Sea Control - Sea Control 226 - Phase Line Attila with Dr. Ed Erickson & Dr. Mesut Uyar

Episode Date: February 7, 2021

Links: 1. Phase Line Atilla, The Amphibious Campaign for Cyprus, 1974, by Edward J. Erickson & Mesut Uyar, Marine Corps University Press, 2020. 2. Ericksonmilitaryhistory.com

Hey folks, Jared here. This week I'm joined by Dr. Ed Erickson and Dr. Mesut Uyar, and we'll be discussing Operation Yıldız Ama 4, also known as Operation Star Drop 4, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. You can find a link to their book, Phaseline Attila, in our show notes. This episode does start with an extensive history lesson on Cyprus post-World War II, so if you want to skip that and jump ahead to the discussion on planning and the operation, you can jump around to the 15-minute mark, and that'll get things going for you. Aside from that, I do want to include a note on the website. You may have been having some difficulty accessing SimSec. We are in the process of working with our hosting service to migrate the

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hosted by the Center for International Maritime Safety. Aloha, showmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, we're discussing Operation Yildiz Atma 4, the Turkish amphibious campaign for Cyprus in 1974. My guests are the co-authors of Fazla Natilla, the amphibious campaign for Cyprus, 1974, Dr. Ed Erickson, Dr. Mezut Uyar. Ed, thank you for coming on. Mazut, thank you for joining us again. Ed, we'll start with you. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners?

Jared, thank you very much. Sure. I'm Ed Erickson. I'm a military historian. My specialty is the World War I in the Middle East, especially the Ottoman Army. and combat effectiveness. I have a PhD from the University of Leeds. If you're a military historian, you might know of John Gooch. He was my supervisor. I'm also a retired professor of military history from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College at Quantico, Virginia. And in

a previous lifetime before that, I was in the United States Army. I retired as a lieutenant colonel, field artillery officer. I went to Desert Storm with 3rd Armored Division. I was in Joint Endeavor I-4 in Bosnia. I went to OIF-1 with the 4th Division and backed them in Stikina in Baghdad in 2007. So I've got quite a bit of experience in the area. Right now, I'm a working historian and more or less temporarily in upstate New York because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Masoud, how about you? Can you share your background with the listeners, please. Yes, I am a bit similar to Ed. My name is Mesut Uyaz. I am professor of international relations. I am currently the head of School of Business and Social Sciences at Antalya Bilim

University in Turkey. I got my MA on politics, PhD on international relations. My real area of expertise, war studies. But due to mining my data from the military history, I gradually slided into the military history. So currently I am spending most of my time late Ottoman, early modern Turkish military history. I have written several books, two of them with ads, book chapters, journal articles, etc. I'm currently working on several projects. One is the Hijaz Front during the World War I and the Arab Revolt. And the other project is Turkish Independence War. I have recently written two articles and they will appear pretty soon in two distinguished journals. They are about the initiation of the American military mission in Turkey during 1947

before 1960. So the initial part of the American military advisory mission in Turkey. Like in my previous life, I was a military officer. I retired as a full colonel, light infantry, mountain qualified, parachute qualified. I participated in various combat operations, won twice in action. I also joined various peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations in Georgia as a UN military observer, in Bosnia, and twice in Afghanistan. I had several experiences working with the American military courses, on-the-job training with American units in Germany, in America. And during my military career, I spent quite a long time as an initially instructor, later on associate professor at the Turkish Military Academy. And my last place before

Antalya was in Australia. I work as an associate professor at the Australian Defense Forces Academy. Thank you for invitation and let's rock and roll. Thanks, Masoud. Yeah, we'll jump right in. You dedicate a chapter to this in the book. So how did Cyprus get from insurgency from 1955 to 1959 to independence in 1960, all the way to the invasion in 1974? So I don't want to get into the long history of conflict in Cyprus. Cyprus was occupied by the Ottoman Turks in 1570. During During the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-78, the Ottoman Empire suffers lots of defeats at both fronts, at the Caucasus and the Balkan Front. And Britain saved some parts of the humiliation, and as a prize, Britain received Cyprus.

So Cyprus became de facto under the British control, under the Ottoman authority. And this system worked until the beginning of the First World War, and Britain declared the complete annexation of the island and transforming it into a dominion. So Cyprus, starting from 1878 until its independence in 1960, remained under the British colonial administration. And things did not work out quite well because there were two distinct ethnic groups in Cyprus. majority Greek Cypriots and a minority group, Turkish Cypriots, there were other small, small minority groups like Latins, Maronites, Armenians, small Jewish or Gypsy population,

they did not affect the outcome much. So during this long British Dominion administration, Turkish minority slowly but surely depended upon British administration more than the Greeks. From time to time, Greeks ask independence from the British dominion and joining the mainland Greece. So these troubles increased after the Second World War, because during the First World War and the Second World War, several times Britain offered Cyprus to Greece in order to do something. But in all occasions, Greece refused because of the circumstances, et cetera. For example, during the First World War,

Britain offered Cyprus to Greece to join the war, but Cyprus, Greece refused it. And later on, when they joined it, Britain just said, sorry, you are late. We couldn't give you the Cyprus. And similar things happened during the Second World War. And at the end of the Second World War, there was an expectation in Cyprus and Greece

that the British would give the independence and Cyprus joining Greece. This never happened because the British colonial system was collapsing and the British control of Egypt was fragile, later totally collapsed, and Egypt became independent. And all of a sudden, Cyprus gained tremendous importance, being the most valuable piece of British dominion, in order to control or be a serious player in the Middle East.

So Britain started to increase its military buildup in Cyprus and tried to silence the Greek Cypriots about getting rid of the British colonial administration. And in the mid-1950s, with the help of some Greek factions in Greece, a rebellion and some sort of a guerrilla warfare initiated in Cyprus. So initially, the Greek Cypriots tried to force Britain to give Cypriots what they were asking, joining with Greece. So they targeted the British administration, the British soldiers, and the policemen. But slowly, they started to target the Turks also, because the British started to enroll more Turkish Cypriots into the law enforcement, started to use them as a kind of a militia. And the so-called independence war against the British transformed into a kind of an ethnic war between two groups.

