When Diplomats Lead to a War: The Role of the Turkish Diplomatic Bureaucracy in the Military Intervention in Cyprus

ABSTRACT The Cyprus dispute has preoccupied the agenda of the Turkish diplomacy for almost seventy years. From the mid-1950s onwards, the Cyprus issue in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been upgraded from a desk to its busiest department. Turkish diplomatic bureaucracy had been so much wrapped up in the Cyprus issue that a generation of Turkish diplomats were trained at this diplomatic battlefield. Consequently, they developed a specific policy formulation, which would in time transform Turkey’s position towards a more aggressive line. In this regard, this study scrutinizes the role of Turkish diplomats during the most decisive moment of the Cyprus dispute, namely the Turkish military campaign of July 1974.