Kifeas wrote:BirKibrisli wrote: You say the new conditions for the next "marriage" will be chosen by the people themselves...Yet,you want to force the TCs to drop Turkey's guarantees and adopt your full democracy principles...Why? Is it only a GC prerogative to refuse to accept terms of an agreement (even after signing them!)? will you be equally forgiving of the TCs if and when they say they did not agree to such and such but had no choice but sign at the time??? What's good for the goose????
Bir, there is no GC hand that has the nerve to sign an agreement that will bestow unilateral intervention rights to Turkey, in the form of guarantees as we came to know them from the 1960 agreements between Greece, Turkey and the UK. There are reasons for that, and I am sure you know them all, but let me repeat them here once more.
1. Turkey is not a stable democracy, with a healthy political culture and system. It cannot guarantee its own peoples’ human, social and political rights. Turkey needs other countries to guarantee its own peoples’ human, cultural and political rights (see what happens with the Kurds and other minorities,) and it is very provocatively rich from her part, and that of the TCs, to demand that such a country should have unilateral interventions rights into another country, an EU member as a matter of fact, with a much healthier political culture than her own. That the RoC, as it stands today, has a much healthier political culture, I am not the one saying so but all international ratings in all relevant aspects and areas of concern.
2. Turkey had used once these hypothetical intervention rights, and it failed miserably to protect the human rights, constitutional order and sovereignty of Cyprus. Its intervention, in the form of invasion and occupation, evidently created a situation much worse than the one it supposedly came to rectify, and we all experience these results as of this day.
3. Cyprus is a sovereign country, just like Turkey, and a member of the UN and the EU as of 2004. If one sovereign country claims to retain the right to unilaterally intervene into another sovereign state, without this being valid in retrospect, then the principle of sovereign equality between UN members, as it is safeguarded by the UN Charter (article 2, par.1,) is nullified. Such a notion, i.e. that one sovereign country has the right to essentially invade another one at will -as long as there is some pre-text, outside any UN SC mandate, goes against the most fundamental principle based on which the UN was founded. Furthermore, Cyprus being a member of the EU, such a notion goes against the principles based on which the EU exists; more so when it extends to a country that is not even an EU member state itself.
If the Turkish side insists on this anachronistic and essentially illegal under international law provision, then I am afraid there will be no solution. Now, if there will be no solution, all sides stand to lose, including the GC one. However, I happen to believe that the TC side and Turkey are the sides that stand to lose the more, in the long run. Occupation and retention of northern Cyprus by Turkey will indeed become the biggest “white Elephant” example in the modern history, even after the last TC will vanish from the annals of history. I frankly suggest that if indeed the TCs and Turkey are interested in a solution, they should try and find other ways to address the issue of security of the TCs, from the hands of the bloodthirsty GCs -i.e. from the hands of those that many of them seek medical treatment on a daily basis. There are many ways to address this area of concern for the TCs, such as in the form of a mixed local and international force that will include Greece and Turkey, but in which no one country alone will have the right to take unilateral action. We are open to all proposals, BUT one which will allow Turkey to think or believe it has the legitimacy to repeat what it did in 1974 and afterwards.
And since you used the mariage example, no one in his right senses accepts to enter into a marriage relationship, in which the mother-in-law or the father-in-law will have the keys of the bedroom and the right to permanetly station themselves there, when the couble goes in bed every night. If you are ready to accept such a marriage, then so be it, but we are not. It goes against our dignity.
