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On the day of the invasion, Ecevit went before the Turkish Parliament, whose 635 members have usually greeted his appearances without enthusiasm. Not this time. After Ecevit made a 90-minute explanation of why he had ordered the invasion, members gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. Ecevit asked for a declaration of war against Greece if one became necessary—and the cheering legislators left no doubt that they would happily grant it.
Enosis or Taksim. Ecevit's sudden popularity could quickly sour after the euphoria of the successful invasion dissipated in the face of problems requiring solution. Foremost among them was how to bring peace to Cyprus short of stationing a standing army there. No one believes that Greek Cypriots would accept union with Turkey or rule by a Turkish Cypriot. One solution might be to have a Greek moderate acceptable to both island communities take over the presidency, or even have Makarios return. Another, less likely possibility is the old idea of double enosis—or taksim, in Turkish—under which Greek enclaves would be annexed to Athens and Turkish zones to Ankara. One difficulty is that ownership of land on Cyprus is so intermixed between Greeks and Turks that neighbors who have seldom agreed on anything would be unlikely to agree on which country controlled individual tracts of real estate.
But such political concerns were for the future. At week's end attention was focused on the bloody fighting on Cyprus and efforts to keep it from spreading beyond the island.
* In modern times they fought in 1896-97 over Crete, which eventually went to Greece after a brief spell of independence, and in 1920 over Izmir, a Turkish province on the Aegean.