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[kafenes]

In Cyprus, Warm Words Conceal Dark Intentions

By Torode, John

Something is stirring on Aphrodite's Isle. For the first time since Turkey seized Northern Cyprus in 1974, thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, forcibly segregated for decades, are in amicable daily contact across the great divide. The new president of Cyprus and his unrecognised TurkishCypriot opposite number met recently, and actually agreed to start formal peace talks in September. So why are senior politicians on both sides privately warning that a new disaster, as dangerous as the original invasion and partition, is now a real possibility? Recently I sought clues on bullet-scarred Ledra Street, in old Nicosia. This the place which half a century ago colonial Brits called Murder Mile. Greek Cypriot sixth-former boys on their way home from school allegedly shot British troops in the back here, then unsportingly slipped the guns to schoolgirls and trainee priests who would hide them in their inviolable underwear. Postindependence in 1960, it was the venue for periodic inter- communal violence. Then came professional fighting in 1974 as mainland Turkish troops partitioned Cyprus, supposedly to create a temporary safe haven for the vulnerable Turkish Cypriot minority.

Next the 'Green Line' went up, closing Ledra Street, dividing both town and island. Until this April, central Ledra Street was pretty much deserted -- a place of wrecked and abandoned buildings and rusting, burnedout cars. Tourists, hacks and do-gooding dignitaries came to gawk at armed UN patrols, and at the two communities' barbed wire barricades, machine-gun posts, watchtowers and sandbag emplacements, complete with provocative Turkish and Greek flags.

Now the battered buildings are discreetly shielded by smart blue curtaining, hymning the joys of EU redevelopment money.

The wall has been breached (but certainly not pulled down) and checkpoints inserted. Locals cross in thousands -- Turkish Cypriots to work in the prosperous Greek south, and Greek Cypriots to gaze longingly at abandoned homes, to shop, or just have a Turkish coffee and a chat with long-lost neighbours. Ledra Street is abuzz with smart new coffee shops, cafes and boutiques.

Even so, the British Foreign Office, the US State Department and assorted Eurocrats and UN bagmen insist that much more is required, of Greek Cypriots. If they do not progress from informal fraternising to agreement on the details of a 'bicommunal, bi-zonal federation', in pretty short order, we global do-gooders might well take our bat and ball -- and our moneybags -- and go home. The implied threat is that Greek Cyprus will be presented as the obstructive guilty party in any breakdown. In which case Turkey -- desperately unstable and unpredictable, as events this week have demonstrated -- might feel encouraged to take a gamble and formally annex the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Certainly there is a sense of private pessimism and fear in both communities which challenges the upbeat public rhetoric used by the new president of Cyprus Demetris Christofias when he paid his first official visit to Gordon Brown earlier this month, as well as the relaxed way Greek and Turkish Cypriots are intermingling.

Since 9/11, the (increasingly anxious and utterly unrealistic) aim of Britain and America has been to lever Turkey into the EU, so anchoring her to the West and immunising her against Islamofascism. But that can't happen while Turkey still occupies a great hunk of Cyprus, a member of the EU.

Hence the determination to force through a solution acceptable to Turkey -- or to place the blame for continued failure on the intransigence of their Greek Cypriot victims.

The last Western attempt to impose a settlement failed in 2004. The pro-Turkish Annan plan, drawn up in secret by assorted Western diplomats was -- on a take-it or leave-it basis -- put to referenda in both communities. The Greek Cypriots, led by the then President Tassos Papadopoulos chose to leave it. So the Foreign Office, the EU and the Americans devoted themselves to bullying Papadopoulos and undermining his administration. In January the Greek Cypriot community voted Papadopoulos, a pro-Western, mildly rightof-centre commercial lawyer, out of office, replacing him with Christofias, a communist party apparatchik -- to great rejoicing in London, Brussels and Washington. (Don't ask -- Cyprus is a logic-free zone. ) At which point the global great and good graciously returned to the people of Cyprus 'ownership of the peace process'. So it is that in the past three months official, cross-community working parties have been discussing, inter alia, a new constitution, the right of return (or not) for hundreds of thousands of displaced people of both races, the restoration (or not) of abandoned property, and the fate of more than 100,000 backward, aggressively nationalistic and devoutly Islamic Turkish settlers.

