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Interesting article for us to all ponder upon...

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Cyprus : ‘Help’, interpretations, and the isolation of Greek Cypriotic isolation

In the aftermath of the Brussels Summit, which dated the start of accession negotiations with Turkey for October 2005, and in anticipation of the parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus on 20 February 2005, the question of breaking the postreferendum deadlock is once again becoming prominent.

In the last month, Turkish-Cypriot NGOs have urged the UN Secretary General to take steps towards the resumption of negotiations, the Greek-
Cypriot president has visited Athens, presumably to coordinate with the Republic’s closest ally in case such steps are made, and, in an unprecedented move, the only nominally ‘conservative’ Greek-
Cypriot party DISY has undertaken an official visit to Turkey, which included talks at the highest governmental level. That ‘something’ might happen before the actual start of EU accession negotiations with Turkey is difficult to refute. Much more difficult though is to attempt to predict what this would be –a round of talks most likely but with a goal and a format
that are at present completely unknown.

And as the Green Line remains permeable to an increasingly less curious number of crossers, it would appear that southerners and northerners are slowly moving back to the old patterns of their separate normalities. Yet among the crossers are a group of people for whom a particular kind of coexistence is an important part of daily life. A few thousand Turkish-Cypriots daily cross the Green Line in order to work for Greek-Cypriots, the vast majority as manual labourers.

This coexistence, permeated as it is by relations of ethnic domination, is a far cry from the ideal that any ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’, in the political rhetoric of both sides, seeks to establish –an ideal that, crucially, the Greek-Cypriot leadership still maintains as the goal of any future solution it would be prepared to support. And it is for this reason that the recent statements of the Republic’s Minister of Foreign Affairs pose a question about his government’s interpretation of such ideal future
coexistence.

Answering questions in mid-January about the renewed calls of the Turkish-Cypriot leadership for the EU funding pledged for the development of the north after the referenda to be made available in order to help lift the isolation of Turkish-Cypriots, he claimed that the greatest help to the Turkish-Cypriots is already being given by the Republic to them through easing their access to the job market in the south. That these relatively few Turkish-Cypriots, around 3000 of
whom are registered with the Republic’s Ministry of Labour and are thus entitled to social security is proof, the statement seems to suggest, that the Republic is willing to ‘help’ Turkish-Cypriots.

The problem is that such ‘help’ can only be seen as a good-will measure, in the spirit that the Minister’s statement implies, only if such access to the job market and social security benefits are not viewed as rights but only as some form of governmental ‘handouts’. In fact, work and social security (which not all Turkish-Cypriot labourers in the south get), are fundamental rights which Turkish-Cypriots, as citizens of the Republic under the constitution of 1960, are entitled to. Perhaps it is the residence of these citizens in a part of the island that since the drawing up of the Protocol to the Accession Treaty that the Republic signed is formally
recognised as ‘territory outside the control of the Republic’s authorities’ that could have posed problems to their enjoyment of these rights. Yet since any refusal to grant these rights on such a basis would probably
be subject to judicial decisions, the reasons why the Republic has not yet considered such sanctions seem obvious.

In this context then, the claim that the ‘greatest help’ is the granting of citizenship rights can only be viewed as a reminder of the unwillingness of the Greek-Cypriot leadership to engage with the actual problems perpetuated by the absence of a solution –in this case, the relationships under formation between Turkish-Cypriots and the EU and the changing relationships between Greek- and Turkish- Cypriots. And while the
EU funds that provoked these statements are still being negotiated between Cyprus and Brussels, queues of labourers continue to form at the checkpoints in the mornings, and the economic disparities that push them there are still the primary argument fought in the election campaign. The reading of rights as ‘help’ is better left as an isolated statement of which the more extreme xenophobic undertones should not be explicated.

Ironically, one story of economic cross-border movement seems to have come full-circle: the owner of the Turkish-Cypriot bank Everest, the collapse of which along with others brought about the first demonstrations
against the regime in the north in 2000, who had been living in the south after escaping arrest in the north, was shot dead around the time these statements were made, presumably by killers who had crossed from the north to ‘settle the score’. The question of their apprehension is split along the Green Line and it looks as if UN mediation might be necessary to
bring it about. Like ‘rights’ and ‘help’, the meaning of ‘legality’ also seems to get modified as it crosses the border.

Written by Olga Demitrou
http://www.euborderconf.bham.ac.uk/publ ... ssue11.pdf