Law’s Politics: The Cyprus Troubles, 1960-1968

The book concerns the internal armed violence between the ethnically Greek and Turkish communities of the Republic of Cyprus, within eight years from the Republic’s establishment in 1960. It therefore precedes the more broadly known events surrounding the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the resulting division since. Inspiration for the research and the book was drawn from theoretical debates in Public International Law on the relationship between law and politics in critical legal studies, enriched with insights from the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement, in the context of the island’s colonial and post-colonial past. The book has benefited from previously unpublished archival material – most notably, the archive of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva – and secondary literature on this period in History and the Social Sciences. The book examines inter-ethnic violence in Cyprus also as a case study of the multiple dimensions and actors playing a role in non-international armed conflicts, by turning the spotlight on internal legal and political developments, thus, removing the spotlight away from the usual focus on international diplomatic power-struggles relevant to this conflict. The Cyprus Question is an excellent example of a highly complex conflict, involving a network of internal and external actors, whose relationship today is further complicated by the passing of more than half a century since the events addressed in the book. Considering that nowadays the majority of ongoing armed conflicts face similar complexities, the book is insightful in illustrating the deepest controversies of the internal politics of armed conflicts, and Law’s role in them. Hence, the book offers contributions to Public International Law scholarship, as well as International Relations, and Conflict Studies, among others.