Was EOKA anti-colonial, or nationalist?

I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't intend for our elders to change their language surrounding their feelings towards this. I did not live during British colonial rule, and I cannot speak to whether I would have recognised the ways in which anti-coloniality was co-opted for a nationalist cause, not for sovereignty. However, younger generations who do not carry the direct emotional baggage of EOKA's struggle and martyrs (who should have never been executed nor tortured), have a responsibility to present this movement accurately in modern discourse, evading conflation of Grivas or Sampson with every EOKA member. We can't afford an EOKA C or a TMT B, and if we want any sort of reunification, celebrating EOKA day is an obstacle. Let's get into it.

The EOKA movement’s campaign (1955–1959) and its role in shaping Cyprus’s 1960 "independence" (I really struggle to even use the term in speech marks) reveal a fundamental contradiction: while framed as anti-colonial, and indeed formed an important resistance, its ethnonationalist agenda prioritized union with Greece (Enosis) for recolonization. This objective may have superficially sought self-determination for Cypriots as a sovereign people at the time, but the transfer of colonial subordination from Britain to Greece replicated hierarchical dependency on an external power. As such, EOKA exists with a very mixed legacy.

The 1960 Zurich-London Agreements—crafted by Britain, Greece, and Turkey without Cypriot participation (and not dictated by EOKA ideology but did respond to both nationalisms on the island)—formalised a neocolonial settlement;

• Sovereign British military bases (e.g., Akrotiri and Dhekelia) were retained, ensuring continued imperial influence.

• Guarantor powers granted Greece and Turkey unilateral military intervention rights, violating Cypriot sovereignty.

• Ethnically divisive constitutional quotas institutionalized political separation, entrenching colonial-era communal hierarchies. Unlike anti-colonial movements such as Algeria’s FLN—which expelled all French military bases in 1962—EOKA compromised with imperial powers, prioritizing anti-British goals over dismantling colonial structures.

EOKA's structure was more akin to a proxy-bourgeois leadership, which Fanon argues leads to neo-colonial subjugation, chauvinism and racism. 1960 did not produce an independent national class capable of directing autonomous national development, but rather an intermediate dependent class that profited from the appropriation of surplus from the colony. Such a class would not be capable of formal independence through overturning the inherited colonial structure of the national economy [unitary state]. Fascist suppression in anti-colonial berets took away Cyprus' chance to structurally reorganize a post-colonial economy, fertile for sovereign conditions of economic development.

Now more than ever, Cypriots have needed land reforms to overcome dependent economic conditions, imposed through the legacy of colonisation and ongoing Turkish settler-colonialism. States whose sovereignty is recognised by the imperial core, are those who do not disrupt the land question. Ones that don’t disturb the drain of wealth from periphery to core. Remaining a dependent state allows us to participate under the guise of being developing peoples within a capitalist world system.

Ethnonationalism vs. Anti-Colonial Praxis

Class perspective aside, if Enosis was the will of the majority, then majority rules, right? TCs at this point were considered another minority alongside the Armenians, Maronites and Latins, after all. Full decolonisation was not an option. So, instead of a collective and representative self-determination, the GC idea of such was the only just one, and came from the only mainstream anti-colonial-adjacent movement for Cypriots to refer to. I will get into the dehumanisation of Cypriots instigated by foreign powers which manufactured that particular conflict in another post, but for now, and for the sake of modern discourse, true anti-colonialism necessitates cross-communal solidarity and rejection of all foreign domination. EOKA, however;

• Eventually targeted Turkish Cypriots and leftist Greek Cypriots opposing Enosis, using violence to enforce political goals. Intercommunal violence is often framed as ethnic tensions, however, Niyazi Kızılyürek describes the nature of cyclic revenge violence and false flag missions. Peristianis covered this Mediterranean-style honour-based society in his seminal 1950s paper. Also, while Turkish Cypriots were considered collaborators as members of the auxiliary police, it is important to remember that they were extremely poor and exploited members of society who would accept any opportunity to escape their conditions. Especially, in a geo-political climate of multiple ethnic cleansings to refer to.

• Excluded non-Greek communities making up 18% of the population (Maronites, Armenians, Latins) from its liberation narrative, framing Cyprus as an extension of Greece’s Megali Idea—a 19th-century irredentist project to annex Anatolia and the Balkans.

