Treaty of Guarantee (1960)

The Treaty of Guarantee is a treaty between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom that was promulgated in 1960.

Article I bans Cyprus from participating in any political union or economic union with any other state. Article II requires the other parties to guarantee the independence, territorial integrity and security of Cyprus. Article IV reserves the right of the guarantor powers to take action to re-establish the current state of affairs in Cyprus, a provision that was used as justification for the Turkish invasion of 1974. The treaty also allowed the United Kingdom to retain sovereignty over two military bases.[1]

Article IV entitled these three guarantor powers to multilateral action among them or, as a last resort if no concerted action seemed possible, each guarantor to unilateral actions confined to restoring its status according to the treaty as a democratic, bicommunal, single, sovereign independent state:

Article IV

In the event of a breach of the provisions of the present Treaty, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom undertake to consult together with respect to the representations or measures necessary to ensure observance of those provisions.

In so far as common or concerted action may not prove possible, each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty.[2]

— Article IV

Initially, a bicommunal independent state was at stake because of the July 1974 coup and several Turkish Cypriot enclaves being attacked at the onset of the coup. Those circumstances made Turkey claim the right to unilateral action, as provided by the treaty, by first invading and creating a bridgehead and corridor between Kyrenia and Nicosia enclave.

In the second invasion campaign, Turkish forces invaded and held on to one third of the island, resulting in effective partition of the island and secession of the parts of the island under its military control. Hence, the second invasion is regarded by some as a violation of the treaty.

Turkish Cypriots, Turkey and some observers on the other hand, view the intervention and the effective partition as legal, citing how bicommunalism had already ended from 1964 and onwards, when the founding treaties were violated by Greek Cypriot amendments and separate communal autonomous administrations were created. In the Geneva Declaration of 30 July 1974, the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Turkey and Britain recognized "the existence in practice in the Republic of Cyprus of two autonomous administrations, that of the Greek Cypriot community and that of the Turkish Cypriot community." The Turkish Cypriot position therefor maintains that the Turkish intervention did not alter the state of affairs created by the 1960 treaties, as separated communities already existed before the intervention, after provisions guaranteeing equal status of the two communities had already been violated by Greek Cypriot amendments.[3]

The treaty was concluded the same year that the Constitution of Cyprus was finalised, and the Zürich and London Agreement and the Treaty of Alliance between Cyprus, Greece and Turkey were written.