And Britain, after suffering lots of difficulty, because at the same time, don't forget, 1950s, terrible times for Britain. Economy is terrible. Lots of troubles in different colonies. So, in the end, Britain decided to make an agreement with Greece and Turkey and give Cyprus its independence, but at the same time, stopping the Cyprus joining with Greece. So, this was the basis of the Zurich Agreements, and out of this, the independent Cyprus stayed one. So, the Greek Cyprus did not ask for it. They didn't want it. They wanted to join Greece. The Turkish Cyprus did not want it. They want the British administration to continue on, or dividing the island into two and becoming part of Turkey.

So, a state born in 1960, the Cyprus Republic, which nobody wanted except the British and the Turks, because the Turks did not want Cyprus joining Greece. So, an independent Cyprus worked most for the Turkish interests. So, that was the start of the issue. But the foundation of the republic did not solve the problem. And starting in 1962, trouble started because the Cypriot president, Makarios, he was also the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus. He wanted to eliminate the Turkish Cypriot control on political, administrative, and armed forces, and against the constitution, tried to force the Turks to accept the status of a minority group. So the Cyprus constitution gave equal rights to both sides and provided a kind of a population-based representation at the parliament and also the government, sharing key ministries between two ethnic groups, which the Greek Cyprus did not want. And the second phase of the war started in Cyprus.

This time, the government, the Greek Cypriot-controlled government, started to attack the Turkish minority. And the Turks had to escape to enclaves all around the island. So there were more than 30 enclaves, which the Turks tried to protect themselves, moving from mixed villages to the Turkish-populated villages. And in some parts, they created larger enclaves, but in most parts, small, small enclaves distributed all around the island. During 1950s, the Turkish side also created a self-defense force, a kind of a militia known famously from its initials, TMT. And Turkey secretly provided officers, weapons, some financial support, but this was not very big during the 1950s. During the 60s, it increased, and Turkey from time to time tried to intervene to the island in order to stop the fighting and create a larger enclave for the Turkish minority group.

This didn't work out, and in our book, we try to give the answers to the reason why Turkey was unable to intervene before that. There were some international reasons, but the main problem was the Turkish armed forces did not have the capacity to conduct an amphibious operation before 1974. Turks started developing their capacity after 1967, and Turkey followed various methods, but the most interesting part is at that time Turkey was part of NATO, so most of the units allocated for the NATO use. Turkey started to create new units independent of the NATO control, and they created interesting division within the armed forces, a small portion of officers and units totally dedicated for an operation for Cyprus, and the larger part allocated to NATO. And this division follows up very strictly. So if you are a staff officer working on Cyprus, you would continue to work Cyprus most of your career. You get assignments to Cyprus as a special forces secret operative working with the Turkish Cyprus militia. And you return back, continue working in Cyprus, allocated troops, parachute brigades, a commando brigade, some small units or a corps headquarter in Adana, six army corps headquarters.

Meanwhile, most of the Turkish officers had no connections with Cyprus-related issues, completely dealing with Cold War era NATO issues, NATO-related issues, trying to defend Turkey against a possible Soviet invasion, joint exercises with Americans and other NATO members. This division created one very serious issue. Because the Turks put the division between two groups very concretely, there were no information exchange in between the sides. And the Turkish side suffered some troubles during the conduct of the operation in 1974. Let me give you an example. The NATO conducted a series of amphibious-related exercises during late 1960s and early 1970s, and in fact, these operations continued on up until the beginning of 2000. So, different NATO armies, including Turkish units, joining the amphibious operations, and in 1973, they even included a vertical dimension, airdropping units behind the defense lines, whereas the amphibious operation going on. Various authors, including Greeks, accused Turkey that Turkey made use of NATO-provided opportunities to learn and extend, prepare for the operation in Cyprus, but it was not true.

Because all these operations done by NATO-allocated units, NATO-allocated staff officers, which the Cyprus-allocated units and officers had no information at all. It may look a bit funny right now, but it was the reality during 1970s. Yeah, absolutely. So the decision to execute may have been made relatively quickly in 1974, but this plan existed for quite some time. So how long had the Turkish military actually been planning this invasion scenario? Yeah. The invasion itself happens on July 20th, 1974. And it looks to the world like it's a very quick, hastily put together operation. In fact, it's not. It is a deliberate campaign plan that goes back as early as 1971. As Missoula has talked about, the Turkish Armed Forces have planning staffs that use standard NATO procedures. They use a similar system to what the Marines call the Marine Corps planning process, MPP. It's structured.

It involves investing in information and intelligence, accumulating it, coming up with courses of action, and then putting together all the different threads, logistics, fire plans, all those things that would go into a normal campaign plan. centralized planning, decentralized execution. It's a standard NATO practice and embedded in the Turkish armed forces for really a hundred years back to the German military assistance commands. But in March of 1971, March of 71, the first campaign plan, it's called Yildiz 70 or Star 70. And it looks at the island and envisions an invasion coming in on the eastern shore near the town, what the Turks call Gazimagusa, what the Greeks call Thamagusta. And from this emerges a two-part plan, amphibious invasion with air assault paratroopers coming in beyond the beachhead.