• Replicated colonial "divide and rule" dynamics by fracturing resistance along ethnic lines. EOKA legitimized Britain’s portrayal of Cyprus as inherently divided, justifying prolonged colonial control. This contrasts sharply with movements like Kenya’s Mau Mau which united diverse ethnic groups against British rule and their colonial land policies. EOKA’s campaign, in contrast, mirrored the logic of coloniality by substituting one hegemon (Britain) for another (Greece), as theorized by Aníbal Quijano.

EOKA’s anti-British resistance may align with broader 20th-century anti-colonial movements (e.g., India, Algeria). However, as decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo emphasizes, anti-colonialism must reject all imperial matrices of power, including those masquerading as “liberation.”

Decolonial Feminist Critique

A decolonial feminist lens reveals how EOKA’s ideology reproduced colonial epistemologies:

• Homogenisation of identity and monolithic nation-states: EOKA’s Ellinikóthita (Hellenic identity) narrative erased Cyprus’s syncretic history—Ottoman, Arab, and Armenian influences—reducing the island to a "Greek" space. This echoes colonial discourses that legitimize domination through historical claims (e.g., European settler-colonial “manifest destiny”) and mirrored British colonial claims to "civilize" Cyprus, exemplifying María Lugones’ critique of colonialism’s destruction of pluriversality. She states colonialism operates through “the reduction of pluriversality into a single, governable reality”—a process EOKA perpetuated by framing Cypriot identity as inherently Greek.

• Coloniality of power: EOKA’s alignment with Greece’s imperial ambitions positioned Cypriots as pawns in a geopolitical project, not agents of self-determination. As Sylvia Wynter argues, this perpetuated the "colonial Manicheanism" of liberation-as-territorial-transfer, rather than reimagining sovereignty beyond imperial frameworks. The movement’s masculinist leadership suppressed women’s roles in resistance, despite their participation in strikes, intelligence networks, and resource distribution. Feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues that anti-colonial movements must reject “nationalist myopia” to address intersecting oppressions. EOKA’s failure to do so—prioritizing ethnic unification over class solidarity and social justice—revealed its allegiance to patriarchal nationalism, not decolonization.

• Violence as colonial continuity: EOKA’s assassination of dissidents (e.g., leftist trade unionist Savvas Menikos) and attacks on Turkish Cypriot villages mirrored colonial tactics of subjugation, fracturing grassroots solidarity. Both major communities suffered under British rule, but their leaders prioritized (and partially forced to prioritize due to British policies pushing the wedge between the communities) ethnic unification, territorial expansionism and cultural assimilation with Greece or Turkey over collective liberation. Britain exploited this fragmentation to prolong its control, positioning itself as a "neutral arbiter" (and continues to this day to falsely purport neutrality in dictating Cypriot narratives) stoking intercommunal violence (e.g., the 1958 riots).

Neocolonial Legacies

EOKA and TMT's ethnonationalism (stoked by the U.S, NATO and U.K's manipulation) catalyzed cycles of violence, culminating in Turkey’s 1974 invasion and Cyprus’s ongoing partition. The 1960 constitution’s ethnic quotas and foreign intervention clauses entrenched divisions, enabling;

• Militarization: The island remains one of the world’s most militarized regions, with Turkish troops occupying 37% of Cyprus and British bases persisting as 'sovereign territory' (but are really colonies).

• Displacement: A third of Greek Cypriots and half of Turkish Cypriots became refugees, with property disputes unresolved due to ethnonationalist legal frameworks and elitist corruption.

Modern Cypriotism—the ideology promoting a singular, unified Cypriot identity transcending Greek and Turkish ethnic divisions—emerged as a response to decades of partition and ethnonationalist conflict. However, when framed as a homogenous identity that suppresses the island’s plural histories and intersectional realities, it replicates the very colonial logics it seeks to overcome;

• Enforces assimilation: Demands minorities sublimate Armenian, Maronite, Roma or Turkish identities into a homogenized "Cypriotness" dominated by Greek linguistic and cultural norms. For example, Turkish-language education remains restricted in government-controlled areas, LGBTQ+ Cypriots and migrant workers (e.g., domestic laborers from Southeast Asia) remain invisible in mainstream Cypriotist discourses.

