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24.05.2025 – The Union of Cypriots represented Cyprus at an international theoretical conference on Comprador and Bureaucrat Capitalism in the Neocolonies, organized by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK), held in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 23–24.
The conference, held over two days, provided an opportunity to examine the prevailing mode of production in various countries and to discuss the historical development of neocolonial societies under imperialist control. Delegates explored the underlying foundations of bureaucrat and comprador capitalism, the strategies used by imperialist powers to maintain dominance, and the role of local classes as agents of economic exploitation and political subservience in service of foreign interests.
The conference brought together 110 individuals from 28 political parties, anti-imperialist formations, research organizations, and progressive people’s movements across 20 countries on five continents. Participants engaged with 21 articles presented by groups leading liberation movements. These included contributions from the Union of Cypriots, who represented Cyprus, alongside organizations and movements from Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Kenya, Kurdistan, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Sudan, South Sudan, Turkey, Uganda, and Zambia.
The Union of Cypriots’ contribution to the international theoretical conference on Comprador and Bureaucrat Capitalism in the Neocolonies was as follows:
Resisting the Hidden Machinery of Neocolonial Domination
Across every corner of the colonial and neocolonial world, the machinery of oppression does not function solely through foreign armies or distant capital. It relies heavily on internal collaborators who benefit not from national liberation but from continued national subjugation. Compradors and bureaucratic capitalists act as vital structural links, embedding foreign domination within local economies and administrations, ensuring that imperial control remains both entrenched and oppressive.
Even as continents and centuries change, the colonizers’ need for systems of domination remains constant. The same holds true for Cyprus, an island situated in one of the most geopolitically strategic locations in the world. The people of Cyprus, the Cypriots, have consistently been denied true sovereignty throughout their history. Over the last thousand years, Cyprus has passed from colonizer to colonizer, from the Crusaders to the Venetians, from the Ottomans to the British. Each power entrenched foreign control through subjugation and exploitation, aided by collaborators they found and funded in every corner of the island.
During Ottoman rule, the sultan’s primary intermediary on the island was the Church of Cyprus, which had been granted the right to collect taxes from the Christian population—the majority of the island’s inhabitants. In 1831, when both Muslim and Christian Cypriot peasants, oppressed by heavy taxation and systemic exploitation, rose together in the historic Gavur Imam Revolt, it was the Church that helped Ottoman authorities suppress the revolt and restore the exploitative system. As a result of its privileged position under Ottoman colonial rule, the Church of Cyprus accumulated vast wealth and land. To this day, it remains the richest institution on the island.
Under British colonial rule, foreign domination and the strategy of divide and rule were sustained through the cultivation of local allies. The colonial authorities fostered a narrow layer of Cypriot elites, both Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking, who gained not only materially but also politically from their alignment with the imperialist power. In 1948, when Cypriot miners united in a strike against the American-owned Cyprus Mines Corporation, the British turned to these collaborators to divide the workers and suppress the movement. This ensured continued control over labor and the island’s natural resources.
Despite these efforts, the armed liberation struggle of Cypriots against British colonialism led to formal independence for the first time in the island’s history in 1960. A Cyprus that did not follow the regional examples of NATO-aligned Greece and Turkey, and instead sought to position itself within the anti-colonial and non-aligned world, was seen by the West as a threat to its strategic interests. As a result, a NATO-backed plan for Turkish occupation was carried out in 1974, only fourteen years after independence. Immediately following this Turkish occupation, Cypriots were presented with a NATO-supported project known as the bicommunal bizonal federation, aimed at the fragmentation and destatification of the Cypriot nation. Since the NATO-backed Turkish occupation, which forcibly segregated the Cypriot population, internal agents of imperialism among both Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking Cypriots have continued to collaborate. They serve colonial interests in both the occupied and free areas of the island, promoting the projects and aims of the colonizers.
