Battle of Ledra Palace | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Turkish Invasion of Cyprus | ||||||||
| ||||||||
Belligerents | ||||||||
Turkey | Cyprus | United Nations | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
Hasan Pasias | Major Demitrios Alevromageiros Captain Nikolaos Ligoustianos ContentsSub-lieutenant Andreas Magnitis | Brigadier Francis Henn Colonel Clayton Beattie | ||||||
Units involved | ||||||||
| UNFICYP | |||||||
Strength | ||||||||
300–1,000 | Approx. 200 | Unknown | ||||||
Casualties and losses | ||||||||
Unknown | 1+ | None |
The Battle of Ledra Palace was fought during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974.
Ledra Palace is located in Nicosia district, about 2.6 km north of the Presidential Palace and on the Green Line. [1] During the invasion, and indeed from the beginning of the conflict on 20 July, Ledra Palace was a point of vital importance for the Turkish Armed Forces and its possible occupation would have likely led to the destruction and dissolution of the Republic of Cyprus. [2]
The Reserve Officers Company of the National Guard, a few days before the invasion, had been based in the camp of the 11th tactical group, which was located near the ELDYK camp and Nicosia International Airport, and on the day of the invasion (20 July), it received orders to take hold of Ledra Palace and the surrounding area before the Turkish military. [3]
Soldiers from the 1st Company of the 211th Infantry Battalion went to the roof of the hotel and mounted a 50mm machine gun and when Turkish paratroopers began to descend, they began to fire on them. [4] [5]
The Turkish military, at 8 a.m. began to hit the national guardsmen and the surrounding area with bullets, mortar shells, and artillery and this continued until the end of the day with UNFICYP men conveying threats by the Turks that if the national guard did not leave, they would drop napalm bombs on them the Greeks refused to leave. [6] [7] By the end of the day, the first National Guardsmen had been killed. [8]
On 21 July, in the morning hours, the battle started again with the national guardsmen firing against the Turkish military who were fortified in the surrounding houses. [9] During the battle, a Greek Cypriot opened fire on the Turkish mast with the Turkish flag (and therefore fell) to mislead the other Turkish soldiers that the outpost was captured (to send reinforcements). Some Turkish soldiers also tried to trap the national guardsmen allegedly surrendering in order to for the advancing national guardsmen to be trapped and killed. [10]
After this incident, the Turkish side tried through the United Nations (UNFICYP), to have a cease-fire, again, with the threat that if the Greeks did not leave, they would drop napalm bombs but again the national guard refused to leave. [11] [12]
The soldiers from the National Guard then received a call from the government to leave the hotel but refused because they were afraid that if they left, the hotel would be taken over by the Turkish military and therefore made a plan with the government which included the National Guard troops leaving the hotel and for it being turned over to UNFICYP. [13] [14] [15]
Turkey did not try to seize the hotel and therefore, the hotel has remained under the control of UNFICYP since then with various meetings and events held there either by the Republic of Cyprus or the United Nations. [16] [17] [18]
The United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus is a demilitarized zone, patrolled by the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), that was established on 4 March 1964. It was extended on 9 August after the Battle of Tillyria and extended again in 1974 after the ceasefire of 16 August 1974, following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the de facto partition of the island into the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus and the largely unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the north. The zone, also known as the Green Line, stretches for 180 kilometres from Paralimni in the east to Kato Pyrgos in the west, where a separate section surrounds Kokkina.
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The National Guard of Cyprus, also known as the Greek Cypriot National Guard or simply the National Guard, is the military force of the Republic of Cyprus. It consists of air, land, sea and special forces elements, and is highly integrated with its first and second line reserves, as well as supporting civilian agencies and paramilitary forces.
The 1974 Cypriot coup d'état was a military coup d'état executed by the Cypriot National Guard and sponsored by the Greek military junta. On 15 July 1974 the coup plotters removed the sitting President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, from office and installed pro-Enosis nationalist Nikos Sampson. The Sampson regime was described as a puppet state, whose ultimate aim was the annexation of the island by Greece; in the short term, the coupists proclaimed the establishment of the "Hellenic Republic of Cyprus". The coup was viewed as illegal by the United Nations.
Vasilis Michaelides was a Greek Cypriot poet who is considered by many to be the national poet of Cyprus.
