Cyprus-Forum.com

[Kifeas]

Would Turkey take the risk of shouldering failure in the current negotiations Tim? If Turkey has gone back to its intransigent past, any advantages gained by accepting the UN brokered solution plan in 2004 will evaporate away. They are not that stupid, I am sure.

These are very complex games played on constantly shifting sands. I can only guess as to what is really happening, but I get the distinct feeling that Turkey is being less compromising on Cyprus now than a couple of years ago. Don't you agree?

I personally don't see any shift in Turkish policy. Whats new? The confederation demands? The Guarantee demands? The undemocratic voting schemes?

I would have thought that removing Denktash from power in itself represented a massive shift.

Or a massive ...trick.

[DT.]

Let us not forget that for the hardliners in Turkey, the Annan Plan represented an unacceptable compromise. That the Annan Plan could even be contemplated represented a victory of the moderates over the hard liners.

so what, Denktash even admitted that had the GC's voted yes the Tukish millitary would have overthrown the govt and nullified the plan. Only after we had accepted they would now use the fact that the ROC was destroyed and all that was left was a GC statelet.

[Kifeas]

Let us not forget that for the hardliners in Turkey, the Annan Plan represented an unacceptable compromise. That the Annan Plan could even be contemplated represented a victory of the moderates over the hard liners.

Well, for the GC counterpart extremists the solution should be based on a unitary state with a one-man-one-vote system and mere plain minority rights for the TCs, just like in any other country around the globe, and slightly better than in Turkey; yet, no single GC political party or negotiator ever went along with such proposals in the last 35 years.

[Paphitis]

Let us not forget that for the hardliners in Turkey, the Annan Plan represented an unacceptable compromise. That the Annan Plan could even be contemplated represented a victory of the moderates over the hard liners.

That is because these hardliners do not even want Turkey to withdraw her Army from Cyprus. They want to keep Cyprus and annex it if necessary.

The GCs however just want their basic democratic and human rights as defined universally. You can not accuse us of being hardliners for just wanted what every human deserves as a fundamental right and not a privilege.

[Tim Drayton]

[...]
So what?
[...]

The point is that Turkey's Cyprus policy is not as monolithic as some would have us believe.

The following quote (my translation) from a series of articles about the Ergenekon movement written by the highly-respected columnist Ismet Berkan in the Radikal newspaper this April provides a hint of the dispute that was going on between the elected government and the deep state over Cyprus at the time of the Annan Plan:

There is more. At that time, United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan proclaimed a plan for settling the Cyprus problem which bore his name, and invited the sides in the Cyprus dispute to the Hague in the Netherlands to discuss this plan.

Even though TRNC Prime-Minister Rauf Denktash had received instructions from Prime-Minister Abdullah Gül not to reject the plan out of hand, his first act on landing in the Hague was to proclaim, “I have come here so say ‘no’ to Annan”. Denktash was not acting alone when he spoke these words; he knew that he had support among certain quarters in Ankara who were encouraging him. The elected government of Turkey was unable to implement its own policy; to have it carried out. Certain parties had intervened in Ankara to prevent a clear government instruction from being carried out.

[zan]

Let us not forget that for the hardliners in Turkey, the Annan Plan represented an unacceptable compromise. That the Annan Plan could even be contemplated represented a victory of the moderates over the hard liners.

which moderates are you referring to on the Greek side...The ones that will not give us our rights back and expect a total surrender to the "RoC" line

[Kifeas]

Let us not forget that for the hardliners in Turkey, the Annan Plan represented an unacceptable compromise. That the Annan Plan could even be contemplated represented a victory of the moderates over the hard liners.

which moderates are you referring to on the Greek side...The ones that will not give us our rights back and expect a total surrender to the "RoC" line

Which rights are you talking about, Zan? Those arising from the 1960 constitution of the RoC? If so, when was the last time your official leadership asked for the return back the 1960 constitutional provisions, including all your rights from it? Do you happen to remember? Do you personally wish the return of all these rights? Which other rights are you talking about?

[EPSILON]

We must understand that the main reason of 35 years or so discussions without result have one target only. To prepare the G/cs to accept that they lost a war and therefore they must sign an unfair solution. Recently something is moving on this direction. May be 5-10 years more will be sufficient.

[Byron]

could someone please tell me how many times Talat and Christofias have met over the past year and what political agreement has been reached so far compared to discussions held by Papadopoulous or Clerides before him.

[Tim Drayton]

That is the easy part Tim. The difficult part is to explain this "change".

The Letter from “AFRIKA” column in yesterday's (1 December) Afrika newspaper contains an interesting answer to the above question, so I have posted my own translation of it below. I think that the AKP's reasons for supporting Turkey's EU accession are more complex than this article would suggest, but I certainly detect a sharp change taking place in Turkey's Cyprus policy.

THE ERA OF UNVARNISHED STATUS QUO ONCE MORE IN CYPRUS

Turkey, whose European Union membership process has lost a lot of steam, no longer feels the need to get into the EU’s good books and to take steps in the direction of compromise in Cyprus in order to make progress in this process.
At the outset, the Erdoğan government needed the EU, its support, to protect the Islamist party against the soldiers.
For this reason, it had to take steps in Cyprus.
In fact, it took a number of steps, however unimportant.
It changed the old status quo team.
The old stalwart Denktash was put out to grass.
It earned the approval of Europe.
And this is how it got through that most critical of periods in Turkey.
However, there remains no need for this.
It has left the old dangers behind.
It has united with the soldiers.
It has suspended the reforms.
It has mapped out joint policies with the generals.
Now if the EU warns it, “If this goes on, eight negotiation chapters will never open”, it pays no heed whatsoever.

Erdoğan actually escaped from that period pretty much unscathed as far as Cyprus is concerned.
As he himself has frequently stressed, he has not withdrawn a single soldier from the island and has not conceded an inch of territory.
Furthermore, he has not opened his ports to South Cyprus.
He has for some time held the upper hand in the international arena against the Greek Cypriot side, which was ensnared by means of the Annan Plan, with the refrain “We said yes, they said no”.

The changes made in North Cyprus did not result in the demolition of the status quo, simply in its varnishing.
It was given a new look.
The policy of non-solution was masked with “settlement varnish”.
The CTP was used for this.
In any case, Talat and CTP officials have also frequently revealed how they were used.
They boasted of opening Turkey’s way forward.

But this now appears to have come to the end of the line.
Having dismissed the EU process, there remains no further need for the varnish on the status quo in Cyprus.
They are now preparing to bring in a different policy.
They will remove the varnished status quo team and bring back the unvarnished.
They will furthermore attribute this to the Turkish Cypriots’ “political will” and “democratic” elections.
In one sense, they will also wreak their revenge on the EU.
“What can we do?,” they will say, “You did not keep your promises to the Turkish Cypriots and so this is what they did.”
A UBP-ÖRP government is looming on the horizon.
Parties which support, not in the embarrassed manner of Talat and the CTP but openly, two people, two states and the TRNC.
The ÖRP is in any case the Ankara’s darling.
The UBP has long since secured the AKP’s forgiveness and relations between them are thawing.
Wait.
You will see soon enough.