They were shipped in from the mainland and given citizenship to tilt the demographic balance in Turkey's favour, and to keep the more secular and democratically-minded Turkish Cypriots in their place. (There are already more Turks than Turkish Cypriots living in the North, and, boy, do the Turkish Cypriots hate it. ) I recently spent a few days talking to key players. None asked to go off the record and all held astonishingly similar views. Among them was Papadopoulos. He is convinced that Turkey no longer wants a negotiated settlement, and has lost interest in the idea of the bi- zonal, bicommunal federal solution -- the declared goal of all parties for 30 years. He says the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, 'takes his dictation from Turkey'. Now you could, wrongly in my view, dismiss Papadopoulos's comments as sniping by a rejected president. But George Iacovou, a former foreign secretary and the new President's man in charge of negotiations, expresses similar doubts and fears.

Talet is 'Ankara's man' and he suspects that Ankara 'lacks the will to settle'. He fears that the West -- which sees Christofias as 'malleable' -- is setting the stage for Turkey to 'look good' when and if the talks break down.

Then I took myself across the Ledra Street checkpoint, to Mr Talet's unrecognised ministate. There I bounced these worries off Ali Erel, the nearest thing the North has to a leader of the opposition. (If it were not for the swamping votes of the settlers he could well have been president by now. ) He too insists that Turkey no longer wants a negotiated settlement; it is simply playing for time, hoping to avoid blame if the peace talks collapse. Then, astonishingly, Ali Erel predicts, tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots will flee their 'safe haven' to resettle in the more liberal, prosperous -- and now more genuinely Cypriot -- Greek area from which many of them fled in 1974. More sensational still, he feels that Turkey would secretly welcome such an exodus, although it would 'put an end to the pretence that the Turkish armed forces are here us to protect us, because those they claim to protect are escaping from them'. It is a bizarre suggestion, but it makes a mad sort of sense if you believe, as, apparently a growing number of worldly-wise Cypriots do, that Turkey really is bent on annexing the North, and that -- as happened in 1974 -- a hypocritical West would shed precious few tears.

Copyright Spectator Aug 2, 2008

(c) 2008 Spectator, The; London. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Story Source: Spectator, The; London

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/vi ... Words.html

[Nikitas]

Annexing the north, like Israel annexed the Golan heights, is not the kind of thing that can legally happen after 1945. Legally in this case means formalised and recognised in such a way as to extinguish rights of the "owning" state. The Golan is still subject to negotiated settlement with Syria precisely because the Israeli annexation cannot be recognised by anyone.

Annexing the north would leat to understanding that the south is free to do what it wants. Which no doubt it will do. And having legal claim to the north the long term course of action is obvious.

[humanist]

Very interesting post Nikitas, even I managed to figure it out. Hope Talat and Turkey do also. Might save the TC's a few more years of suffrage under Turkish occupation and might reach to te obvious solution now, whilst the iron is still hot so to speak.

[Paphitis]

Very good article Kafenes.

But what gets me is that our side have been making most, if not all the concessions and the Turks have made none. A solution based on BBF, is in itself one such compromise and concession. Now, lets assume these peace talks fail, how can the west justify shifting the blame onto the RoC as they did with the Annan Plan? Surely, the blame should be on Turkey, as she has not made one single concession and keeps insisting on making unacceptable demands such as "virgin birth" Confederacy, and a Guarantorship from Turkey. And how can Turkey be a Guarantor to Cyprus, when she is even incapable of taking care and sorting out her own problems on the domestic front?

As far as Annexation is concerned, I do not believe that this is possible. The US will prevent this from happening, as her main aim is to get Turkey into the EU. This will not happen if Turkey annexes the north or continues the occupation.

[Tim Drayton]

Annexing the north, like Israel annexed the Golan heights, is not the kind of thing that can legally happen after 1945. Legally in this case means formalised and recognised in such a way as to extinguish rights of the "owning" state. The Golan is still subject to negotiated settlement with Syria precisely because the Israeli annexation cannot be recognised by anyone.

