Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

"When you created the Cyprus problem there was no EU,so whatever solution there will be it will be through United Nations not European Union you joined.."

Thre is not choice. The EU has to rubber stamp any solution to ensure it does not conflict with EU legal rules. There can be some deviation from some rules, but the basics must be implemented.

Greece has tried several times to bypass rules claiming that they conflict with its constitution, it has not worked.

Forget trying to evade the basics, like freedom of movement for people and capital, freedom of establishment, right to own property.

Also, the EU does not allow ANY member to enter without accepting the European Charter of human rights. So one way or another the major player is the EU and not the UN.

[zan]

and your still not seeing a penny VP.....................

You are the bigger losers here the 4 billion dollars refers to lost "RoC" revenues for not being able to enter Turkish docks. The income for Turkey is miniscule in comparison.

Are you prepared to gives us some figures VP, as to how much it's going to cost Turkey ( just from direct foreign investments alone) if their EU accession talks come to a dead end next year, if the Cyprus problem is not settled.?

As the saying goes,

"what goes around, comes around".!!

Companies have 80,000,000 people to sell their wears to...You do the math

Which companies are you talking about, foreign owned abroad or foreign owned in Turkey. Either way, foreign companies selling to the Turks and taking their profits out of Turkey, does not help Turkey other than taking the money from the Turks, or paying them "slave wages" to produce their products to sell abroad to make even bigger profits. The Turks are just barely making a living, which on average, it is less than the minimum wage in the "trnc". God forbid the Turks should ask for a living wage, which will see these companies head to other cheaper countries, and if the EU accession is terminated, watch the flood gates break open to leave Turkey altogether.

All money needs to show an interest is profit and as long as Turkey can give them a secure foot then why the hell would they leave? They will have the freedom of no overbarring EU rules that are cripling other companies elsewhere so I would say that Turkey might be even more atractive in that sense...But you do prefer to look at the negatives to suit your needs.......Watch Boomers come in now and start to splash a few more silly doubts about what might happen...

[Kikapu]

and your still not seeing a penny VP.....................

You are the bigger losers here the 4 billion dollars refers to lost "RoC" revenues for not being able to enter Turkish docks. The income for Turkey is miniscule in comparison.

Are you prepared to gives us some figures VP, as to how much it's going to cost Turkey ( just from direct foreign investments alone) if their EU accession talks come to a dead end next year, if the Cyprus problem is not settled.?

As the saying goes,

"what goes around, comes around".!!

Companies have 80,000,000 people to sell their wears to...You do the math

Which companies are you talking about, foreign owned abroad or foreign owned in Turkey. Either way, foreign companies selling to the Turks and taking their profits out of Turkey, does not help Turkey other than taking the money from the Turks, or paying them "slave wages" to produce their products to sell abroad to make even bigger profits. The Turks are just barely making a living, which on average, it is less than the minimum wage in the "trnc". God forbid the Turks should ask for a living wage, which will see these companies head to other cheaper countries, and if the EU accession is terminated, watch the flood gates break open to leave Turkey altogether.

All money needs to show an interest is profit and as long as Turkey can give them a secure foot then why the hell would they leave? They will have the freedom of no overbarring EU rules that are cripling other companies elsewhere so I would say that Turkey might be even more atractive in that sense...But you do prefer to look at the negatives to suit your needs.......Watch Boomers come in now and start to splash a few more silly doubts about what might happen...

You make valid points Zan, but you are overlooking what might happen if Turkey does not make it into the EU. At the moment, most foreign companies see their investments safe as long as Turkey is heading towards the EU, and if they were not heading towards the EU, then Turkey itself will start to change from within with either the military becoming more dominant than they are now, or the Islamist pushing their agendas further to change the country, which will bring it to a "boiling point" with the secular and the military V's the Islamist. These are hardly very comforting conditions to foreign investors in a country that might just implode from within. The last thing that the Turkey needs, is to lose hope of ever getting into the EU, and if you think the EU is not for Turkey, then they would have voluntarily retracted their EU application long time ago, and they have not done so, which must tell you something, I hope.!!

[bill cobbett]

"When you created the Cyprus problem there was no EU,so whatever solution there will be it will be through United Nations not European Union you joined.."

Thre is not choice. The EU has to rubber stamp any solution to ensure it does not conflict with EU legal rules. There can be some deviation from some rules, but the basics must be implemented.

Greece has tried several times to bypass rules claiming that they conflict with its constitution, it has not worked.

Forget trying to evade the basics, like freedom of movement for people and capital, freedom of establishment, right to own property.

Also, the EU does not allow ANY member to enter without accepting the European Charter of human rights. So one way or another the major player is the EU and not the UN.

Absolutely N. I remember a thread a few weeks ago when the presence and availability of EU officials/legal experts to the technical committees to ensure compliance of any "solution" with European Laws was discussed. So although the UN has kept some kind of peace on the ground in past years, time has moved on, in to the EU arena, which is only right as we are all Europeans now.