Unfortunately for the Turks, maybe fortunately, this is the best beach. It's about 30 kilometers wide. It's big. There's plains in back of it. It's the best geographical location to mountain invasion. That plan is compromised. Masoud may talk about that later on. But because that plan is compromised, within a very short order, in July of 1971, they come up with the second variant. This is called Atma, or a drop. So what starts as Yildiz 70 in March of 71 becomes Yildiz Atma 1 in July of 71. And it goes through different iterations as they refine the plan. The final plan, Yildiz Atma 4, is finalized in July of 1973. And rather than coming in on the eastern shore, now the Turks will cross the beach on the northern shore near the small town of Kyrenia, or Girne,

as the Turks call it. I'll talk a little bit later on about the operating environment, and this is a high-risk plan. But suffice it to say that as the political situation starts to deteriorate. In May of 1974, the politicians sit down with the military and examine the situation and determine maybe intervention might be necessary. In June of 1974, in the early first weeks of June, the Turks start to marshal their forces. The plan has a menu task list of airborne, air mobile, Turkish Marine units, Turkish infantry units, which will assemble in the 6th Corps area and come under the 6th Corps commander for tactical control. That starts to happen in early June. So by July, when the situation really becomes dicey and problematic

in Cyprus, the Turks are leaning forward and poised, ready to go, getting ready to go. The proximate cause, what sparks this thing? It's a coup d'etat that occurs on July 15, 1974. A Greek backed group of conspirators, take over the government, put a Greek Cypriot named Nikos Samson in charge on the 15th of July, 1974. And it looks to the Turks like the island will then reject its independent status guaranteed in 1960 and merge or become one with mainland Greece. That concept is called enosis. So on 15 July, when the coup d'etat occurs, the orders go out to the 6th Corps get ready to intervene. A couple days later, they're in motion, and on July 20th, 1974, they execute. We would call it D-Day. The Turks call it G-Day, Golf Day, because day in Turkish

translates to Gnud. So G-Day is on the 20th of July. That's the sequence of events. Thanks, Ed. So as we've done these episodes in the past, and we did one with the Western Philippines with Major General Pat Donahoe. We did one for Operation Albion with Dr. Bruce Goodmanson and Tim Pollage. Break it down through the lens of Milan-Vigo's joint military operations. We talk about space, time, and force, and the operational factors, maneuver, intelligence, protection, fires, logistics, command control, and information. Ned, you already hinted at sort of the direction of this next question here. So we'll address space first. How would you describe the operating environment between Turkey and Cyprus at sea and then on land on the island of Cyprus itself?

Yeah, the operating environment in terms of the levels of war is at the strategic level. The island itself being near the eastern side of the Mediterranean, it's a long way from Greece. So the closest Greek air bases, aero-naval bases on Crete or Rhodes, a couple hundred miles away. Reciprocally, the island is darn close to the Turkish mainland. So the operating environment strategically favors the Turks. It enables them to gain air and sea supremacy immediately and retain it for the entire length of the operation. That's critical, as we know, to any amphibious operation. At the operational level, the terrain on Cyprus is risky for the Turks. Why is that? If you look at a topographic map of the island, you'll see that along the northern coast,

very close to the beaches, is a long and high mountain chain called the Pentadakpilos Mountains or the Beşparmak in Turkey. This mountain chain stretches parallel to the coast. So that creates an immediate disadvantage for the Turks. It's a severe operating constraint. It makes it high risk for the Turks because the forces coming across the beach are looking up at the high mountains. And the airborne forces dropped in the interior are also looking up at the high mountains, which separates the operating forces. At the tactical level, it boils down to a pass through these mountains. The key terrain is called the Airdaz or the Airdag Pass. And it's the only road between Nicosia and Caridia. So as you go down the operating level, strategic to operational

to tactical, it starts off at the highest level being very favorable to Turkey, which then you it down to the tactical level. And it's very risky. It's very difficult. And at the tactical level, the obstacles and the single pass through the mountain make it very, very, very problematic if there's a coherent Greek-Cypriot response. So it's much riskier the farther down the levels of war you go. Thanks. So, Mesut, I'm going to come to you to talk about time. How did the Turkish staff plan to exploit the invasion date to maximize their freedom of maneuver? First of all, the Turks had the advantage of time because they started the planning for an operation in 1963. That means they spent 11 years for planning.

And as you know, you need lots of details about the geography, topography, the roads, the people, and all sorts of these details. And because the Turks had special force officers working with Turkish Cypriot militia TMT on the islands, they had the advantage of making the reconnaissance, research, and all the accumulating the technical data to conduct such a complex and risky operation. And in fact, the Turkish side prepared double plans. One plan for Turkish armed forces to conduct the amphibious and air mobile operation. Another operational plan for the Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot militia on the island to do their bit according to the Turkish plan. So the Turks made use of these advantages, and they had another advantage because in 1964-1967, they wanted to intervene in Ireland, and because of various reasons, including the American intervention, the Turks were unable to do it. A kind of a false confidence grown up within the Greek Cypriots, believing that the Turks never able to conduct a military intervention against the island.

So this false confidence played a crucial part, especially during the first two days of the operation. Most of the Cypriot leaders, including Greek leaders in Greece, did not believe that actually a military operation is going on. They could not comprehend information coming from various channels about an amphibious operation, an airborne operation. So these worked quite well for the Turks. But at the same time, don't forget, Turkey from its foundation until the Cyprus operation did not participate in any wars or military conflicts. So the Turkish armed forces at that time was a peacetime army with all the problematic baggage of a peacetime army. So additionally,

the Turks had to build up their operational capacity because before 1967, the Turkish Armed Forces did not have amphibious capacity. The Turkish Armed Forces did not have marines. They created afterwards, and they did not create an American-type marine force. They created naval infantry under the control of the Turkish navy. They built up or purchased amphibious landing vehicles. They started building up air mobile capacity by purchasing helicopters and initially they couldn't get it from the Americans. Most of the helicopters Turkey purchased from Italy. Turkey had to purchase ships from different sources from Britain, America, Germany. And at At the same time, Turkey had to incorporate all these new capacities, military system,

learning how to make the planning, the training, joint and combined operation systems. And these created lots of tensions, delays, etc. And this 11-year period really needed for Turks to build up the necessary capacity to do that. Because until that period, Turkey depended upon America and NATO for most of its military operations, training, etc. All the Turkish manuals, translation of the American field manuals, and Turkey to create an independent military capacity turned out to be something difficult. And during the operation, Turkey suffered some problems because of lacking the necessary independent capacity to conduct these operations. But don't forget, Turkey went quite a long way by incorporating new doctrines, training, creating new troops, giving training to the officers, units, and individual soldiers, acquiring new weapons, etc. And they never had the chance to use all these allocated troops to get us because some troops located hundreds of miles inside Turkey, the northern part, some troops located in the southern part.

