EOKA 70 Years On: Anti-Colonial or Colonialist? Liberation or Subjugation?

70 years after the start of the EOKA campaign to unite Cyprus to Greece (enosis), this essay revisits the nature and activities of EOKA, and its legacy. Most Greek Cypriots and Greeks believe in what can only be termed as official national myths and transferred community memory, aimed at retaining EOKA on a pedestal as a necessary national liberation force. But was this the reality? This essay asks whether EOKA was really anti-colonial or whether it was colonialist? It also asks if it aimed at liberation or subjugation. After 70 years the time has come to critically reconsider EOKA and reveal the truth of what it really represented and did, and to understand the way that EOKA members came to control the subsequent Republic.