Cyprus-Forum.com

[EPSILON]

Epsilon,

You say that you have been won over to Denktash's dream. Fine, but which dream? If you look at Denktash's career you could argue that he has made statements or engaged in acts which support three different policies.

1. His famous comment which angered the first Turkish Ambassador appointed to the RoC in 1960, Emin Dirvana, was, "You have come as an ambassador and will depart as a district governor." He meant that Cyprus would be partitioned and part of the island would become a province of Turkey. So, here he appears to support full annexation of part of Cyprus to the Turkish Republic.

2. His statement, "We will keep it alive forever" with reference to the "TRNC" implies that he sees the creation of an independent, sovereign Turkish Cypriot state as an end goal and not a tactic in the direction of annexation.

3. Despite 1 and 2, we saw the same Denktash time and time again sitting down at the negotiating table trying to find a formula for reuniting the island. If he genuinely believed positions 1 or 2 above, surely he would turn round to the UN and say, "The problem has been solved. There is no need for any further negotiations."

So, I am genuinely curious. Which of the above three "dreams" is the one that has won you over?

OK, Denktash has made it abundantly clear in statements he has made that he only consented to take part in negotiations to make other people happy, and in the firm conviction that they would end in failure.

So, Denktash's dream was either 1 or 2 above. And the difference between these two options is of more than just academic imprtance for Cyprus.

Glafcos Clerides is reported to have made the following comment in the 1960's (source Fileleftheros 20 September 1992) "Today we Greek Cypriots fully control the government. There is neither a Vice-President armed with a veto nor are there three Turkish ministers. All the ministers are Greek. The international community recognises our government alone. Why should we bring the Turks back in among us… Today the Turks are only able to control their positions; that is three percent of the total land. Since they are not rich in resources they are in a weak economic position. In the end, they will capitulate to our decisions or get up and go." Sound familiar? I think this reflects the position of Greek Cypriot partitionists today, except that they are prepared to concede considerably more than three percent.

However, this position contains a fatal flaw if applied to the current-day situation. This is because, of the options I have listed above, partition if finalised will lead to result 1 above and not 2. The northern part of Cyprus is not today an enclave in which Turkish Cypriots eke out precarious existences under the constant threat of embargoes. The north of Cyprus is already de facto a province of the Turkish Republic. Recent debate in the Turkish Cypriot press has concluded that the only institution over which the "government" in the north has any control is the fire brigade! This is a puppet regime controlled by Turkey. The only reason that the pretence of a sovereign state is kept up is to keep the option of a negotiated settlement open. Totally remove that option and annexation to Turkey will only be a matter of time. The word "forever" is virtually the first thing that greets people crossing to the north at Ledra Palace; personally I don't believe it. Denktash's dream has always been annexation to Turkey, and the "TRNC" for him was just a tactical move on that road.

So, Epslon, what you are actually arguing for when you say you support Denktash's dream is for a border between Turkey and Cyprus to rum across this island. Moreover, given the rate with which settlers are being moved into Cyprus from Turkey, you would face a population on the other side of this border consisting mostly not of Turkish Cypriots who have a very similar culture to Greek Cypriots and have a collective memory of times when all Cypriots lived together in harmony, but of mainland Turks who have been whipped up into a frenzy of nationalistic hate against Greek Cypriots. Is this what you dream of? Would the rest of Cyprus ever breathe easy again if this happened? And, once you reach this situation, the game will have ended. There will be no turning back.

You are entitled to your opinion, but please think the consequences through.

Well sent. My position was not that i fully agree with Denktash dreams. I said , this was not my dream for Cyprus, BUT UNDER THE CIRCUSTANCES....I was refering to the solution of partricion in relation with Denktash policy and not of course to be a supporter of all Denkdash deep plans and ideas.

I underlined the need of security guarantee by NATO OR EU OR UN council.

My point which makes me , now, to support partition , explained many times in this forum. I do not believe that the two parties which are involving in a possible solution agreement are Tcs and Gcs.

I base by decision to support partition on the real fact that the side which will decide the main terms of a unification agreement is not Tcs or Gcs but only the invasion army and Ankara.In such a case i foreseen that the party which will impose the terms willl actually control all the territory of the new state named it ROC or otherwise.