So they have to carry all these troops to get us in Adana and then carry out the operation. So time consuming needed a lot of financial sources. And at the same time, like I said before, Turkey had to divide its armed forces into two parts, a small group completely allocated for Cyprus operation, the larger one working on the NATO doing standard Cold War duties. Thanks. Ed, I'm going to come over to you to start the topic of force. What forces were available to the Greek Cypriots? Yeah, I'm going to talk about the active forces and kind of discount the Greek Cypriot reserves. If you look at the paper order of battle, the Greek Cypriot National Guard, the active National Guard, it's called, is a pretty substantial force, five infantry brigades, an armor mechanized brigade, commando brigade, and a large artillery command, two to three artillery brigade equivalents.

In addition to that, there's a Hellenic army, a regular Greek army regiment on the island that can also assist. So what you've got on paper are almost two complete divisions of troops. However, like anything, there's always a however. They're very poorly trained, except for a few of the elite commando battalions and a couple of the armor battalions. They're not concentrated. They're spread out across the island. They have equipment sets that are antiquated and not compatible. The artillery, for example, they have British 25-pounder weapons, guns, gun howitzers.

British 25-pounder gun howitzers use degrees and yards in their computations. The other part of the equipment set are Soviet 100-millimeter guns, which have a mils and meters system. They're not only incompatible ammunition-wise, but they're incompatible in computational skills. And those kind of things pervade the entire Cypriot National Guard. Why are they not in a position to intervene effectively? The problem is that on the 15th of July, 1974, the military, the Cypriot National Guard, supports the coup. They're a part of it. So their posture for 15, 16, 17 July is one of counter coup efforts.

They're interested in maintaining security and stability and ensuring that the coup itself does not fail because of all the dire consequences for the conspirators that would result. So they're in a maintain control status posture for a couple of days. As it becomes obvious that Turkey will intervene on the island, then they start to pull out a little bit, but they're caught on the 20th of July, kind of in between getting out of a counter coup posture, moving into a counter invasion posture. They're not ready. They're caught in garrison, and it's a mess. The two divisional equivalents, because they're not in position at the point of contact where the Turks actually come across the beach on the 20th of July, there's only an artillery battalion covering the beach with fire where the Turkish paratroopers land on the 20th of July. There's nothing at all. So effective forces at the point of contact when it really comes down to important points, the Greeks are totally unprepared. Thanks.

Can I ask one follow up is why do you discount the Greek Cypriot reserve? I'm assuming the answer is because they were you've already mentioned that the Greek Cypriot active forces were relatively ineffective. The reserves were more so. Is that the reason? Yeah, the the reserves are incompletely trained. They're they're left with the residue of weapons. They've got to be brought from civilian jobs into a garrison, put in uniform and deployed. So as the campaign unfolds, they do fulfill a fairly utilitarian part of holding the line. So the parts of the perimeter that evolves after the first five or six days, Greek Cypriot reserves are very, very useful in holding positions that are not going to be attacked.

A lot like what the Germans called static divisions in World War I. They categorized divisions as attack divisions and static divisions. So they're primarily defensive in that sense. Thanks. And then, Mesut, for the Turkish perspective, what Turkish forces were available for the invasion? Well, from the very beginning, Turkey put the operational control of the Cyprus attack on the second field army. And six army corps was responsible to carry out the whole operation, creating the necessary headquarters and commanding the units. Under six army corps, there were two divisions, 39 and 28 infantry divisions. And these divisions destined to be used as part of the second way of the amphibious landing.

Actually, 28 landed as the third way more than a week later, but the Turks also created special custom tailor-made units to carry out the sensitive duties of amphibious operation and air mobile operations, including airborne troops. So, Turkey founded a special naval infantry regiment consisting of two battalions to carry out the initial landing, and these were trained seriously to do all the necessary dangerous and hard work of carrying out the first wave. Turkey created two commando brigades, one airborne air qualifier and the other mountain qualifier units, plus some Vecherlian-sized commando units also created as a kind of reinforcement to carry out some of the special operations planned on the island. But we are not talking about huge numbers. For example, let me give the Navy Amphibious Regiment, Naval Infantry Regiment, consists of 800 combatants. A special regimental combat team was created, 50th Infantry Combat Team, and this was taken from the 39th Division, and it consisted of only 2,000 soldiers. And the first day at the landing, there were only 2,800 soldiers landed in several waves.

Plus, when we take a look at the, for example, airborne brigade, it had only 2,090 combatant soldiers, whereas the commando brigade had a bit more, 2,200 soldiers. So, in effect, the numbers were not great. So, Turkey depended upon the expertise of some of the special units, the naval infantry and the commando brigades, to conduct the amphibious and air mobile operations. The follow-on troops, the infantry divisions, received training, but they were more standard infantry that can extend the bridgehead after the necessary security established on the island. And this is what happened during the Cyprus operation. Another part of the Turkish planning was the Turkish-Cypriot enclaves on the islands. According to the Turkish planners, this one was very important. It is on the northern part of Nicosia, the capital city. The Turks called a triangle and it looks like a triangle occupying some of the important

mountain tops that Ed already mentioned about. So the Turks enclave is larger than the other enclaves and controlling some key terrain features including the mountain pass that the Turkish units should pass from Kyrenia to Nicosia. Additionally, the Turkish planners gambled on the Greek Cypriots' tendency to eliminate the Turkish enclaves. So the Turkish planners thought that when the operation started, most of the Cypriot Cypriot units, instead of moving to face the Turkish attack, they would instead allocate lots of troops to eliminate small, small enclaves covering all around the island. And this was what the Greek Cypriots did, actually, during the operation. And this gave Turks tremendous advantage

because two quarters of the Greek Cypriot military force completely occupied to deal with small, slow enclaves all around the island instead of moving their troops and concentrating against the Turkish beachhead or the triangle that the Turkish airborne troops landing. So these planning gambles or planning proposals actually work quite well. And this shows that the Turks spent quite a long time to understand the mentality and the psychology of the enemy. And like Ed mentioned, This operation carried out during the most fragile moment of the island, the Greek Cypriots divided into two, a sizable portion of them supporting the constitutional government of Makarios, a minority supporting the coup d'etat. Immediately after the coup d'etat, they started to hunt Makaryos sympathizers within the army and the police force. The most important part is the police force was completely manned by Makaryos sympathizers.

