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Radio War Nerd #346 — Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, Part 3: 1974 Invasion + Azerbaijan/Armenia Flareup (Patreon)

Published:
2022-09-18 21:54:06
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: September 15, 2022

We wrap up our RWN series on Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus (EP #337, #339). This episode, Kissinger takes control of the Empire during the chaos of Watergate, making the world an even shittier place than ever — greenlighting the Greek junta's coup against Makarios, and Turkey's subsequent invasion, partition & occupation of Cyprus, a sovereign European nation — breaking a postwar taboo and setting a precedent for Europe's wars since...

First, we discuss the latest Azerbaijan-Armenia flareup...(link to Pashinyan's April 2021 speech here)

At 30:39, we discuss Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus...

Maps:

*Azerbaijan's latest attack on Armenia

*Turkey's first invasion of Cyprus, July 20-23, 1974

*Turkey's second invasion of Cyprus, August 13-15

*Ethnic map of Cyprus before/after Turkey's invasion/partition

Total time: 1:23:16

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Major bit me

Go on google maps, look at the towns and villages in Nagorno Karabakh near the border with Iran. You will see town after town abandoned, roofs caved in, and streets overgrown, because the Armenian forces ethnically cleansed the Azerbaijanis from there in the 90s. Even the city of Fuzuli which had 18,000 by the end of the USSR was completely cleansed of Azerbaijanis by Armenian forces in the 90s. It is incorrect to portray Nagorno Karabakh’s pre-2020 borders as solely Armenian, since they greatly expanded past the historically Armenian autonomous region during the 90s war. Maybe this was previously mentioned in past episodes 🤷‍♂️

M

Armenians have lived in Artsakh for thousands of years, there is international academic consensus around this. The issue is the region was autonomous during the USSR. Afterwards, despite it having an Armenian majority and going through the voting process as a democratic means to secede from the USSR like all other former SSRs did, this was a move that didn’t sit right with Azeris and push came to shove and a war broke out. The regions surrounding Artsakh were likely to be used as bargaining chips for concessions from Azeris, but Azerbaijan instead stocked up on weapons, received the support and intelligence of the Turkish military and the 2020 war began. Fwiw, the ethnic cleansing didn’t start during the first Karabakh war. Azeris massacred the Armenians in Shushi back in 1920, destroying the whole Armenian part of the city. Today, Azeris have leveled many historic Armenian sites now in Karabakh, or worse, started dubiously claiming them to be “Caucasian Albanian”. This is a form of cultural genocide, and this is all able to occur because Aliyev’s wife holds an important position within UNESCO, and the country has been caught bribing people to look away (like at Djulfa in Nakhichevan). Armenians are losing very valuable and important historical sites which will be hard or sadly impossible to recover.

Raffi Bilemjian

You conveniently leave out the 1920 cleansing of Shushi of Armenians, the Sumgait and Baku massacres and pogroms and Operation Ring ethnic cleansing with help of Soviet troops in Khanlar and Shahunyan. You are either a Azeri or a propagandist for Azerbaijan the way you pretend that all of a sudden Armenians went crazy for blood. Absolutely ahistorical. This is not even mentioning the very important of Armenians being genocide by Turks once the 1870 Hamidian massacres. Armenians will not put down their weapons because Turks and Azeris have shown repeatedly they cannot be trusted historically. No amount of oil and gas money can change the historical record. Nice try though.

Major bit me

I am talking about the 1990s ethnic cleaning of Azeris from lands surrounding the former NKAO, which were conquered by Armenian nationalist forces. This is a very important event that occurred during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, it’s a part of how the Azerbaijani state justified the 2020 war and subsequent ethnic cleansing against Armenians. I know Armenia has been victims of ethnic cleansing, I know that Armenia has done it as well, and if you don’t believe me go on google maps yourself, and do some reading

M

I also have to say, I don’t think it’s fair to call the region of Artsakh a “breakaway” or “separatist” entity. This belies the fact that Armenians have been living there in a wide majority for thousands of years, before Azerbaijani SSR was even created. You guys (Mark & John) talk about the extensive Armenian history of the region, but to refer it as a “breakaway” region or that the war was fought by “Armenian separatists” makes it sound like the region was inherently part of Azerbaijan SSR, which isn’t the case.

Jennifer Wiren

Britain: "I really fucked Cyprus up good there, muhahaha." America: "Hold my beer"

David Andrews

Another great episode. The maps were most helpful.

Raffi Bilemjian

There is something wrong with people who keep blaming the weaker party (Armenia) through out history. Every single scholar, a few Azeris included accept that the beginning of this conflict started when Azeris began massacring and cleansing civilians in the cities of Sumgait and Baku starting in 88. If you start a fight in this way then your victims will arm themselves and respond. It’s not rocket science. Turks and Azeris are brought up in an echo chamber of revisionist history and hatred not only of Armenians but Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds as well. Now ask yourself why you find yourself loosely defending the side that keeps starting wars and committing crimes. It’s very interesting. There is no grey area, things are very clear.