In adition i am taking into account the mainland Greece policy after Cyprus entered EU which guide us to the conclusion that Greece gave what it has to give about Cyprus case and there is not any further interest on this subject.

Do not consider an acceptance of partition solution so easy target- pls do not be so sure that invasion army and Ankara will accept even such a proposal by Gcs.

By secured and guranteed boarders there is a small possibility the loosers of the war, Gcs,to suceed to survive as society/ethnicity in the Island which will not be the case if they became part of a Turkey's controlled Cyprus/state.

Our targets must always have a base of logic and not to try to suceed on the basis of our emotions.This if you remember costed us a lot.

The part of Gcs which created the last episode of Gcs disaster are blamed that they guided the Island to be devided. Beilieve me that I am not coming from this part of Gcs and my today's support to partition is based on logic and not on emotions which was the case in 1974.

[Get Real!]

:shock: Is someone implying that I'm a cross between a serf, a janissary, and a Cypriot womble? Because that would explain a lot...

You really want people to answer this??!!! That's like offering free napalm to pyromaniacs...

I often set members up with a perfect opportunity for a slum-dunk but alas... they just respond like you did!

What does someone have to do to get entertained around here?

[Tim Drayton]

Tim,

Are there enough Turkish Cypriots left in the north to make any kind of intercommunal, meaningful solution posible? The population census (what I saw of it anyway) shows that the settlers already outnumber the indigenous Cypriots. In effect we have partition and practically enosis of the north with Turkey.

From your experience of the north and your visits there how reversible is this situation? Is there any realistic hope of achieving a real federal solution agreed between the two communities? Sometimes I think that in 1974 the Greek Cypriots managed to rebel and get rid of the mainland Greeks from Cyprus. There was a horrific price but at least it left 67 per cent of the island free. It seems that the only way to free the north is a revolt by Turkish Cypriots, if there are enough of them left to revolt.

I think that this is a question that needs to be asked. Obviously, the answer should come directly from the mouths of those Turkish Cypriots who support reunification. So, perhaps I could refer to one such source. I have just been reading the house journal of Izzet Izcan's BKP (United Cyprus Party), Birleşik Kıbrıs (United Cyprus), in which the lead article is devoted to the question of settlers from the Turkish mainland, and the political motives behind these process. None of the points made are dramatically new, but reading this article makes me realise the importance of this issue and the way time is running out. Perhaps I can just give you my translations of one or two selected lines from this article:

"Our doctors are no longer treating Turkish Cypriot people, but the population transported here from Turkey. Our teachers come face to face with a different culture in the classroom.

(...)

Turkey, by illegally transporting population to North aims to create a new social structure which has no connection with the south.

(...)

Its aim is, by altering the social structure in the north, to turn the Turkish Cypriots into a small minority such that they can be pressurised, and to present to the world the political will exhibited by the imported population as the will of the Turkish Cypriots."

The last point is quite significant when you consider that a very ugly demonstration was held last week outside the offices of the pro-reunification Afrika newspaper. I think we are going to see more demonstrations of this kind where the participants are actually mainland Turks but the impression will be created that this is the voice of the Cypriot in the street. It is also ominous that Mehmet Ali Talat recently made a proclamation to the effect that the population of the "TRNC" could easily become 500,000 if everybody there was given citizenship.

The same article that I quoted from also goes on to make the claim that jobs are specifically being created for settlers that are denied to Turkish Cypriots, and also that settlers are being given bank loans to set up businesses which are not available to Turkish Cypriots. The first claim seems a little spurious to me. I thought that Turkish Cypriots were increasingly being attracted to the offer of better jobs in the south and settlers are partly being brought in to fill up numbers, and civil service appointments still remain the preserve of Cypriots, as far as I know. The second claim is not backed up by any evidence so I cannot vouch for its accuracy.

Reading between the lines of this article it sens shivers up my spine as a foreigner who has made commitments towards remaining in Cyprus and does not welcome the prospect of the border with Turkey running across the island. Have we perhaps departed from a policy of "Giden de Türk, gelen de Türk" (i.e. any losses due to emigration can be made up for by importing people from Turkey) to a policy of "Giden Kıbrıslı, gelen Türkiyeli" (i.e. encouraging Cypriots to migrate and replacing them with mainland Turks so that reunification will become politically impossible)? Editor of the Afrika newspaper, Şener Levent, once jokingly commented that the day may come when all Cypriots, both TC and GC live south of the line and there will only be mainlaind Turks north of it. Let's hope it remains a joke.