So while they were infighting, the Turks started their landing, and the infighting continued on during this military operation, which worked quite well for the Turkish planet. Thanks. Adam, I'm going to come to you for the last question about force here. You spent the early part of the book breaking down the amphibious cultures and challenges faced by the Allies in World War II. How did you differentiate the challenges, and then what similarities did you see when you assessed Yildiz Atma for? Yeah, this is a good question. In a general sense, there are two types of amphibious campaign conducted by the Allies in the Second World War. In Europe, and this is a generality, but in Europe, it's generally because of the proximity of the friendly shore to the enemy shore, shore to shore movement. You don't need assault transports, for example. Also in Europe, you have land-based air units, air force, and you also have airborne paratrooper and glider outfits. So that characterizes all of the European amphibious invasions, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, southern France, and Normandy. In the Pacific is the other American style of amphibious warfare, things like Guadalcanal or Peleliu or Okinawa, where the distance from the friendly shore, the enemy shore, is so vast that the troops have to be put in transports, brought to the tactical area,

and then transloaded into assault ships, LCTs, LCMs, those things. So in the Pacific, it's sea to shore movement. Importantly, the Pacific also has naval air. Guadalcanal, the first week, it's all naval air. Okinawa is all naval air. There are no paratroops used in the Pacific during the assault phases of amphibious operations. The geographical constraints prohibit that. So back to the analysis.

What we see in Yildizatma IV is Operation Overlord in miniature. It's Normandy in miniature. What we see is air supremacy based on land-based air. We see paratroops and air mobile operations, no gliders, of course. And we see shore-to-shore movements. They get on the boats and nurse in, and within 24 hours, they're crossing the beach at Katarini. So like Normandy, it's Normandy in miniature. They spend the first couple days creating a beachhead and an airhead,

and then connect them to form what's called a lodgement, which is a small footprint on the ground. It gives them the toehold they need. From there, the lodgement is expanded to where it can contain maneuverous or rather tactical staging areas for follow-on forces. Once that lodgement is secure, the follow-on forces are in position. The two divisions that Massoud mentioned, the 28th and 39th, once they're inside the lodgement, then they plan for a breakout. And like Normandy, there's a breakout followed by a pursuit operation that goes to the end state, which is phaseline Attila, thereby concluding the campaign. Thanks, Ed. So we'll go into the operational factors now here, starting with maneuver. And Ed, I'm going to come right back to you with the first question is reading about the operation.

It seems to be the critical factor around which the remainder of the plan was built. So what was the Turkish scheme of maneuver? Yeah, at the strategic level, it involves the staging of forces. It's important to keep in mind, this is a joint operation. This is the Turkish Air Force, the Turkish Army and the Turkish Navy all operating together on, as Masoud has pointed out, a spontaneous ad hoc basis in real life. They've been planning this for a long time, but the planning has been compartmentalized. The training has been compartmentalized. So this is the first time that they really put it all together. It's a joint operation under the command of the 6th Corps, and at higher levels, it's under the 2nd Army. It's a strategic level, then the maneuver is the staging to put the joint force package together in southeastern Turkey near the port of Mersin.

At the operational level, the maneuver is twofold. It's maneuver from the sea with marine forces invading across the beach and maneuver from the air or vertical envelopment, if you will, commandos by air mobile helicopter and paratroops dropped from fixed wing aircraft over the island itself. If you get down to the tactical level, maneuver becomes not quite irrelevant, but because at the tactical level, the bulk of the forces are walking there. They're walking off the beachhead up toward the mountains. They're walking off the drop zones and the landing zones into the mountains. So at the tactical level, for the establishment of the lodgement, we're basically talking infantry attacking at the speed of a walking man. The flow of forces is important. In the beachhead, the flow of forces is two battalions.

In the airhead, the flow of forces are also two battalions. So these are followed on in bits and pieces. The Turks reinforced the beachhead with a regiment later on. as the day goes by. The Turks reinforce the airhead with commando battalions by helicopter as the day goes on. So part of the scheme of maneuver at the tactical level is the sequencing of forces. Who gets there first? Which battalions? Why would you pick them? The Turks, for example, they have four airborne battalions. Two are old-timers, the old guard, if you will, very experienced. So they go in first. The two newly raised, newly activated battalions come in later.

So part of the scheme of maneuver, besides the obvious of who moves where when, is what choices do you make in terms of the forces as they sequence on the ground over the day? And for the Turks, it's the obvious choice, experienced men first, followed by the less experienced men once the ground has been taken. Thanks. So, Mesut, the original Turkish plan was focused on eastern beaches near Famagusta, and the general staff then shifted to the northern beaches near Kyrenio. What was the impetus for that decision, and how critical was that to the operation's success? Like Ed explained, the eastern beach is widest, and there was available roads leading directly to Nicosia, the capital city, following the plains. So you can easily land larger units, and they can easily move inside. The downside was the Greek Cypriots were also aware about this issue, and starting late 1960s, they built up concrete bunkers covering most of the beaches, not only the eastern beaches, but also the northern beaches. So the Turks facing small-type Normandy scenario to deal with these units in bunkers and how to eliminate them.

