The role of “smallness” in the Cyprus constitutional breakdown of 1963

Christos Papastylianos

Dr Christos Papastylianos is an Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Nicosia, Cyprus.

The Cyprus Constitution, enacted in 1960, was a post-conflict constitution. Cyprus achieved its independence from British colonial rule on 16 August 1960, after a revolt of the Greek Cypriots—this revolt was viewed as a terrorist campaign in the eyes of the British, of Turkish Cypriot leaders and of Turkey; and as a liberation struggle by most Greek Cypriots and by Greece. The cause of the revolt was not typically anticolonial, since the unyielding demand of Greek Cypriots was to translate their right of self-determination into union of the island with the territory of another state, Greece. The Greek Cypriot struggle for unification (enosis) fuelled the deeply ingrained fears of Turkish Cypriots that the British might one day depart from their colony and that they would then be left at the mercy of the majority. Thus, since 1956 Turkish Cypriots demanded a parallel exercise of their right to self-determination, something that would most probably lead to partition of the island (Taksim). The two communities were brought to the verge of civil conflict.

The Greek and Turkish Ministers of Foreign Affairs negotiated the (international) status and the constitutional essentials of the new state during December 1958 and January 1959 in a series of top-secret meetings and exchanges whose specific contents even British representatives were not aware of. The negotiations took place in the absence of Cypriot representatives, and were concluded in a summit meeting at Zurich between 5 and 11 February 1959. In this meeting, the Greek and the Turkish Prime Ministers, Karamanlis and Menderes respectively, approved a document regarding the ‘Basic Structure of the Republic of Cyprus’, which provided that ‘[t]he State of Cyprus will be a Republic with a presidential regime’ and which specified in considerable depth the bi-communal constitutional structure of the new state. The approval of the Zurich Agreements by the leaders of the two Cypriot communities, Archbishop Makarios and Dr Fazil Küçük, took place at the Lancaster House Conference in February 1959. The London Agreement assigned the drafting of the Constitution to a Joint Commission with a quadripartite composition: Greece, Turkey, the Greek Cypriots, and the Turkish Cypriots each sent a representative at the head of a small delegation. The most interesting feature of the Joint Commission was, of course, its Zurich straitjacket, i.e. the obligation of the drafters of the Constitution to strictly abide by the letter of the Basic Structure points, as agreed upon in Zurich.

However, the mistrust between the two communities was not eliminated after independence and the enactment of the Cypriot Constitution. The inability of the two communities to cooperate revealed their mutual lack of trust in relation to three main issues: the creation of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots; the establishment of the Cypriot military; and the composition of the civil service based on the quotas provided for in the Constitution (70% for the Greek Cypriots and 30% for the Turk-Cypriots respectively). The corollary was that three fundamental articles of the Constitution (Articles 173(1), 129 and 78(2)) were dead letters from the outset. They were not implemented because their implementation required the cooperation of the two communities: something that was desirable under the Constitution but not possible in practice. In December 1963, intercommunal conflicts broke out and all Turkish-Cypriot officials withdrew from their offices.

The crucial question then, is whether the smallness of the Cypriot state affected the outbreak of the crises, which led to the constitutional breakdown. Drawing from my chapter published in Small State Constitutionalism, I argue that the relative smallness of Cyprus did indeed contribute to the constitutional breakdown in the following ways:

A)    A number of variables common to small states affected the character of the constitution-making process. Among these factors in the Cypriot case are elite stewardship and ethnic/religious heterogeneity. Among others, political elites can influence the outcome of a constitution-making process through consultation. However, consultation can take the form of a top-down input to the drafting process, which reflects not the participation of single individuals represented by the consultants, but the community as a whole. Consultation in such cases is not part of a deliberative process; rather the representatives of the people participate only in an informative capacity. Another variable related to the constitution-making process in some small states and relevant to the Cypriot case is ethnic and religious heterogeneity. The lack of a common sense of belonging or of a common vision for the future among the ethnic and religious groups in a small state, if they dominate the constitution-making process, would hinder the efforts of the drafters to create a functional constitution.

B)    Another common aspect of small states is their limited capacity to self-define in relation to external forces. In this respect, they usually act as the ‘weaker party in asymmetric relations.’ They are legally sovereign but not fully autonomous regarding their control over external relations and even over internal affairs. This aspect is relevant to the Cypriot case, most notably in the drafting and the unamendability of the Cypriot Constitution.

Furthermore, the life span of the Constitution was also influenced by the external factors guiding the drafting, according to a formula for external unamendability. The term ‘external unamendability’ indicates three factors. The first is that the unamendable provisions of the Constitution of Cyprus, and their status as unamendable, were determined by an international agreement (The Treaty of Guarantee that was signed between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and UK). Secondly, this agreement was negotiated without the direct participation of the people(s) of Cyprus and was only approved ex post facto by their – at the time unelected but undisputed – leaders. The third feature of external unamendability in Cyprus is related to the founding treaties and to the fact that the entrenchment of the basic structure of the Republic, as established in Zurich, was equipped with a set of ironclad guarantees that secured the military presence on the island of the former colonial ruler and of the two ‘motherlands’.

C)    According to the relevant literature, two other variables that affect the quality of democracy in small states are the lack of political parties, due to the personalised functioning of local politics; and the tendency of small states to follow majoritarian variants of democracy, even despite the existence of a strong consensual framework of political activity. Both of these variables were observable in Cyprus in the first years after independence, fuelling the inability of the two communities to cooperate in the House of Representatives and ultimately causing to the collapse of the constitutional order. The first parliamentary elections in Cyprus were held under the electoral law of the colonial administration, since neither community had proposed any changes to the law when the issue of the elections was raised. Cyprus was divided into six constituencies, which would elect the 35 Greek-Cypriot and 15 Turkish-Cypriot MPs. In each constituency, the deputies from each community who received the most votes were elected until the number of seats corresponding to each constituency was reached. In other words, rather than opt for a proportional allotment of seats, a single party could sweep all the seats if its candidates won a majority in all six constituencies.

D)    The rigidity of the dividing lines between the two communities was also intensified by the lack of organised political parties (apart from the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL)). This impacted the way the two communities were represented. Intermediary institutions, such as political parties, structure conflicts in such a way as to allow the political system to absorb tensions. They disconnect politics from any ‘absolute truth’, by enabling public debate and challenging monolithic approaches to facts. The electoral pact and alignment between AKEL and the pro-Makarios political forces in the early post-independence period, which were critical for the consolidation of the Cypriot Republic, precluded a possible alternative to a unified and rigid Greek-Cypriot approach to intercommunal relations. On the other hand, the Turkish-Cypriot community also failed to offer such an alternative, due to the absolute control of its political life by those who considered that its ‘survival’ depended upon its solidification vis-a-vis the Greek majority.

Thus, the smallness of Cyprus intensified the group identities and loyalties of the two communities, and the constitutional design which aimed to provide guarantees against domination of each community by the other community finally entrenched the division between them, and led to constitutional breakdown. 

This blog post is part of the IACL Blog symposium Small State Constitutionalism, which presents some of the key arguments made in chapters of the newly-published edited collection: Elisabeth Perham, Maartje De Visser and Rosalind Dixon (eds) Small State Constitutionalism (Hart Publishing, 2026).

Dr Christos Papastylianos is an Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Nicosia, Cyprus.

Suggested Citation: Christos Papastylianos, ‘The role of “smallness” in the Cyprus constitutional breakdown of 1963’ IACL-AIDC Blog (17 March 2026) The role of “smallness” in the Cyprus constitutional breakdown of 1963 — IACL-IADC Blog