• Ignore asymmetrical power: Treats non-Greek identity as a “divisive” relic of partition rather than an integral part of Cyprus’s fabric. The Republic of Cyprus is internationally recognized, while Turkish-speaking Cypriots endure decades of political and economic isolation exacerbated by RoC policies and Turkey's settler-colonialism and neocolonial infrastructure via water and electricity. Flattened Cypriotism risks legitimizing this status quo.

• Selective hybridity: Reduces reconciliation to shared symbols (e.g., halloumi cheese) while ignoring material injustices like displaced families’ land claims or the militarized Green Line.

• Commercialised diversity: Tourism campaigns market Cyprus as a “bridge between civilizations,” commodifying its complexity while denying minorities political agency.

• Distracts from material injustices: Emphasising “shared identity” glosses over trauma. Turkish Cypriots still live with the legacy of EOKA’s 1950s–70s violence, while Greek Cypriots carry memories of 1974 displacements. A “we’re all Cypriots” narrative silences these lived experiences.

• Depoliticises reconciliation: Reduces the Cyprus Problem to a “lack of unity,” ignoring the need for decolonizing sovereignty.

• Avoids Decolonisation: Fails to challenge the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee (allowing foreign military intervention), reinscribes colonial hierarchies by mimicking British and post-independence policies that categorized Cypriots as "Greek" or "Turkish," erasing smaller groups.

Resistance Beyond EOKA

Other movements contested both British rule and EOKA’s ethnonationalism;

• Communist Party of Cyprus (later AKEL): Advocated for bi-communal independence, organizing Greek-Turkish Cypriot labor strikes and condemning EOKA’s sectarianism. British authorities banned AKEL in 1955, branding it "subversive" (following this period, they abandoned the pro-independence stance of their predecessors and sought enosis).

• PEO Trade Union: Mobilized multi-ethnic resistance, including the 1948 miners’ strike, and opposed EOKA’s violence of whom they became a target and victim of assassinations.

• Women’s Organizations: Groups like the Pancyprian Federation of Women’s Organizations (POGO) critiqued militarism and authoritarianism, though marginalized by nationalist leaderships.

• Village cooperatives: Rural communities exercised cross-communal solidarity through organized clandestine schools and cultural preservation efforts to counter British assimilation policies. Farmers, teachers, and civil servants boycotted British institutions while rejecting EOKA’s coercive demands.

Conclusion

Anti-colonial movements aim to deconstruct borders of oppression, not redraw them along ethnic lines. EOKA’s legacy underscores that resisting a specific colonial power does not inherently make a movement anti-colonial. Resisting one colonial power while aligning with another perpetuates the "coloniality of power." Its ethnonationalist violence, exclusionary politics, and neocolonial compromises laid the groundwork for partition and ongoing imperial interference. The dominance of EOKA and TMT entrenched partition as Cyprus’s "solution," sidelining visions of shared sovereignty. A decolonial future for Cyprus requires;

• Celebrating multiplicity: Recognize Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Maronite, and other identities as non-hierarchical components of Cyprus’s fabric.

• Decenter the nation-state: Advocate for bi-zonal, plurilingual governance that shares power with minorities, valuing their agency and expels foreign military bases.

• Reparative Justice: Restoring displaced properties, commemorating all victims of violence, and integrating minority histories into education.

As Frantz Fanon warned, true decolonization demands dismantling the "psychology of dependency"—a task EOKA failed by idealizing Greece as a "motherland." While EOKA dominates historical memory, communist movements and the PEO articulated a decolonial vision that rejected both British colonialism and ethnonationalist expansionism. Their suppression accompanied by TMT suppression foreclosed possibilities for a unified Cyprus, illustrating how anti-colonial struggles are never monolithic—but always contested.

Only by centering Cyprus’s intersectional realities and subaltern voices can the island escape the colonial binaries that continue to fracture it.

An Alternative Perspective and Geo-political Context

After writing this article, I presented it to friends to see what I may be missing. As such, I'd love to include Rhomaios' response. This type of nuance is extremely important and comes from a perspective that I simply cannot represent;

"I agree with most of what you're saying when reflecting on the modern situation, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with the main thesis. I believe EOKA's main argument can be understood only if we hear the narrative of GCs of that time who viewed themselves as simply a regional Greek population under foreign rule, and thus viewed Enosis as a form of liberation.