But still, the Turkish plan depended upon the eastern beaches because of its lots of advantages. But they discovered that one Turkish special force officer working with the Turkish Cypriot militia in Cyprus decided to change sides, escape to the Greeks. And this guy was a logistic officer, logistic staff officer. So he compromised the plan. He actually told the Greeks what he knew about all the plans. Luckily for the Turkish side, he compromised the logistical portion of the plan, which is the weakest part of the plan, actually. But at the same time, were the Turks planning to land? And in a very short time, the Turkish militia on the island started to report the movement of large Greek Cypriot units to the eastern beaches and Greek Cypriots conducting various exercises to stop possible Turkish amphibious landing.

And at this moment, the Turks decided, OK, the plan is compromised. We need to change the landing sites. This is the reason they moved to more risky northern beaches. The problem was, like Ed said, the mountains were very close to the beaches. There were only a few mountain passes bottlenecking the movement inside the island. Additionally, most of the beaches were short. There were rocks and other impediments. But it turned out to be this compromise worked quite well and very lucky coincidence for the Turks because the Greek cyclists for two days, even getting the information of a large Turkish amphibious landing on the north, they waited for an even larger landing from the eastern beaches.

So they stayed where they were instead of moving and facing the northern landings. So it worked as a kind of a display landing type, camouflaging the main operation. Additionally, the Turkish side selected a very small beach in which the Greek Cypriots did not think anybody would use for amphibious operations. So there were no concrete bunkers or Greek Cypriot units facing the small beach that the Turkish amphibious operation used for the main landing. Later on, after the fourth day, the Turks started to use Kyrenia harbors, but it was not a huge harbor also with very limited capacity to handle movement of larger forces. So, without any intention, the compromise of the plan made the Turkish operation more successful by giving false confidence to the Greek Cypriots, and at the same time, they did not believe the incoming information that the Turks were actually landing to the northern beaches. The downside of all this issue was the Turks already very secretive of the operational plan, increased the secrecy. So most of the unit commanders, including the regiment commanders, the chaplain commanders,

unaware of their role within the operational plan until the very last moments. And when they received the briefings about the plan, they barely memorized their role, and they couldn't get the information what the neighboring units would do, and they couldn't get the larger picture of the operation. There were some officers who worked on the planning during late 1960s, early 1970s, and they were in key roles. So these guys, knowing the operational plan by heart, helped carry out some of the problems that happened during the operation because of not knowing the details of the plan enough. So this should be taken as a good lesson learned for any kind of military operation. Forget about the amphibious operation. If you put priority to the secrecy, that means you will lose a lot to inform the especially small units commanders to know about what they will do during the operation. Thanks. I'm going to ask you about intelligence now, Mesut.

How did the Turkish forces use the forces already on island as well as their local militia to support intelligence effort? And then how did those forces on island and their observations inform the Turkish plan? Having special force officers on the island for a long time, having a large network of militia on the island helped the Turks to deal with lots of technicalities of the planning, suitability of the beaches, their capacity. The Turks even hired some frogmen conducting some archaeological investigation around the island to learn about the real character of the landing beaches. And the first complete technicalities of the island prepared in 1963, so very early. Additionally, Turks managed to get lots of useful information from the British because the British still had two large bases on the island. They had enormous information about the island and they

published some of them freely. For example, very recently I purchased a British coastal map of some portion of the Cyprus and even this map provides lots of good information for planning purposes, and they did publish this map in 1967. So the Turks not only make use of their men on the island, but they also make use of the open channels, open information that are readily available for anyone looking for it. Additionally, Turks smuggle some critical assets like long-range radio sets on the island, and they already established lookouts, especially around the triangle. For example, why they chose triangle for air mobile operation, because that was a half-finished dirt track, airfield, a half-finished one available on that part. So this made easier

for helicopters and paratroopers to land. They also prepared the militia to receive the troops, incoming troops, especially air mobile troops. And in some occasions, the militia provided trucks and buses to transport the troops from one location to another, making the life easier for them. We knew that there should be lots of intelligence files, very detailed intelligence files at the Turkish military archive. Unfortunately, they are not released yet. But I have to say one problematic aspect of Turkish understanding of intelligence, Turks approach this issue in a very secretive way. So only a small number of staff planners knew about all this immense intelligence. Most of the unit commanders, including the division

commanders and army corps commanders unaware about some of the issues, which when they landed on the island, they started to have difficulty to formulate this issue. Another problem with the Turkish intelligence, they did not pay enough attention about the logistical side, the water sources, the food sources, where to get what kind of things. Although they knew about the capacity of the roads the bridges etc but they did not know about the how to make use the local sources effectively so when the troops landed and when they suffered difficulty to get logistical support they had to search for it to find the water sources to find food sources to feed themselves because during the first week most of the turkish units on the island did not receive any kind of

logistical support. So when you are dealing with intelligence, you should also pay more attention for the self-sufficiency of the troops in foreign lands. Thanks. Edem, for the next round of questions, I'm going to ask you to put on your former artillery officer hat and talk about fires. So how do the Turkish forces use fires to support maneuver, and then as they consolidate their position? There are two primary forms of fires in the first couple day period. First is support the amphibious beachhead, and the Turks do that with a naval gunfire support group, ex-US Gearing Class destroyers with the famous 5-inch, 38-inch gun, 5-inch, 38-inch gun that we've used since, really, from World War II right straight into the Vietnam War.

That supports the Turkish Marines and the infantry and the beachhead. The other form of fire supporting the paratroops and the commandos in the airhead and the triangle area is tactical air support. In both cases, there's a lot of planning that has gone into this to make both of these function as the Turks want them to. So fire support coordination, fire support plans are instrumental in the effective delivery of fire. And the naval sense, the Turks break down all the naval forces into the appropriate task groups. For example, there's a task group that does the amphibious assault. There's a task group that performs screening.

to the west of the island in case the Greek Navy, the Hellenic Navy, intervenes. There's a task group that's tasked with naval gunfire support. So organization feeds into the global fighters. On the air side, because of the danger of the Hellenic Air Force, the Turks marshal and move all of their interceptors to the western part of the country under the 1st Tactical Air Force. They then reciprocally move the bulk of their close air support aircraft like F-100s and F-84s to the eastern side of the country in the 2nd Tactical Air Force. So the first part of this is simply structural organization, marshalling forces, and then the moving into supporting of the forces.