Today, Cyprus exists as a neocolony. This status is deeply embedded in its economy, politics, land, and legal structures. Strategically located, the island functions as an unsinkable aircraft carrier just a few miles from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. It serves five NATO countries— the United Kingdom, Turkey, Greece, the United States, and France—despite the will of the Cypriot people.
The role assigned to comprador and bureaucratic capitalists by imperialist powers is to protect the status quo and facilitate fait accompli situations. For over half a century, Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking collaborators, far removed from the will of the people, have worked together to fulfill this role, preserving their economic interests and reinforcing a political order that serves the broader architecture of imperialist control in West Asia and North Africa. Rather than resisting colonization or advocating for a democratic, unitary, and sovereign Cyprus, they normalize occupation through networks of economic collaboration, informal trade, and elite consensus. In exchange for military, economic, and political cooperation with Western imperialist powers, the elite in the Republic of Cyprus actively promote the imperialist agenda and projects on the island, relying heavily on imperialist support.
In the areas occupied by Turkey, Turkish-speaking Cypriot comprador elites act as intermediaries for Turkish occupiers, capital, and colonization efforts. This is most clearly seen in their support for illegal settlements on properties seized from displaced Greek-speaking Cypriots for illegal tourism, housing, and commercial use. Bureaucratic capitalists embedded in the occupation regime of the so-called “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” guarantee these colonial ventures. These networks extend beyond property theft, encompassing illegal economies involving money laundering, unregulated casinos, and trafficking routes including drug and human trafficking, enabled by a lack of oversight and complicity from the unrecognized illegal entity that controls the areas occupied by Turkey in Cyprus.
In the areas legally controlled by the Republic of Cyprus, comprador elites deepened imperialist control by profiting from economic dependence and the island’s occupation. Bureaucratic corruption weakened the state’s ability to resist, allowing Turkey’s occupation and British military bases to persist unchallenged. In some cases, elites within the Republic of Cyprus actively benefited from settler colonization in the occupied territories, further entrenching neocolonial domination.
An example that illustrates the complexity of how comprador and bureaucratic capitalists protect the status quo can be seen in their reaction to the ongoing campaign launched in 2024 by the Union of Cypriots against illegal settlements built on usurped Greek-speaking Cypriot land in the areas of Cyprus occupied by Turkey. These settlements, often the result of Turkish-Zionist collaboration, constitute crimes against humanity under international law. Our efforts led to the arrest of several individuals involved, including Zionists, which triggered a swift backlash from Turkish-speaking Cypriot elites who had facilitated these crimes. Shortly afterward, the names of Greek-speaking Cypriot capitalist elites and lawyers complicit in these actions also came to light. When the Zionists were jailed, the so-called president of the Zionist entity, Isaac Herzog, intervened, followed by then–United States President Joe Biden, both attempting to interfere with the legal process in Cyprus. Greek-speaking Cypriot political elites worked behind the scenes to undermine the campaign, both out of loyalty to these foreign powers and under the guise that our actions endangered the five-decade-long NATO-backed project of bicommunal and bizonal federation talks for Cyprus under United Nations auspices. Despite all this pressure, due to our sustained efforts and broad support from the overwhelming majority of Cypriots, those criminals, including the Zionists, remain in jail in Cyprus until this day.
The struggle for a fully independent and truly democratic unitary Cyprus is not only a fight against external occupations and imperialism but also against the internal forces that sustain this oppression. History shows us that liberation demands dismantling the network of intermediaries and collaborators who profit from the fragmentation and subjugation of the nation. Understanding comprador and bureaucrat capitalism in the neocolonies in advancing the struggle for national liberation and against imperialism is essential to recognizing these internal mechanisms that uphold neocolonial control not only for Cypriots but for all oppressed nations engaged in struggles for national liberation worldwide. The road to liberation is arduous, but the promise of freedom and dignity for all oppressed nations shines as a beacon that no colonizer or their hidden machinery of neocolonial domination can extinguish.
