July 20, 2026, Virginia | Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the Turkish Rescue and Peace Operation, conducted by the Turkish Army in Cyprus on July 20, 1974, to protect the lives and liberties of the island’s Turkish community from mass extermination.
The Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) commends the Turkish Armed Forces, which carried out one of the few modern military interventions that improved human rights and democracy—alongside the British intervention in the Falkland Islands. The 1974 Turkish intervention toppled the Greek junta in Athens and halted anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim massacres by the Greek military and Greek Cypriot militias, who had been campaigning for Greek and Orthodox Christian homogeneity on the island since 1963 under the ineffective watch of United Nations Peacekeeping Forces.
ATAA reaffirms its support for the removal of the economic and cultural embargoes that continue the racist policies of the Greek Cypriot government and violate the human rights of Turkish Cypriots.
Turkish Army War Memorial, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus