Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis and Turkish Prime Minister Menderes met to hammer out constitutional guarantees for Cyprus's Turkish minority, laying groundwork for the London-Zurich Agreements. The compromise ended years of guerrilla conflict but planted seeds of ethnic division that would erupt violently in later decades.
Cyprus had been convulsed since 1955 by EOKA's guerrilla campaign against British rule, seeking union with Greece, while the island's Turkish minority feared domination. Britain, exhausted by the insurgency and eager to retain military bases, pushed both Athens and Ankara toward a negotiated settlement.
The Zurich talks produced a delicate constitutional architecture: separate voting rolls for Greek and Turkish Cypriots, a Greek president paired with a Turkish vice president, and guaranteed troop presences from both Greece and Turkey on the island. Neither community was fully satisfied, and Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios had little input into terms negotiated over his head.
Independence followed in August 1960, but the compromise proved brittle. Intercommunal violence flared repeatedly through the 1960s, and the fragile balance collapsed entirely in 1974 with a Greek-backed coup and Turkish invasion, partitioning the island in ways that persist to this day.