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🔴 Cyprus’ EOKA struggle of 1955-59 to overthrow British colonial rule is commemorated on April 1st
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https://archive.is/zk222EOKA - Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters)
🔸 EOKA was a Cypriot nationalist paramilitary organisation that fought a campaign for the end of British rule in Cyprus one of its main goals was Enosis (union of Cyprus with Greece)
🔸 EOKA was headed by Georgios Grivas, a Greek Army officer, World War I and World War II veteran. During the Axis occupation of Greece in World War II, he led a small, anti-communist resistance group, named Organization X
⚠️ shortly after midnight on April 1, 1955, 18 bombs shook Cyprus and marked the beginning of the EOKA Struggle. From be beginning of the armed conflict to the end of June 1955 EOKA performed 204 attacks in several locations such as police stations and at the homes of British officers and soldiers
🔸 The "Turkish Cypriot" community objected to Enosis long before the 1950s from fear that unification with Greece would lead to their persecution and expulsion. Paramilitary armed groups, such as "Turkish Cypriot Resistance Unit", "Black Gang" and Volkan, appeared as early as May 1955. All of them were absorbed later by TMT which was Turkey's tool to fuel intercommunal violence in order to show that partition was the only possible arrangement
⚠️ In August 1955, the Turkish president at the time, announced that Turkey wouldn't accept any change in the status quo of Cyprus which were not in Turkeys interests. Rumors were spreading in Turkish media that a slaughter of the Turkish Cypriot community was likely to occur, even though they were unfounded, they led to the government-sponsored anti-Greek Istanbul pogrom of September 1955
‼️ Intercommunal (and intra-communal) violence escalated in the summer of 1958 with numerous fatalities. French counted 55 assassinations of Turks by Greeks, and 59 assassinations of Greeks by Turks between 7 June-7 August
⚠️ On November 1956 due to the Suez Crisis large numbers of British troops were transferred off Cyprus. EOKA launched a wave of attacks known to the British as "Black November" with a total of 416 attacks that left 39 dead 21 of them were British
⚠️ From 1956 to 1957, there were 246 attacks until March 31 1957 including an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the British governor. Army and police facilities were attacked totaling 104 house bombings, 53 riots, 136 acts of Sabotage, 403 ambushes, 35 attacks on police, 38 attacks on soldiers and 43 raids on police stations
🔸 The most glorious battle for EOKA was the Battle of Spilia, fought on 12 December 1955 when 12 Greeks took on 700 British soldiers in the Troodos mountains and won. The British Army attempted to encircle the headquarters of EOKA, but it did not work out that way. Instead Georgios Grivas, leader of the EOKA guerrilla organisation, divided fighters in two as the British came up the mountain in two units. EOKA then retreated to the summit of the mountain after fighting the British in heavy fog. Eventually the British reached the summit in heavy fog and thought they surrounded the EOKA fighters and begun shooting and calling airstrikes at each other for over 8 hours. In this battle, the British suffered 127 deaths, 102 injuries and 21 missing. A lot of this came from the confusion EOKA made by withdrawing from their positions in heavy fog with two British units fighting against each other, with EOKA only having to pick off straddlers and did not lose a single man
⚠️ The campaign of the EOKA formally ended on March 31, 1959
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Source 1
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Source 2