It really is a race against time. I believe that as long as people are free to cross to the other side and contacts between TCs and GCs increase, to begin with mainly just at the level of being work colleagues or customers in commercial transactions, but hopefully as time goes on a deeper level, a new political will could emerge for reunification that has genuine popular support. This cannot happen overnight, and a lot of other processes such as the one I pointed out above are working against this.

Quite frankly, I think the atmosphere among Turkish Cypriots is hardening. Prior to the referndum on the Annan Plan, there was a mass demonstration in Nicosia attended by a huge number of Turkish Cypriots bearing placards with slogans like "Denktash does not represent us". There were slogans of "Give me back my jasimines", the jasmine flower having been adopted as a symbol of Cypriotness. This was the atmosphere of protest you were looking for, and I feel that it has all but totally evaporated. The argument is obviously that we voted "yes" and you voted "no" so let's go our separate ways. Turkish Cypriots living in the north are, rightly or wrongly, pretty pissed of by the messages they are hearing from the GC side these days. The only message that is acceptable to them is that they will be accepted as a political partner, not a minority, in any prospective unified state, and they want cast iron guarantees of this. It may seem preposterous to some that a numerical minority can have anything more than minority rights, but Turkish Cypriots are not prepared to accept anything less. Makarios once, under different circumstances, famously spoke of the difference between the "desirable" and the "feasible", and stressed that the art of politics is aiming for the "feasible". Makarios was clearly a very able politician, and I think that the only feasible option on the table is a settlement based on poliitical partnership. If you don't go for it, you have to ask what the alternative is. Well, you did ask what I sense from the contacts I have with Turkish Cypriots, and this is it what I hear. Sorry if it unpalatable. And please remember that the clock is ticking away.

May I end my post on an optimistic note. I was in both sides of Nicosia last week. In the northern side in what used to be the main shopping streets of the Turkish quarter, I was walking along what I identify as being Arasta Street on my very old street plan of Nicosia. Three young Greek Cypriot women aged about 18-20 were walking along this street speaking Greek. They stopped to look at a shop window and one of the turned to the assistant, a Turkish Cypriot women of about the same age, and with a smile on her face said "Geia Sou". OK, what a banal event you say. But I visited the north of Cyprus many times in the 90s and walked in that part of Nicosia many times. If you had told me then that one day I would hear Greek spoken on that very street I would have said that you were mad. When seriously was the last time previous to 2002 that young Greek Cypriot women could calmly walk throught he centre of the Turkish quarter in Nicosia and not even have the slightest fear of making their ethnic origin known by openly addressing people in Greek? Some things are changing on the ground in Cyprus. There remains hope

[CopperLine]

What do I want to say ? ...I want to say that the postings between Tim Drayton and Nikitas is an example to follow. If there was a prize for best posting I'd give it to these two for the measured, careful and thoughtful discussion we've just witnessed. More of it.

[phoenix]

What do I want to say ? ...I want to say that the postings between Tim Drayton and Nikitas is an example to follow. If there was a prize for best posting I'd give it to these two for the measured, careful and thoughtful discussion we've just witnessed. More of it.

I take it you are a convert to the "reasoned argument" now Copperline . . .

. . . or was it the content that met with your approval?

[CopperLine]

Phoenix,
I'm not a convert to anything.

There are things in what Tim Drayton and Nikitas said which I don't agree with or which I'd give different weight to. Nevertheless what was absent from them was the hysteria, venom and enmity which characterise so many posts made here, yours included. I appreciated their reasoning and their differences and their ability to dissent without maligning the other's character or making false accusations as to the intentions of the other.[/i]

[phoenix]

Phoenix,
I'm not a convert to anything.

There are things in what Tim Drayton and Nikitas said which I don't agree with or which I'd give different weight to. Nevertheless what was absent from them was the hysteria, venom and enmity which characterise so many posts made here, yours included. I appreciated their reasoning and their differences and their ability to dissent without maligning the other's character or making false accusations as to the intentions of the other.[/i]

I knew that! . .

