of a bi-district and bi-community State, and should be founded through direct negotiations between the representatives of both nations, working as equals. Another important feature of this resolution is that it underlined that the Cyprus issue was not dated from 1974 but prior to this date, back to 1960. THE CYPRUS ISSUE SHIFTING AWAY FROM UN CONTROL Despite these developments, the UN began to lose its grip on the Cyprus issue as a result of Cyprus's application to the European Union in 1990 and the European Commission's decision, three year later, to reinforce its political and economics relations with the Greek part of the island during the "pre-accession" process. In 1994, the European leaders decided at the Corfu Summit that the second enlargement process would encompass Malta and Cyprus, and, despite the opposition of Turkey and TRNC, they started accession negotiations with the Greek Cypriot administration on 31 March 1998. These negotiations, which were conducted without the participation or the consideration of the Turks, ended just before the Copenhagen Summit in December 2002, which officially declared that the Greek part of Cyprus would join the EU with nine other candidate countries. Meanwhile Denktas, who was regarded as the main obstacle to a solution to the division of the island, demonstrated that he was open to negotiations by proposing to restart the direct discussions under UN leadership. From the 16th of December 2002, these negotiations continued with meetings every three weeks between Denktas and the Greek- Cypriot Klerides.
This process, which slowed down during the presidential election of the Greek Cypriots, took a new dimension with the Peace Plan proposed by the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, 11 November 2002. ..... And we know what happened: After long discussions and intense pressure, the Greek Cypriots have rejected the Annan plan, which was strongly supported by the EU, whereas the Turkish Cypriots have approved it. The Greek Cypriots became part of the EU immediately after having rejected the Annan Plan, therefore the problem remains unsolved at EU and UN level