ethnarch

…during the Turkish occupation as ethnarch, or head of the Greek Christian community. Opposing the British government’s proposals for independence or Commonwealth status, as well as Turkish pressures for partition in order to safeguard the island’s sizable Turkish population, Makarios met with the Greek prime minister, Alexandros Papagos, in February…

…community and given the title ethnarch. The Turkish Cypriots are Sunni Muslims. There are also smaller Maronite, Armenian, Roman Catholic, and Anglican Christian communities on the island.

Archbishop Makarios III, who as ethnarch considered it his duty to champion the national aspirations of the Greek Cypriots, was deported to the Seychelles. He was released from exile in March 1957 and soon made his headquarters in Athens. By that time the operations of EOKA had been reduced, but…

…or in Greek the “ethnarch,” with the right to administer, to tax, and to exercise justice over all the Christians of the Turkish empire. Thus, under the new system, the patriarch of Constantinople saw his formal rights and jurisdiction extended both geographically and substantially: on the one hand, through…