[Nikitas]

Tim thank you for the insight.

I definitely hear the clock ticking away on more than one level. Everyday I wonder if I will get to visit Famagusta once before I finally check out.

I read Sener Levent every day in Politis and heard him speak on RIK TV. He is, in my opinion, the most reliable and insightful commentator in Cyprus today (all of Cyprus).

The equality of the two communities is a thorn. At a personal level I feel this and it is not based on ethnicity, but on the violation of the one man one vote principle that my western education has fostered. But now, with EU membership and the guarantees of personal rights and equality the EU insists on, things are more palatable.

I will give an apparently unrelated example. The Greek supreme court, applying EU court rulings yesterday ruled that men civil servants can retire after 25 years of service even if they have not reached 65, beacuse that is the retirement system for female civil servants. The rule of equality works in the mens favor overturning local legislation. The EU is a stickler on its rules and has the (financial) means to enforce them. So things for the individual would be different than in the 60s.

From the point of view of community equality, well most federal systems apply equality between their federal components. California is equal to Idaho, to give an example, even though California has 80 times the population. In practice each part assumes the importance it really has. Kikapu and Kifeas both set out federal plans which address the individual and communal rights issues.

But the settlers are a problem. A painful compromise would be acceptable if the beneficiaries of the sacrifice are Cypriots. It is totally different if they are mainland Turks because in this case the compromise becomes a conquest, and that just does not go down at all! I am surprised that Turkish Cypriot politicians seem not to understand this emotional aspect and how it lies at the root of the NO to the Annan plan.

[joanna]

100% agree, and i think the majority will agree whether GC or TC

[CopperLine]

I share much of Nikitas' assessment, especially of the changed conditions and circumstances that have come along with both EU expansion but especially the practical extension of European human rights law, equalities law and so on. Certainly any proposed settlement which rests in any way on an ethnic or communal criteria flies in the face of all of these other positive developments.

Whilst not underestimating the continued difficulties of arguing for a democratic and non-communal settlement I also agree with Nikitas that the Turkish army remains a problem - perhaps the central problem not just for Cyprus, nor just for TCs but also for Turkey itself. (That is why, amongst other reasons, we should be bothered about Turkish democracy and the beating that it is taking from fascists, nationalists and AKPers alike). Given that TCs on the whole do think that Turkey saved TCs, that most TCs sincerely believe that the Turkish army did (and does) protect the community, but that now a significant proportion of TCs resent the continued presence of the Turkish army or rather the lack of autonomy or independence of the TRNC from Turkey, then what can TCs do about this ? It is just not enough - it just doesn't recognise the depth and power of the problem - to say that TCs are wrong or mistaken in their beliefs or that they should "just get a grip" and tell Turkey where to go.

The problem for TCs is that, whatever the alleged backroom shenanigans that were going on in the run up to the AP referendum, the TC community mobilised for what they thought would be an acceptable solution only to be disappointed. More than disappointment is the fact that just a few years ago TCs confronted Turkish nationalism, Turkish Cypriot nationalism, Denktash's semi-fascist politics .... and it is very, very hard in the wake of that disappointment to re-mobilise for a new Cyprus that specifically excludes Turkey and Turkish nationalist institutions (army, education, finance, etc).

To add to this is the point already made by Nikitas about Turkish settlers. Whether official Turkish policy or not, whatever the details of subsidies, tax breaks, work privileges etc, there is without a doubt a demographic shift in favour of Turkish (and it should also be said in favour of Brits, Germans, etc) It is TCs who may - again as already mentioned - become a minority in their own land. That last fact also makes TC mobilisation against the current Turkish dominance still more difficult.

Nikitas' and Tim Drayton's discussion is sobering and judicious and also tinging with some hope if not optimism. Regretably, I wonder if it is all a little bit too late for the TCs, in particular, to do much about.

For the moment, I end with Hegel on the Greek myth of Minerva and knowledge : In his 'Preface' to 'Philosophy of Right' he writes, - "Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. .... The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering." In other words we only gain wisdom at the end of the day, when it is too late to do anything. (But read the whole preface, it's wonderful see http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/preface.htm