Cyprus POLICE
Portion of the green Line, the line dividing Nicosia
Courtesy Embassy of Cyprus, Washington
The police system, like the armed forces, was split
along
communal lines. The 1960 constitution called for two
police
organizations: an urban police force, to be commanded by a
Greek
Cypriot, and a rural police force, or gendarmerie, to be
commanded
by a Turkish Cypriot. The constitutional system broke down
after
the Christmas crisis of 1963, and each community
subsequently
provided its own police. The Turkish Cypriot police was
originally
an arm of the paramilitary TMT; after 1974 it operated
under the
Turkish Cypriot Security Force, within the Ministry of
Foreign
Affairs and Defense and the Ministry of the Interior of
the Turkish
Cypriot administration in the north. New legislation in
1984
redefined its structure, but it continued to be
accountable to the
commander of the Turkish Cypriot Security Force.
The Cyprus Police Force, in contrast, was a force
organizationally and operationally separate from the
National
Guard, within the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of
Cyprus.
After 1963 the police of the government of Cyprus assumed
no
responsibility for the Turkish Cypriot community (in 1973
the force
of over 3,000 contained only one Turkish Cypriot), so that
the de
facto partition of the island after 1974 meant only a
reduction in
the amount of territory for which the police were
responsible. The
Greek Cypriot police force rose in strength from 2,550 in
1969 to
3,500 in 1978, and to 3,700 in 1989.
Data as of January 1991
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