On November 19, 1987, the US Senate amended the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to declare “defense articles of United States origin may not be transferred to or used on Cyprus by Turkey or Greece.” The arms embargo passed without notice in either the Washington Post or New York Times, and neither president Ronald Reagan’s papers nor secretary of state George Shultz’s autobiography mention the ban. The senators behind the amendment believed it would jumpstart diplomacy by convincing both Greeks and Turks there was no military solution. In reality, it did the opposite: Because Turkey has more men under arms than France and Germany combined, the United States kept weaponry flowing to Turkey, much of which successive Turkish governments diverted to Cyprus. As Turkey built its own indigenous military industry, Ankara increased its military transfers to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus even further.
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