Major bit me

Azeris cleanse Armenians in 88, so Armenians now have “just” cause for their own ethnic cleansing operations? Azeris driven from their homes could make the exact same arguments. That just produces a vicious cycle of eternal hatred, where ethnostates spend their whole existences quibbling over border and perpetuating endless crimes upon each other. Holding an entire ethnicity responsible for the crimes of certain nationalists is ridiculous, especially when it’s widely acknowledged that both Armenia and Azerbaijan were not democracies for nearly their entire existences.

xnfec

I think you told the same story about the Armenian officer being killed before. Last time it was a Turk who killed the Armenian and the Nato meeting was in Hungary. The result was the same in both cases though.

Aleks

Thank you for the episode guys, and for the reminder of how horrible this invasion was..

Doug Cartel

"there is a long list of nations let down by russia" doesn't bode well for the Donbass referendums happening soon well, even if the vote is unanimous russia is free to go "yeah sure, we'll start working on that" before going back to playing Modern Warfare 2 or whatever but yeah there's already stories of azeris mutilating female armenian soldiers and stuff like that

Doug Cartel

you know what's weird, is that Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002) had a story plot point about the Georgians exterminating the Azeris, which is funny/bizarre in retrospect

JoR

Thank you for covering the Armenia situation. Genuienly depressing, and there doesn't seem to be a decent solution. Is there any chance you can get a guest on the situation? I'm obviously not in any position to speak on the matter, but I'm wondering if Azerbaijan genuinely has the military advantage against Armenia proper they had against the Artsakh forces. I also get there's a lot of overlap, but is there any potential at all that Azerbaijan does the classic blunder of getting overconfident and "bites off more then they can chew?" Again, this may be wishful thinking. You would hope that invading the official territory of Armenia would at the very least limit the amount of damage they can do, but who are we kidding lol. If there is any guest who can overview the potential upcoming conflict that would be great. I hope your former guest, Lika Zakaryan, is still well after the war. Not sure if she would be covering this story, but perhaps you could have her on again?

JoR

While I agree with your sentiment, and I'm sure Mark and John agree, they do have to remain somewhat even in their coverage. Even though Artsakh really should be Armenian, it is for all intent and purposes a separatist region, who existed because of the military actions of another sovereign country (Armenia). They are not equivalent situations, but it would disingenuous to call the Russian backed groups in Ukraine anything except separatists, so it's only fair to give the same coverage to Artsakh (and again I feel bad saying that with how reprehensible and immoral the Azeri side was and is)

VictorBout

Thank you for your points Tsar, I think you are absolutely right. It's also worth pointing out, particularly to the other two commentators, that "Azeris" and "Armenians" were not responsible for most of the atrocities mentioned in any real collective sense - not for the Sumgait pogrom, not for Operation Ring, not for Khojaly, not for the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh. Most, on both sides, were former Soviet citizens and were horrified at what was taking place. But extremists hold their own populations hostage with an escalating cycle of crimes and mutual hatred, that over time have made the notion of collective responsibility much closer to reality. It is undeniable that today a majority of Azeris hate Armenians, and visa-versa. I do think Armenians have gotten the worst of it, but the "perpetual victims of history" mentality is inaccurate and also self-defeating, it blinds Armenians in particular to the internal issues that have left their state at the mercy of its enemies.

Rudy (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-07 15:00 Thanks for another great episode. I need to learn more about the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, and specifically how Armenia was able to win and what changed so drastically in terms of Azerbaijan’s power in ~30 years.
2022-09-22 14:32

Mark Ames

Just looked it up and you're right. What a dope. All I can think of is that in 2002, Georgia's president was trying to play both sides, which to the Bush Admin made him an enemy, whereas Azerbaijan was considered very friendly (and of course put all the US bigwigs on the boards of oil joint ventures). That was why Bush consigliere James Baker color revolutioned Shevardnadze the next year, 2003, while publicly praising Aliyev's democratic credentials on the same diplomatic tour. So all I can think of is that in Clancy's neocon world, Azerbaijan and Georgia were somehow adversaries since in their minds one was considered a team player, the other not. But the idea Georgia would ethnically cleanse Azerbaijanis...for what? Just bizarre. They're still trying to figure out how to ethnically cleanse Ossetians and Abkhazians, they'd get utterly stomped by Azerbaijan. It seems Clancy's neocon pals wanted a way to imagine a scenario under which the petrodictatorship could be cast as victims, and making Armenians the bad guys would've been too obviously fraught, so they just chose the next difficult Caucasus country over.

Mark Ames

We've done a few episodes on Nagorno-Karabakh including one on the first war.

Doug Cartel

Lol thanks for the response! I think Clancy was still giving direct input for licensed properties like the tom Clancy games, but I kind of wonder if/how many ghost writers helped him for stuff like video game plots. I mean, stephen Ambrose got into hot water for having his sons help him write his books so I figure tom probably had something similar going, especially since it was a multimedia operation. Now that I think about it, Sum of all Fears came out the same year, right? We were so pissed that we never got to duke it out in the Fulda Gap.