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Suspicious Greeks. Everywhere there were the tragedies and anomalies of war. One Turkish plane hit a Nicosia mental hospital, killing at least 20 patients and throwing the rest into a panic. One small boy rolled on the ground in hysteria and chewed pieces of broken glass. Greek Cypriots defending Nicosia periodically popped into available apartments to sip soda and listen to radio reports of how they were doing. But strangest and saddest of all was that the first battle between Greeks and Turks in seven years had been touched off by bitter animosity between Greek and Greek. The root of the war was enmity between the tall bearded Makarios and Greek Strongman Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannides. Makarios felt that Ioannides, working through Greek officers who have long commanded the Cypriot militia, was trying to turn his people against him.
As much as it distrusted the Turks, the Athens regime looked on the archbishop as the immediate enemy. The violently anti-Communist regime in Athens was suspicious of the archbishop's dealings with Moscow and the support he received from the 40,000-member Cypriot Communist Party. The junta reviled him as "Red," and worried that he would open Cyprus to the Soviet navy. In recent months, the anti-Makarios campaign was stepped up, and posters denouncing Makarios appeared on walls in Athens.
Makarios grew uneasy under Athens' mounting campaign, sensing a coup in the wind. He realized that his greatest danger was the presence of the 650 Greek officers on the island, and three weeks ago he wrote a letter to Greek President Phaedon Gizikis demanding their removal. Their continued presence, he said, was "harmful to relations between Athens and Nicosia." In a sermon two weeks ago, he spoke of feeling "the invisible hand that is threatening the liberty of Cyprus and menacing my life." Just three days before the coup he asserted that he had proof that Athens was plotting his overthrow.
Though Athens denied that it contemplated any action against Makarios, there was little doubt on or off the island that a plot to depose the archbishop was planned by the secretive Ioannides, 52, chief of the Greek military police and strongman behind President Gizikis. Under the mounting demands from Makarios, Ioannides finally ordered the coup to take place Monday morning and, as the archbishop had feared, the Greek officers led the national guard against troops loyal to him. Using Soviet T-34 tanks that the archbishop had received from a 1964 aid pact with Russia, the guard attacked strategic locations, including the presidential palace, Nicosia airport and central prison, where hundreds of pro-enosis prisoners were being held.
When the fighting started, Makarios was in the presidential palace greeting a delegation of Greek Orthodox school children from Cairo. With the building being repeatedly hit by tank and mortar fire, the archbishop and three bodyguards ducked out a rear door, crossed a garden where no tanks or armored cars had yet appeared and commandeered a passing car. As the President of Cyprus lay on the floor, the party headed for Paphos, on the southwest coast, where Makarios was born and where the population was fanatically loyal to him.