[Nikitas]

"as long as Turkey can give them a secure foot then why the hell would they leave?"

For the same reasong they left other countries and moved to Turkey- low worker cost, no environmental controls, minimum delay in starting up. If any of these advantages is lost the foreign companies will move out fast.

Take Pirelli, the tyre people, they moved out of Greece and into Turkey in one week because of cost differentials. The problem with Turkey is the large concentration of firms. If they leave ithere will be a major problem since Turkish industry is not developing its own technology to replace the foreign firms and offer new products.

For instance, cars now built in Turkey are sold under their maker's brand. Once the factory changes location is there a viable Turkish car that can compete under its own brand on world markets? So far there is not because there is no sizable research and development investment.

[Kikapu]

"as long as Turkey can give them a secure foot then why the hell would they leave?"

For the same reasong they left other countries and moved to Turkey- low worker cost, no environmental controls, minimum delay in starting up. If any of these advantages is lost the foreign companies will move out fast.

Nikitas, I read this article last month and it goes along what you are saying. Due to lack of safety concerns for the workers to curb high cost financially, 25 workers died in 11 months (to July) at shipyards in Tulza, Turkey. Here is the rest of the story.


Brisk sales at Turkish shipyards expose fatal flaws
By Thomas Grove ReutersPublished: July 10, 2008

TUZLA, Turkey: Turkey is jockeying to be the biggest European shipbuilder, but a spate of deaths shows the need for changes in the sector and the cost of spectacular growth on the fringe of the European Union.

Financial markets in Turkey have been hit by concerns over legal attempts to ban the governing Justice and Development Party, speculation of coup plots and resistance among key powers to eventual Turkish EU membership, but at the Tuzla shipyards, in the so-called real economy, business is brisk.

The Turkish shipbuilding industry has raised its exports by 30 percent in the past year by focusing on high-value, made-to-order ships that are not available from larger-scale builders in China and South Korea. Exports are expected to make up 80 percent of total revenue in 2008 compared to 60 percent last year.

Capacity has grown 400 percent over five years.

"Turkey is similar to Spain, Poland, Croatia and other European shipbuilding countries, but Turkey is surpassing these countries," said Vidar Smines, a shipbuilding consultant for Ulstein Group. "Here the value per vessel is higher so Turkey is more important in international shipbuilding than statistics reveal."

However, with 25 deaths in the last 11 months at Tuzla, on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara, the sector has become emblematic of the mixed blessing of rapid growth in trade ties brought on by Turkey's EU candidacy.

"Most of these accidents happened because the sector was caught unaware by this growth," said H. Erkan Selah, owner of Selah Shipyards, which was closed earlier this year after two workers at his yards were killed in the same week - one crushed by a two-ton metal plate.

Selah says he takes the appropriate measures to educate and train his workers, but like other yards, he relies on temporary subcontractor labor, which accounts for 83 percent of all manpower in Turkish shipyards.

Economists say the unique Turkish position of having started EU negotiations while depending on a thriving market for temporary jobs to make itself internationally competitive creates a deadly mixture.

"The accession process to the European Union is a double-edged sword because it means there are increased opportunities for trade; and things look to be thriving in Turkey," said Surhan Cam, an expert on the Turkish labor market at Cardiff University, in Wales.

"But the formal employment sector is not growing proportionally, and for now in some sectors things are getting worse before they get better," he said.

Turkey faces a number of legislative as well as political hurdles in its bid for EU membership, which itself has been sidetracked by legal challenges to the governing party. The party started entry negotiations in 2005.

Still, experts say the changes embarked upon as part of the entry process, which includes the implementation of new labor laws, will not be stopped in the long term regardless of the current political climate.

"There may be hiccups along the way, but the path the country has chosen is one of reform," said Nick Kennedy of 4Cast financial advisers in London, who follows Turkey.

"It would take a lot to sidetrack that," he said. "It's not just to join the EU club, but in order to stay competitive in labor."

In a country with the lowest national income per head of members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, where many believe real unemployment is sharply higher than the official level of about 10 percent, the demand for temporary workers thrives.

Beki Akar is one of 35,000 people who work at the 44 shipyards in Tuzla. He has been employed at the yards for nearly a year, making 1,000 Turkish liras, or about $820, a month and sending half home to his wife and child near the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Like most shipyard workers, he lives with other workers and is hired on a daily basis by subcontractors who supply the Tuzla shipyards with its manpower.

The subcontractor system is one of the main obstacles to training experienced workers, and it allows shipyard owners to avoid responsibility when accidents happen.

"Workers are cheap," he said. "There are hundreds of people waiting to take your spot. That's why you don't refuse to do work or complain about the conditions."

Like other workers, he says safety equipment is shoddy at the shipyard where he works. Belts needed for work at heights of 100 meters, or 330 feet, are not reliable, and cranes that lift the huge plates that make up a ship can be faulty, sending them falling onto the crowded yards - as happened at the Selah yard.

