ABSTRACT
The uprising of 21 October 1931 in Nicosia and other cities but also in parts of the Cypriot countryside could be considered the modern origin of the Cyprus Question. The rising, the reaction of the colonial power to it and its consequences for local politics set in motion a series of crises that account for the subsequent complications and contradictions that still plague the Cyprus problem. Greece’s appeals to the United Nations for the recognition of the right of self-determination to the people of Cyprus and the armed liberation struggle initiated in Cyprus turned the Cyprus Question from a bilateral Greco-British problem into an international issue, with Turkey and the United States and other players drawn in. The 1960s represent a critical phase in the evolution of the Cyprus Question, marked by the island’s advent to independent statehood. Independence presented the Cypriots with a test of their ability to responsibly govern themselves.