The reason why EOKA was the way it was has more to do with the inner politics of the group as those unfolded over time. There's an argument to be had about the organization's exclusionary nature and the fact it was led by a far-right nut, but we can actually see counterweights to that in the early years. Some of the most capable and independent EOKA fighters were killed over time, in great part due to betrayals by fellow fighters, such as Afxentiou and Matsis. As a modern pro-AKEL journalist (Michalis Michail) puts it, the heroism and the anti-colonial struggle were just one part of EOKA. The political aspect of it and the cliques formed within it is another. Mainstream GC narratives focus on the former while ignoring the latter. What made EOKA's ideology pathological at the end of the day was the fact everything revolved around Grivas, and he surrounded himself with teenagers and young men who were malleable, excitable, ideologically unwavering, and fiercely loyal to him personally. It's no coincidence that people who seem to have deviated from that such as Afxentiou and Matsis were older and with more diverse life experiences (late 20s and early 30s respectively).

The biggest problem modern narratives suffer from is treating EOKA as a monolith and its history over the 50s as a consistent whole rather than in phases. Another argument for the latter, for example, is that most of the early actions EOKA took were sabotage. Makarios in fact believes this was what was the primarily goal. It was Grivas that was convinced this had to be a proper armed struggle against British forces, and that picked up the pace as more people died or were mistreated by authorities, prompting the need for revenge.

Another aspect in which EOKA was not one singular thing has to do with the motives of people joining. Not everyone really believes in Enosis from a purely ideological standpoint, many were in fact people who expected to gain rewards within a new state of affairs (especially after independence/self-governance seemed like it was the only possible result). Others joined for personal benefit such as settling scores with people over disputes, getting revenge, exerting de facto power within their villages etc. This is especially crucial for much of EOKA's gang behaviour, even though Grivas still bears huge responsibility for the ideological turn the struggle had.

The ultimate result is also something I wouldn't blame EOKA for, to be entirely fair. This twisted form of independence was the result of the British knowing that they could not disengage - even though they wanted - and giving the impression they simply lost. The only solution would have been a colonialist compromise. Makarios missed the chance for a previous better settlement early on, but even that wasn't entirely free of colonial compromise (period of self-governance without communal distinctions, and then freedom for a referendum to decide the island's fate). Overall it's simply a matter of Cyprus not being under the right circumstances in which it could realistically demand full decolonization. And an additional factor in this were those Brits who had no sympathy for the matter and truly believed they should never completely leave the island. This is something persistent to this day.

As a last point, it'd be good to have some additional perspectives on EOKA, detached from the Cypriot political landscape. Even though most outsiders lacked the fundamentals to understand the ugly side of the organization, they understood it to be an expression of anti-colonialism in the sense of kicking the present colonizers for a more desirable "management" of sorts. The PLO, for example, took after EOKA's example and there was a network of prominent former EOKA members with close connections to anti-NATO Arab leaders (most notably Vasos Lyssaridis, personally connected to both Arafat and Nasser). So there's a plausible argument to make in that EOKA - even if by accident - effectively exported a form of armed struggle to other more genuine anti-colonial organizations in its vicinity which is still commendable, at least abstractly.

Another outsider perspective is that of the mainstream Turkish narrative about EOKA. The idea that the original organization is a terrorist organization with backing within both fascist and socialist circles betrays a NATOist narrative that juxtaposes the EOKA struggle with American colonialism in the region, such as the internal covert domination over Turkish politics. In other words, if EOKA makes colonizers and pro-colonialist governments squirm and unfactually ramble (to the point of falsehood, as is the supposed "socialism" of EOKA), then there's credence to at least the notion that the organization was at least antagonistic of the prevalent colonialist tendencies. You can see this even within leftist circles; not just AKEL's support of Enosis, but also within Turkey itself. Nazım Hikmet famously advocated for allowing Cyprus to unite with Greece, and the (severely, violently suppressed) Turkish radical left had been critical of Turkish interventions since the 60s.

So when judging a struggle as anti-colonial or not, external legitimacy matters insofar as determining how it fits into the broader geopolitical landscape. A more easily digestible example, Makarios was seen as an anti-NATO, potentially pro-Soviet liability even though he was the political leader of the EOKA movement, not leftist at all, a religious leader of a Church with historically nationalist allegiances, and he was also personally opposed to communism. It would of course be incorrect to say Makarios was in any way a figure of leftist anti-NATO resistance, but it's also the case that his political stance de facto constituted an anti-NATO (or at least NATO-critical) force that was felt and understood both within Cyprus and outside. This is why Arafat also supported Makarios, even though ideologically in theory they had very little in common.

