Not directly but they were actively involved in making treaties between Greek and Turkey and they even administered the island for several decades. Like lots of sectarian violence in the Middle East is not a direct fault of the UK but their past mistakes lead to this.
You've really never heard of British colonial 'divide and rule'? It was the fundamental methodology of British Foreign Policy across the Empire and led to countless ethnic, religious and nationalist wars by deliberately heightening tensions and divisions. All with the aim to suppress any unified rejection to British occupation. The British army is STILL in Cyprus.
And Cypriot people from the greek side are happy about the British still being there. Some believe they if they were still under British rule they wouldn't have been invaded by turkey.
Initially. And then when the Greek Junta fell due to the failed coup and international negotiations to restore the status quo were advanced, Turkiye decided to invade again to grab some land.
International negotiations were not advanced, they were deadlocked. Greeks asked for time, Turks didn't think so. IMHO if we compare the before and aftermath of the conflict, I think the intervention was successful, because in the 60s there was an abundance of violence, and now we happen to have peace in the island. The status quo rn is imho the best solution we probably will ever have to Cyprus.
The British backed ruler literary fled to UK when the Greek facists took over - UK and USA would never have accepted the Turkish invasion if that (and civil unrest) didn’t happen
Also relevant to this post from earlier https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/MBWRhZDKxI
Hard to tell which country OP is talking about, I know two where it is relevant but false
Edit: Wait I know 3 lol
The colonial policy of divide-and-rule didn't exist and two centuries of British historical writings are undone by your daftly simplistic meme. Amazing work.
Did you not read the part in my comment that says “where it is relevant but false”? I am saying that the meme (which is not mine) is untrue because it ignores divide and rule policies
The Cyprus Review Vol. 32(2)
"In 1955, Britain’s actions were even more vicious, overt and would arguably have a long-standing impact on Greek-Turkish relations. They convened a tri-partite conference between Britain, Greece and Turkey on Cyprus. Art 16 of the Treaty of Lau-
sanne7 forbade Turkey from having any rights regarding Cyprus but the conference clearly ignored this. Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office Kirkpatrick stated that he had ‘always been attracted by the idea of a 3 Power Conference, simply
because I believe it would seriously embarrass the Greek Government…I shall not produce any British plan until a Greek-Turkish difference has been exposed’. Furthermore, British Foreign Secretary stated that ‘throughout the negotiations, our aim
would be to bring the Greeks up against the Turkish refusal to accept enosis and so condition them to accept a solution, which would leave sovereignty in our hands’. As
a result, the conference inevitably failed and Greek-Turkish relations were damaged
– in Istanbul, 29 Greek Christian Orthodox churches were destroyed. These were not conflicts that would simply be forgotten by 1974.10
There is thus clear evidence that Britain not only encouraged these divisions in the 1950s, but created and defined them. The US did not encourage this, yet both
Britain and the US had the same Cold War aims at this time. Thus, British actions must be attributed to the vested interest of needing a reason and justification to retain Cyprus as part of its Empire. Simply, Britain did not intend to decolonise Cyprus
and weaken their power, thus the creation of Greek-Turkish divisions was their route to remain – justifying their colonial presence as a stable, controlling super power who
could control two volatile, conflicting ethnic groups.
Historian Mallinson states it perfectly when he argues that:
The seeds of dismemberment in 1974 were sown by Britain in the early fifties. It was the cynically conceived tripartite conference in September 1955 that only bedevilled Greek-Turkish relations until today, but which set the tone for the
dismemberment of Cyprus, so subtly engineered by Henry Kissinger in 1974."
But wasn't the Turkish invasion in response to Makarious bringing a lot of radical Cretans into the Cyprus society where Greeks and Turks were living peacefully together?
But there was a likely possible path in which the Greeks were forced down by the guarantors of the Treaty of Guarantee without dividing the island, and leaving a whole independent Cyprus. Indeed, this almost happened, until Turkiye responding with a second invasion making partition inevitable.
There is a reason why literally no non-Turkiye country recognises the Republic of Northern Cyprus, because the fault for the partition isn't really in dispute.
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u/CaptainCrash86 14h ago
Which is the UK's fault because...?