21 December: Eruption The incident that sparked the events of Bloody Christmas occurred during the early hours of 21 December 1963. Greek Cypriot police operating within the old Venetian walls of
Nicosia demanded to see the identification papers of some Turkish Cypriots who were returning home in a taxi from an evening out. These Turkish Cypriots were being driven by taxi driver Zeki Halil and were around
Hermes Street en route to
Taht-el Kale. When the police officers attempted to search the women in the car, Halil objected and a discussion ensued. Soon a crowd gathered and shots were fired. Cemaliye Emirali, the ex-lover of Zeki Halil, who was similarly returning from a night out, saw the incident and got involved. Police called for reinforcements from
Paphos Gate, and one of the reinforcements shot and killed Zeki Halil and Cemaliye Emirali. By dawn, two Turkish Cypriots had been killed and eight others, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, had been wounded.
21 to 23 December After the shooting, crowds of Turkish Cypriots gathered in the northern part of Nicosia, often led by the
Turkish Resistance Organisation (TMT). On 22 December, the funerals of the two Turkish Cypriots killed were held without incident. However, shooting broke out on the evening of 22 December. Cars full of armed Greek Cypriots roamed through the streets of Nicosia and fired indiscriminately, and Turkish Cypriots fired at patrolling police cars. Turkish Cypriot snipers fired from minarets and the roof of the Saray Hotel on
Sarayönü Square. Some shooting spread to the suburbs and to
Larnaca. The Greek Cypriot administration cut off telephone and telegraph lines to Turkish Cypriot quarters of the city of Nicosia and the police took control of the
Nicosia International Airport. Greek paramilitary groups led by
Nikos Sampson and
Vassos Lyssarides were activated. On 23 December, a ceasefire was agreed upon by Makarios III and Turkish Cypriot leadership. However, fighting continued and intensified in Nicosia and Larnaca. Machine guns were fired from mosques in Turkish-inhabited areas and later on 23 December, Greek Cypriot irregulars headed by Sampson came to assist in the
battle of Omorphita, they attacked the suburb and eventually took it over with the Turkish Cypriot residents of the quarter later being expelled from their homes.
Later events A number of Turkish Cypriot mosques, shrines and other places of worship were desecrated. Greek Cypriot irregulars attacked Turkish Cypriots in the mixed villages of
Mathiatis on 23 December and
Ayios Vasilios on 24 December. The entire Turkish Cypriot population of Mathiatis, 208 people, fled to nearby Turkish Cypriot villages. Based on later interviews, the reporter
Harry Scott Gibbons described the murder of 21 Turkish Cypriot patients from the Nicosia General Hospital on Christmas Eve. This is taken as a fact in the Turkish Cypriot narrative, but is disputed in the Greek Cypriot narrative. An investigation of the incident by a Greek Cypriot source found that three Turkish Cypriots died, of which one died of a heart attack and the other two were shot by a "lone psychopath". A joint call for calm was issued on 24 December by the governments of Turkey, Greece and the
United Kingdom. Further clashes took place in the pass linking Nicosia to
Kyrenia through the
Kyrenia Mountains. This pass had fallen under Turkish Cypriot control and came under intense attack on 26 December from the north, with the Greek Cypriot forces being commanded by a Greek officer from the mainland. Turkish Cypriot forces, mostly from the village of
Agirda, managed to retain control of the pass, and one Turkish Cypriot was killed. As Cyprus was falling into chaos, Greece, Turkey and Britain, with Makarios's approval, created a Joint Truce Force under the command of General Peter Young, whose goal was to maintain, or rather re-establish, law, order and peace in Cyprus. A conference held in London in January among the protagonists of the events, failed because of the maximalist positions of the leadership of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.
Mass grave of Ayios Vasilios Greek Cypriot forces attacked the Turkish Cypriot village of
Ayios Vasilios on 24 December. A mass grave was exhumed there on 12 January 1964 in the presence of foreign reporters,
British Army officers and officials from the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The bodies of 21 Turkish Cypriots were found in this grave. A number of the victims in the mass grave showed signs of torture, and observers noted that they appeared to have been shot with their hands and feet tied. Various rationales have been put forward as motivators for this Greek Cypriot attack. The Greek Cypriot leadership at the time was particularly wary of the villagers of Ayios Vasilios and nearby
Skylloura blocking the road from Nicosia to
Myrtou, which would have represented a strategic disadvantage should the Turkish army have invaded at the time from the northern coast. There may also have been an element of revenge in response to
previous killings of Greek Cypriots in the local area. An investigating committee led by independent British investigators then linked the incident to an ostensible disappearance of Turkish Cypriot patients in the Nicosia General Hospital, but it was not determined until decades later that many of the bodies had been murdered elsewhere, stored in the hospital for a while and then buried in Ayios Vasilios. However, several of the village's residents were also amongst those killed by Greek Cypriots. The exhumed bodies were interred by the Turkish Cypriot authorities to the yard of the
Mevlevi Tekke in Nicosia. The bodies were exhumed in the 2010s by the Missing Persons Committee, the eight villagers of Ayios Vasilios identified and buried individually. == Legacy ==