For the first couple of days, the naval gunfire support is very effective in suppressing Greek Cypriot National Guard artillery units. and Greek National Guard reinforcing units that are moving toward the beachhead perimeter. In the airhead, it's pretty much the same thing. This is a lot like the 9th Air Force over Normandy, where free-ranging fighter bombers are swarming over the island, and they aren't necessarily needed at that point to support Turkish infantry, Turkish commandos or Turkish paratroopers. But what they do do is, much like the German army was beleaguered in Normandy by Allied air power, the Turkish F-100 swarmed the island and pounded up Greek Cypriot National Guard reinforcing units. So convoys of Cypriot National Guard units moving to positions to

oppose both the airhead and the beachhead are just slaughtered by Turkish F-100s who can't move without being hit by attack air. So those are the two forms of fire support that are seen on the island. In the later phases, the Turks do bring in artillery, 105 millimeter howitzers, but it's never really critical, never really needed because of the superiority that their infantry and tanks generate on their own. Interestingly, there are a couple incidents of fratricide. There's famously an incident, a Turkish destroyer, the Koca Tepi, is attacked on the 21st of July by Turkish Air Force units. Why does this happen? Well, confusing reports come in to the joint

headquarters, and it looks like the Hellenic Navy is about to intervene and attack the amphibious shipping, massing off the coast. Well, the problem is the United States has, over the course of the Cold War, given the same types of ships, gearing class destroyers, mostly, to both the Hellenic Navy and the Turkish Navy. So they're both using the same equipment at sea. This causes great confusion with the reporting that is coming in. Turkish F-100s attack the Turkish screening Flotilla, which has gone out to screen against the Hellenic Navy, and the Kojitepe is sunk. There's a couple incidents of fratricide on the ground. The regimental commander is killed inside the beachhead at night. Accidents have happened. Fratricide is more common than most of us would

like to believe, but those things are happening. It's especially true of unblooded units, and we should always keep in mind as pursuit notes that this is the Turkish Army, the Turkish Air Force, the Turkish Navy's first time out of the box since the Korean War. And the Korean War is only a single brigade. So it's really the first time out of the box, if you will, since 1922, when they're engaged in the War of Independence. So it's a steep learning curve for the Turks in fire support. They're very good at it these days. They've been very, very active in the last 20 years in southeast turkey and places like syria and and they're they're much they're very good at it today thanks now i want to follow up and how would you assess the uh greeks use of fire some because it

doesn't sound like there wasn't a greek use of fires yeah as an artilleryman the the greek potential is is huge and i'm i'm very disappointed as a professional artilleryman and and looking at at their inactive uh use of artillery they have a large artillery park they've got 100 millimeter guns that are long-ranging and could be used for counter-battery. They've got the famous British 25-pounder, an 84-millimeter time-tested gun from World War II that's a wonderful close support, direct support artillery piece. It can also be used as an anti-tank gun in an emergency. But they've got this artillery command that's kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time throughout the operation. Once they actually come into position, even when they're camouflaged and

ready to fire. They can't connect with the infantry that they're supporting. So they're unable to effectively do fire support planning. They're unable to concentrate fires. They're unable to connect to the maneuver units that they're supposed to be supporting. It's probably the largest unused potential game changer that the Supergat National Guard has. And it's kind of a tragedy from that side that it's not more effectively employed. Thanks. Masoud already kind of covered the logistics portion of this, so I'm going to skip that and I'm going to come back to you for command and control question before we allow Masoud to finish discussing function information. So command and control, can you compare and contrast the two command and control

structures in use? Yeah, let's define the terms first. The essence of command and control, The essence of command is decision-making. Intelligence feeds into it. Communications, you use planning processes. All these things are, in essence, making a decision, whether you make it quickly or longer, and then the quality of the decision. The essence of control is execution. What are the processes by which the decisions are transmitted to units? How are orders written? What are discretionary circumstances? Is it as practicable, for example? So command is about decisions, control is about execution. The Turks are very, very, very effective. They have quick decision-making capabilities, at least down through corps and brigade level in the first couple days. Part of this is the command and control system itself. On the morning of July 20, the amphibious and airborne units go in in the 7 to 8 time frame in the morning. By 1130 in the morning, the core commander, the sixth core commander, is in the airhead and has his TACCP, his tactical command post, active. And he's able to make decisions quickly. What kind of decisions?

Well, when and where to move the arriving forces. As the follow-on, as the second wave of the airborne comes in, as the second, third, and fourth battalions of air mobile commandos come in, where to put them and how to urge to actually push the subordinate brigade commanders into activity. So that's very, very, very important. We have a famous American Confederate Civil War leader named, the general named Nathan Bedford Forrest, and his advice, and it's silly, but get there firstest with the mostest. You know, Nathan Bedford Forrest wins battles because he, quote, gets there firstest with the mostest. And that's what the Turks do. They get to the key spots quicker. They get there with more, not necessarily more forces, but with forces that are effective because they're coherent and well-trained.

So that's a part of it. The Turkish decision-making processes, the Turkish command and control can plan and execute to a NATO standard. The Greek Cypriot National Guard, outside of NATO, underfunded, poorly trained, has a very, very difficult time making decisions. And then when they are made, their ability to execute is flawed because it takes a long time for that decision to make its way down to the people who have to execute. This enables the Turks, to use a NATO phrase from the Cold War days, to get inside the enemy decision cycles. By the time the Cypriot National Guard leaders have decided and ready to do something, the Turks are already a step ahead of them. The worst decision that the Greek Cypriot National Guard makes is a failure to anticipate a rapid post-coup Turkish intervention. That failure makes it almost impossible to respond in any kind of a coherent manner to the intervention once it occurs.