Shipyard owners may have to take more responsibility for workers' safety to maintain Turkish economic growth.

"If Turkey can succeed in entering into more advanced tonnage markets - like offshore drilling - health and safety issues will become very important, because those conditions will be forced on shipyards by those who want the ships," Smines said.

The Turkish Shipbuilders Association has introduced a series of training measures which are to start in September, said Murat Bayraktar, the association's president.

But the head of a shipbuilding workers' union said those measures would not be enough to stop the accidents.

"Education is important but you have to make sure employers deal with the dangerous conditions these people are working in," said Cem Dinc, leader of the Limter-is union.

Even with better education, people working longer than seven and a half hours a day are likely to cause accidents regardless of how much training they have, he said.

"Until we start treating our workers with respect and give them humane working conditions these accidents will continue," Dinc said. "We can't accept conditions the way they are."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/10/ ... s/ship.php

[Nikitas]

Kikapu,

It is a theme that repeats itself in other industries. Take lead for example, a metal placed in the Hazardous Materials list by the EU. In Greece lead recycling follows EU rules and has become ridiculously expensive. The melting has to be done in a "bathtub" style building designed to contain any probable leak. So the result has been to export lead to Turkey where there are no such fetters and re import it in the form of finished product. Turkey's entry in the EU will put a stop to this practice.

I went to a boat show recently and saw lots of nice boats from Turkey and some pics of the work in the yards. The pics were meant to show flexibility to satisfy any design demand. What I saw was workmen using epoxy and glassfiber with no protection at all- no gloves, no masks- grinding away at finished hulls with regular grinders with no vacuum hoses. These employers would have been arrested in the EU.

[Kikapu]

Kikapu,

It is a theme that repeats itself in other industries. Take lead for example, a metal placed in the Hazardous Materials list by the EU. In Greece lead recycling follows EU rules and has become ridiculously expensive. The melting has to be done in a "bathtub" style building designed to contain any probable leak. So the result has been to export lead to Turkey where there are no such fetters and re import it in the form of finished product. Turkey's entry in the EU will put a stop to this practice.

I went to a boat show recently and saw lots of nice boats from Turkey and some pics of the work in the yards. The pics were meant to show flexibility to satisfy any design demand. What I saw was workmen using epoxy and glassfiber with no protection at all- no gloves, no masks- grinding away at finished hulls with regular grinders with no vacuum hoses. These employers would have been arrested in the EU.

Having built 4 new cross-arm beams for my boat and have extensively used Resin - Epoxy with powder fiberglass to make the mix to laminate 20ft long pieces of wood together, as well as other boat body work involving this nasty stuff, can be very harmful without proper protection. You can just imagine where using no vacuum grinders on fiberglass not only endangers those who are doing the work but also those in the whole boatyard and locals, because the particles are in the air. But as the report stated, that if anyone complains, there are another 100 who are willing to take their places. Do you want to work and get sick or die, or do you want to feed your family as you are slowly dying. Some choice.

[observer]

To return to the original question, the UN and the EU should take the back seat to Cypriots.

[Oracle]

Time to ditch the UN as a Negotiating partner and bring in the EU!

Let Cypriots solve Cyprus, Greek Cypriot tells U.N.

Date : September 24, 2008

By Claudia Parsons

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Cypriot President
Demetris Christofias urged the United Nations on Wednesday not
to try to impose a solution on the island, which has been
divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since 1974.

Numerous U.N.-led efforts to reunite Cyprus have failed, most recently in 2004, when Greek Cypriots rejected a plan
prepared under the aegis of previous Secretary-General Kofi
Annan.

Christofias, the Greek Cypriot leader, and Turkish Cypriot
leader Mehmet Ali Talat started a new round of reunification
talks this month.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday,
Christofias said Cypriots must be in charge of the process.

"Recent experience has shown that any attempt to impose,
even to import, non-Cypriot inspired and improvised models will
meet with rejection by the Cypriot people," he said.

Cyprus was divided in a 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by
a Greek-inspired coup. The stalemate on Cyprus complicates
Turkey's bid to join the European Union, where only the Greek
Cypriots represent the island.

The European Commission has partially suspended Turkey's
membership talks with the bloc over the stalemate in Cyprus,
with a review slated for mid-2009.

Both sides have agreed, on paper, to reuniting Cyprus as a
loose federation of two zones, one administered by Greek
Cypriots and the other by Turkish Cypriots.

Difficult issues lie ahead, ranging from the rights of
settlement of individuals in an area administered by the other
community, to the central government power-sharing structure.

Christofias said the so-called "good offices" role of the
United Nations was to assist and to support. "It is not
arbitration. It is not mediation," he said.

At least President Christofias listens to me ....

So the UN's role should be only to provide the evidence .... and the EU provides the lawyers, barristers to present our case and arbitrate or negotiate alongside us.

http://www.cyprus-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... c&start=10