Some people did not enter EOKA out of ideological conviction, but were supportive of the struggle and were subject to British reprisals and mass incarceration raids to catch local EOKA members. I think such cases are quite telling how EOKA enjoyed so much popular support regardless of the various unsavoury aspects of it.

Overall, I think EOKA should be best seen as an organization of mixed legacy. It's also why it's incorrect to try and find an EOKA during the 60s or identify it with EOKA B in the 70s. It's just sad that whatever commendable about what parts of EOKA have done was coopted and borderline abused by the far right. The evolution of a revolt or insurgency of any kind is crucial. The Greek revolution didn't start with national aspirations, or the Cuban one started with at least partially nationalist ones, with Fidel Castro turning towards socialism gradually. How that plays into politics beyond its limited space is also valid. Groups of people often act sincerely in certain ways because of their own often biased or faulty perception of something else that inspired them."

In response to whether the negative space of Turkish Cypriots in EOKA's movement speaks to their attitude towards TCs in practice, the coercion and threatening of anti-nationalists, as well as Kavazoğlu and Mishaoulis' condemnation of EOKA and Makarios, Rhomaios added: "We simply don't know what the Ethnarchy (GC leadership) thought of TCs and how they fit into their reality of achieving Enosis. Even AKEL was largely supporting Enosis due to how that was equated to the self-determination of just GCs. The general attitude towards TCs in that regard is therefore mostly that of ignoring them. There was this idea that all minorities should be respected, but in the condescending "we will benevolently rule you" kind of way.

The pervasive GC idea was precisely this: TCs are a minority, not a community on the same level as GCs. Before the TCs started resisting, they were a simply more numerous version of Maronites, Armenians, and Latins. There is overall an overlap in cases like this between self-determination and lack thereof for someone else, and then it becomes subjective as to what could be considered the way forward. For example, since very few Cypriots actually desired independence, was the end result truly self-determination? It might seem trivial to answer, but as we saw, the fact neither side got what they truly wanted is precisely what spiralled things into violence. GCs largely understand this, but they argue from a point of democracy: we are more, so we should get our way and make adjustments along the way. Even in modern discourse this is a very pervasive idea of thinking about what happened.

Another point which GCs often point out about anti-coloniality within EOKA was that, due to the organization's popularity, the British had to de facto rely on TC support and policemen to crack down on them. This even manifested in limited lawful enforcement against Vulkan and later TMT. So for many GCs (especially towards the end of the conflict), TCs were even borderline collaborators. This both creates a sense that they shouldn't have been treated on an equal footing as those who actually fought the British, and it's also seen as an argument that even the initial phases of intercommunal violence were essentially of anti-colonial nature. This created resentment and a sense of revenge that carried over to the 60s when the two sides antagonized for their respective goals. "Why should we try and work it out with them in good faith when they were out there participating in arrests and tortures against EOKA?"

Kavazoğlu and Mishaoulis represented a minority opinion that was not taken seriously by the Ethnarchy. After all, supporting cooperation and remaining within the unitary state was in the advantage of those who wished to use the system to achieve Enosis. The TC leadership was understandably more irked by the existence of TCs whom they considered traitors by taking this stance. After all, the firm nationalist position was "we have to live separate, otherwise the GCs will absorb us".

AKEL was conforming to what the majority of the electorate wanted. They realized Makarios was basically too powerful to be challenged and went along with his policies. I'm not sure whether much would change if AKEL had the "luxury" to stand up against him, but they would have definitely sounded more like Kavazoğlu and Mishaoulis' position.

EOKA and the IRA have many interesting parallels, and the after-effects in the respective Cypriot and Irish societies are immediately apparent. Abusive British rule anywhere in the world has been truly a destructive force and a major source of nationalism/nationalist divisions. Pakistan with India is another major example. Britain has overall been one of the greatest forces of evil in world history. A dare I say uniquely destructive colonial power due to its sheer scale and unwillingness to relinquish their colonies, as they struggled to grapple with their gradual demotion from a world power to a regional one."

See more of Rhomaios' long-form content here.