Thanks, Mesut. I'm going to come to you for the last question, which is about function information. So how did each side attempt to, control is probably the wrong word here, but attempt to influence the information environment? What were they communicating to the outside world? Well, for the information, let's say information warfare, at the operational and tactical level, Turks were much better, much better than the Greeks, because they already infiltrated some critical assets to the island well before the operation. So, before the amphibious operation started, radio communication was working quite well from the island to the mainland. And because troops from time to time suffered difficulty to make use of their organic information capability, the assets on the island helped them greatly. Additionally, the Turks immediately before the start of the operation, they start distributing leaflets from the plains all over the island. And following the American Vietnam style target or oriented leaflets, they printed leaflets for the civilians, the Greek Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriots, the Greek soldiers, Greek Cypriot soldiers. And even there was a battalion, reinforced battalion called Turkish Regiment, part of the foundation of the Greek Cypriot Republic. There was Turkish regiment inside the island and there was another Greek regiment there.

They even dropped leaflets for the regiment also. Additionally, the Turkish radio and newspapers immediately started informing the Turkish audience, Turkish public, what is happening on the island, and radios work quite well on these aspects. And because of the proximity of the island, the geographic proximity of the island to Turkey, Turkey had material advantages to control the information sphere better than the Greeks. Because of the Turkish jet fighters, warm, critical radio relay stations, the communications collapsed in the island, so the Greek Cypriots not only suffered difficulty to communicate with each other, they also suffered difficulty to communicate outside the world. And these are important issues. But during the following days, Turkey loses its control on the strategic part of the information warfare, informing the world, informing the key players of what is going on on the island. The Turks did not have embedded journalists with the units initially. They sent them later on. So the world received most of the information either from the Greeks or the BBC reporters on the island.

So, for example, the BBC reporters were the first ones who reported the Turkish airborne operation with camera showing how the Turkish paratroopers landing. They were the first journalists to get an interview with the Turkish army course commander in charge of the whole operation. And in fact, the BBC Land Rover carried the Turkish three-star general and his small staff to their allocated space because they didn't have any vehicles. And BBC, as a kind of back pay for the interview, special interview, provided this transportation duty. What we learned from these operations is Turks put more attention on the operational aspects and deal with for the information aspect also from operational glasses. They neglected the strategic information campaign to daily feed the world media, the world's public opinion about what is going on on the island. Luckily for the Turks, throughout this operation, American public and American media completely focusing on Watergate scandal, so they didn't pay much attention to what was going on on the island,

and this was turned out to be a big advantage for Turkey, not only politically, but also in terms of of public opinion, but, for example, when information pops up on the Greek journals or Greek radios, the Turks suffer difficulty to counter it by providing necessary evidence that that issue never taken place. And not feeding the media on a daily basis turn out to be, later on, a big problem for Turks, because all of a sudden Turkey started to face negative news popping up all around the world. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. That is unfortunately all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Dr. Ed Erickson and Dr. Mesut Uyar. Ed, where can we

find you online and what are you working on next? Yeah, I have a site called ericksonmilitary.com online. The Turks were at war pretty much from 1911 to 1923. I've written a number of books, but one of them is about the Balkan Wars that occurs in 1912 to 1913. One of them is about the First World War in 1914 to 1918. My current project is to continue that timeline and write a military history of the Turkish War of Independence, which is from 1919 to 1923. That book is finished. It's in production with Prager Publishers. It will come out in May of 2021. The title is A Military History of the Turkish War of Independence, 1919 to 1923. And I'm very proud of it. It's a long delayed project. Well, thank you very much. I look forward to reading those and we'll link your site in the show notes as well. Masoud, how about you? Where can we find you online and what are you working on? Well, the best way to find me is Twitter. I am actively using Twitter every day. So if you would like to get more information about what I am doing, just follow me on Twitter and my name, my surname and at 1010 at the end, you will easily find me.

Currently, I am trying to finish a long tail of half-finished projects trailing behind me from Australia. I moved to Turkey three years ago, and I'm still trying to clean up them. Some of them, first of all, were related. Like I said at the beginning, I'm planning to write an article and a book about the defense of Hejaz campaign in the modern Saudi Arabia, Mecca, Medina region, plus the Arab revolt related with it. Unfortunately, most of the information about this period focus on achievements of Lawrence, a kind of a legend, myth. So I will try to deal with the real operational aspects of the campaign, what really happened, when it happened, because the chronology is also very problematic. And like Ed, I am also planning to write something about the Turkish independence war, because we are commemorating it is a centenary every day right now, and it will continue up until 2020. So other than that, I tried to convince Ed to write something about the American military aid and American military presence in Turkey, but Ed refused to do that.

So I am doing that as a Turkish colonel who happened to enjoy the hospitality of the Americans, sometimes their hostility. So I am putting much emphasis on the foreign military assistance, and I would like to put the American-Turkish military relations, the American military advisory mission into wider perspective of the foreign military aid issue. Because right now, America and some other nations having issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all around the world, trying to figure out a workable model related with the foreign military assistance. And I think the early period of the Cold War is very neglected. So Turkey and America provide wonderful experiments for that. And hopefully Ed one day decided to join our effort to write something about it. And maybe he may write down his memoir one day. Well, thank you both again for coming on. I'm looking forward to all those projects, particularly, Mesut, the one you mentioned about the U.S.-Turkey relationship.

I think that would be fascinating, even the context of everything that we're living through right now. Thanks again for our listeners to tuning in and we'll see you next time. Control is produced and edited by Keegan Ingersoll, Ed Salo, and William McQuiston. A pot of rum and a pot of gin, oh Where have they put it in the alley? A pot of wine, both white and red, oh Put it on the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley

Where have they put it in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley Put it on the shimbo now