The Ledra Palace Hotel is located in central Nicosia, Cyprus, and until 1974 was one of the largest and most glamorous hotels of the capital. The hotel was designed by the German Jewish architect Benjamin Günsberg and was built between 1947 and 1949 by Cyprus Hotels Limited at a cost of approx £240,000 Cyprus pounds on what was then called King Edward VII Street, since 1962 Markos Drakos Avenue. The hotel opened on 8 October 1949 in the presence of British Governor Sir Andrew Wright and Vice Mayor of Nicosia George Poulios. It originally had 94 bedrooms and 150 beds, officially rated as de luxe. All rooms had hot and cold water, central heating and a telephone. Facilities included a conference room, reading room, bridge room, and ballroom with orchestra. There were two restaurants, two bars and a café. Located within the garden was a swimming pool, paddling pool, children's playground and tennis courts. The hotel had two additional floors added in 1967–1968, thus raising its capacity to 200 rooms and 320 beds.
In 1974, Turkey invaded the northern portion of the Republic of Cyprus in response to a military coup taking place on the island, in attempt to annex the island to Greece. Turkey claimed that this was an intervention in accordance to Treaty of Guarantee. The invasion consisted of two major Turkish offensives, and involved air, land and sea combat operations. The war resulted in a ceasefire which persists until the present day.
The Hellenic Force in Cyprus, commonly known in its abbreviated form as ELDYK or EL.DY.K. is the permanent, battalion-sized Greek military force stationed in the Republic of Cyprus. Its role is to help and support the Cypriot National Guard. Soldiers are selected from the ranks of conscripts doing their military service in the Greek army.
Ledra Street is a major shopping thoroughfare in central Nicosia, Cyprus, which links North Nicosia, the part of the city under the control of the de facto Northern Cyprus, and south Nicosia.
Pavlos Kouroupis was an officer in the Hellenic Army. At the time of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Kouroupis was a Colonel and CO of the 251st Battalion of the Cypriot National Guard, the unit closest to the Turkish landing site. With his unit, Kouroupis opposed the Turkish army at the Battle of Pentemili beachhead, stalling its advance for two days. Kouroupis was forced to retreat before numerically far superior Turkish forces and is considered the first missing person of the conflict. Kouroupis was presumed dead during the defence of Kyrenia.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Nicosia, Cyprus.
Arab Ahmet is a neighbourhood, quarter, mahalla or parish of Nicosia, Cyprus and the mosque situated therein. Both the quarter and the mosque are named after Arab Ahmet Pasha, one of the Turkish commanders in the Ottoman conquest of Nicosia. It is spelled Arabahmet in Turkish and Άραπ Άχμετ in Greek.
Operation Niki, named after the goddess Nike, was a clandestine airlift operation during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus that was carried out on 21–22 July 1974, with the aim of transporting a battalion of Greek commandos from Souda, Crete to Nicosia, Cyprus. Upon their arrival, the aircraft were engaged in friendly fire, which resulted in the loss of 33 men and the destruction of three aircraft.
The Presidential Guard Unit is responsible for the protection of the President of Cyprus and his family. It was officially established in 1979 and is part of the Cyprus Police.
The Special Forces Command is a combat arm of the Cypriot National Guard. The primary mission of the Special Forces is unorthodox warfare and this is the purpose for which they began their training in 1964, primarily in the Troodos Mountains, while shortly after, they began operations against Turkish Cypriot rebels and the Turkish forces operating on the island.
The Battle of Omorphita was an armed engagement between Greek Cypriot and Turkish–Turkish Cypriot militias and Turkish military forces in December 1963 in the Cypriot town of Omorphita, part of the crisis of 1963.
The Battle of Agios Dometios, was an engagement between Hellenic, Cypriot, Turkish and Turkish Cypriot forces between 14 and 17 August 1974. It was part of the Attila-2 operation as described by Turkey and the wider battle for Nicosia as described by Cyprus.
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Andreas Zakos, was a Cypriot resistance fighter of EOKA. In December 1955, he was taken prisoner by the British after a failed ambush at Mersinaki and was subsequently sent to the Central Jail of Nicosia where after a few months, was sentenced to death and killed via hanging.
"A helicopter, landing in the Turkish sector of Nicosia drew fire from a 50‐caliber machine gun on the roof of the Ledra Palace Hotel...".
Without any improvement in the Ledra situation, Manuel, in his capacity as Nicosia Sector commander, took significant action to prevent both sides from using the hotel. According to Col. Beattie, Manuel ordered his twelve men into the hotel and told his counterpart with the Greek National Guard ,‚It's time to go. Get your men together and get them out of here. You're compromising the lives of civilians. This is UN territory. If you are afraid the Turks will fire on you, I will personally escort you and your men out of the Hotel.‛'.
The Ledra Palace, its glory days long over, has spent the last half-century in the buffer zone, serving as a barracks for British UN troops and a rendezvous for high-level negotiations that get nowhere.