Annexing the north would leat to understanding that the south is free to do what it wants. Which no doubt it will do. And having legal claim to the north the long term course of action is obvious.

If the international community were to grant the separate right of self-determination to the Turkish Cypriots - and this is a big "if" because this would fly in the face of all UN resolutions - then annexation could be accomplished through a referendum in a manner that accords with international law, rather than militarily.

This would require a major paradigm shift in the way the international community views the Cyprus problem, but I think if the current round of negotiations fails this may spark off some rethinking about Cyprus.

[Bananiot]

Talet is 'Ankara's man' and he suspects that Ankara 'lacks the will to settle'. He fears that the West -- which sees Christofias as 'malleable' --is setting the stage for Turkey to 'look good' when and if the talks break down.

Should we seriously believe that George Iacovou has hinted the above? Anyway, my objection to the article is that it portrays the solution process as of interest only to foreigners and this is utterly unacceptable. Christofias, along with the vast majority of Greek Cypriots, understands that solution is our only chance to survive on this island and he also understands that time is running out. Greek Cypriots voted out Papadopoulos last February because it became obvious to them that Papadopoulos was not interested in solution.

May be, just like Nikitas, Papadopoulos still believes that double union is our best option.

[Piratis]

One of the few AngloAmerican made articles which is not pro-Turkish. And of course Bananiot objects to it

If the international community were to grant the separate right of self-determination to the Turkish Cypriots - and this is a big "if" because this would fly in the face of all UN resolutions - then annexation could be accomplished through a referendum in a manner that accords with international law, rather than militarily.

Tim, this is not about "self-determination". With self-determination, you determine the destiny of yourself and what is yours. What the Turks occupy today is not theirs. The 100% of it belongs to Republic of Cyprus, and the 80% of the private owned land belongs to Greek Cypriots, who are legally the overwhelming majority of that part of Cyprus as well. So it is not theirs to fall under their "self-determination" even if they had one.

For official partition to happen or for Turkey to be allowed to officially annex the north, what should happen is the UN to accept that a foreign country can invade and take part of another sovereign country. This will never happen because the UN were created after WWII to oppose exactly these kind of Nazi behavior. (In fact the Nazis used the exact same excuse the Turks used when they invade Czechoslovakia - to supposedly protect the German minority there)

[iceman]

Then came professional fighting in 1974 as mainland Turkish troops partitioned Cyprus, supposedly to create a temporary safe haven for the vulnerable Turkish Cypriot minority.

Next the 'Green Line' went up, closing Ledra Street, dividing both town and island. Until this April, central Ledra Street was pretty much deserted -- a place of wrecked and abandoned buildings and rusting, burnedout cars.

Someone should have told this idiot that Ledra Street was closed and the Green line drawn in 1963 NOT 1974!!

[Nikitas]

Bananiot said:

"Christofias, along with the vast majority of Greek Cypriots, understands that solution is our only chance to survive on this island and he also understands that time is running out."

A bad solution is also a step towards the demise of Gcs on the island. In case you have not noticed, the invasion caused the demise of the TCs as a community. A bad solution could do the same for GCs. The deal is not a "solution at any cost" but a viable solution.

Time is running out for whom? The GC community has survived on 63 per cent of the island for 34 years. How will the non solution affect this situation? The stress of time is a dramatic ploy to induce anxiety in film and theater audiences. It is not the best mecahism to use when talking about a solution that we hope is going to last for generations.

[Paphitis]

Bananiot said:

"Christofias, along with the vast majority of Greek Cypriots, understands that solution is our only chance to survive on this island and he also understands that time is running out."

A bad solution is also a step towards the demise of Gcs on the island. In case you have not noticed, the invasion caused the demise of the TCs as a community. A bad solution could do the same for GCs. The deal is not a "solution at any cost" but a viable solution.

Time is running out for whom? The GC community has survived on 63 per cent of the island for 34 years. How will the non solution affect this situation? The stress of time is a dramatic ploy to induce anxiety in film and theater audiences. It is not the best mecahism to use when talking about a solution that we hope is going to last for generations.

To induce anxiety is exactly his aim!!