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The situation presented a dilemma for the unpopular junta, which would suffer whether it failed to fight or fought and did poorly. Either way, prideful Greeks would feel that the junta had allowed Turkey to humiliate their country. Athens radio at week's end went off the air amid rumors of a major shake-up in the junta leadership.
Snarled Traffic. Rumblings of the Cyprus crisis echoed all around the Mediterranean. Syria placed its forces on maximum alert, and President Hafez Assad canceled a state visit to Yugoslavia. The Egyptian government ordered its navy to stay at home.
Commercial air traffic was snarled at the peak of the summer season, since regional controllers for international flights are located on Cyprus. With them off the job because of the fighting, airports were closed down at Beirut, Teheran, Tel Aviv and other cities, stranding thousands of businessmen and tourists. Only El Al was flying. The Israeli airline threaded its jets on a careful course to avoid both Cyprus air battles and hostile Arab air space.
Also in the air was Sisco, flying in Kissinger's blue and white jet between Athens and Ankara, searching for solutions. He had been dispatched at the beginning of the week merely as a fact finder; when the Turkish ultimatum began to run out, he turned into a mediator, attempting to persuade the Turks to be patient and putting leverage on the Greeks to be generous.
The U.S. position on Cyprus was set by Kissinger himself after conversations with President Nixon at San Clemente.
In the State Department, it was privately described as one of "constructive ambiguity" by some who had been left in the capital to implement it. While not embracing the new President, the U.S. dropped the ousted Makarios by pointedly calling him only "archbishop" rather than "President." To critics, that appeared to be an unseemly speedy desertion of a legitimate head of state.
The loudest catcalls for constructive ambiguity came from British critics of Kissinger who had a heavy stake in Cyprus. But working-level foreign service officers were also vocal in their complaints against his policy. They thought that the Secretary had ignored early warnings that a Cyprus coup might be in the offing, and that, in order to protect negotiations with Greece on home-port facilities for the U.S. Navy, he had not been forceful enough in criticizing the Greek regime. The U.S. confined its public comment on Greece to support of Cyprus' "independence and territorial integrity and its constitutional arrangements." Not until after the Turkish invasion did the U.S. finally acknowledge publicly what many other nations had been saying all week—that the Greek government had directly contributed to Makarios' downfall. At a press conference, Kissinger denied that U.S. policy had been indecisive or biased toward Greece. He said that his prime concern was to maintain a low-keyed, evenhanded position toward both sides in hopes of calming the situation.