halil wrote:his latest article was this one at Dialoque Cyprus.
The work of moving mountains
By Nicos Rolandis
“The Irish conflict once seemed as intractable as any in the world. The Irish solved it by mutual concessions, persistent negotiation, refusal to give in to momentary setbacks and a willingness to let friendly outsiders help. That’s a good template for others to follow”.
In her own historical course during the past 50 years, Cyprus directed her footsteps to an objective quite different from the above. The phrase “political compromise” was absent from the Cyprus vocabulary. We used to reject proposals before we studied them. Instead of building confidence, we demolished it. Co-operation was upstaged by conflict.
I recall vividly a story which Tassos Papadopoulos related to us, a group of friends, one evening, around 1962:
It was about a decision of the Council of Ministers. There was a proposal submitted to the Council, Tassos said, for the approval of the construction of an asphalted road which would connect two Turkish Cypriot villages, close to Nicosia, at a cost of £100,000. The majority of the Greek Cypriot ministers were opposed to the proposal. Eventually, after a long discussion, it was agreed that the asphalt would cover only a single lane. This reduced the cost to £50,000, but it meant, in effect, that if two cars going to opposite directions came across each other on the road (most probably driven by Turkish Cypriots) one of the drivers would have to fall into the un-asphalted part of the road or into the ditch and would probably damage his vehicle.
When the meeting of the Council of Ministers was over, Tassos said, Makarios told him: “Tassos, today we saved £50,000.” “No, your Beatitude,” Tassos retorted, “today we squandered £50,000.”
In other words, whilst Makarios was satisfied because we had curtailed the budget of the “useless Turks” by £50,000, Tassos regretted the fact that we even approved £50,000 for the single-lane road.
We were all silent for a moment and then I interjected: “If this is our mentality in the Council of Ministers, I am afraid that we have neither saved nor lost £50,000. It is Cyprus that we are losing.”
And indeed, we lost Cyprus. We partitioned the country. When the initial enthusiasm and the jubilation which followed the 1960 declaration of Makarios that “We have won” subsided, we all grabbed the body of Cyprus, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike, each side pulling it its own way, until we broke the country apart. Neither side displayed the love and affection of the “mother” in Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Cycle, which might have saved the common motherland. We brought in illegal weapons, they brought in illegal weapons. Warlords on their side, warlords on our side. The ‘Akritas’ organisation on the Greek side, the TMT organisation on the Turkish side.
Eventually we Greek Cypriots dealt the fatal blow, the coup de grace. We endeavored in 1963 to amend the Constitution and strip the Turkish Cypriots of the rights we conferred on them in 1960 by our own signature. In other words, Makarios tried to change radically the very same Constitution which three years before he hailed with the words “We have won”.
We were not wise enough. We failed to win the Turkish Cypriot community. We rejected a Constitution which we had signed and which is considered today as a “blessing”, even by people like Tassos Papadopoulos, who realised in 2005 – that is 42 years later – that the Constitution was a blessing (as he said) and that its provisions were constructive. In 1963, however, Tassos and almost all the others scuttled the provisions of the Constitution as if it were an anathema.
Unfortunately, the above mentality persists today as well. So, when Demetris Christofias referred recently to “a partnership which exists since the 1960s”, those who, in effect, have been striving over the years to abort a solution to our problem, felt uncomfortable. They invoked all sorts of legalistic arguments. However, any objective analyst who will study the 85 pages of the Cyprus Constitution, will reach the conclusion that a partnership between the two communities permeates the whole text. There are two communities, whose co-operation is mandatory throughout the whole spectrum of the constitutional functions: The President and the Vice President of the Republic, the House of Representatives, the High Court, the Independent Officers, the Public Service, the Armed Forces. Both communities have a role in all the above; the Constitution cannot function and the country cannot survive without the co-operation of the two communities. If this does not constitute a partnership, I wonder what a partnership could ever be.
Christofias was right when he alluded to those who never believed in the 1960 Agreements and who, by projection, never believed in the Republic of Cyprus. However, he did not dare speak out and say what is self-evident. He did not say that those who never accepted the co-operation between the two communities have, as a consequence, been pursuing the partition of the country.
Since the year 1184, i.e. for 824 years, Cyprus has been under occupation or semi-occupation, with the exception of the period 1960-1974. In the years of Isaac Comnenus, of the Crusaders, the Franks, the Venetians, the Turks, the British and then again the Turks, we never governed ourselves, we were never free. Christofias, even if I disagree with the methodology of the Working Groups and the Technical Committees (which are a legacy of the disastrous Papadopoulos era), tries, under adverse conditions, to refute the old adage that “a mountain will not move to join another mountain”. He tries to get Troodos and Pentadaktylos together. He tries to restore peace and independence after 824 years of occupation.
I do not belong to Christofias’ ideological camp, but I have worked with him many times in the past: from July 1987 to February 1988, when Ezekias Papaioannou appointed him as liaison officer between my party (the Liberal Party) and his party, during the campaign of George Vassiliou, whom we both supported for the Presidency of the Republic. We also worked together in the summer and late autumn of 1992 in New York, when the Ghali Set of Ideas was under negotiation.
I do not believe very much in walls separating people on ideology: in the international arena and especially in the European Union, “right”, “centre”, “socialist” and “left” do not differ that much. What is significant is to believe in the human being and his rights, in social justice and in the values of life. And most importantly to be willing and able to soothe human suffering and to eradicate injustice which afflicts two out of three residents on this planet.
Thus far, Demetris works tirelessly for his country, with courage and realism. It is easy for some people, acting under the mantle of “patriotism”, to pursue the “absolute” which is not feasible and does not exist, to try to appear as heroes and to vilify others who are chasing hope, even in the darkness.
Cyprus will smile again after 824 years of occupation, when Troodos sends a kiss to Pentadaktylos.
n Nicos Rolandis was foreign minister from 1978-1983
NICOS A. ROLANDIS
POLITICAL BUREAU
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Tel:+357 22 353811/2, Fax:+357 22 353100, P.O. Box 21700 – 1508 Nicosia. Email: [email protected]
This is the one I was translating from the Turkish,halil...I saw it in Hasan Hasturer's column in Kibris...You saved me a lot of time,but stole my thunder as well...not sure if I should thanks you,mate...
