Tim Drayton wrote:One thing interests me, Kikapu. You know two federations, the USA and Switzerland, very well. I am curious as to why you have looked to the former, rather than the latter, as your model. The USA, while certainly a successful working federation, is very different from Cyprus. It is the size of Europe and the individual states themselves are the size of European countries. In terms of size, Switzerland comes closer, and its individual cantons are even smaller than the proposed constituent states in Cyprus. The USA is a very multicultural place, but English is the official language and it is assumed that immigrants will melt into the wider American culture - that is the dream, at least. The Swiss constitutional order, on the other hand, manages to balance the interests and aspirations of different ethnic and linguistic groups and fuse them into a single nation. I have known Swiss Germans. They consider themselves to be different from French, Italian or Romansch-speaking Swiss, and are proud of their German cultural identity, but on the other hand most definitely consider themselves to be Swiss and not Germans (or Austrians). Does Switzerland not provide a better model for a place like Cyprus where the two main communities have a dialectical sense identity in which they are torn between the two conflicting poles of different motherlands and a shared Cypriot home?.
A map of the Swiss cantons:
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Suisse_cantons.svg/400px-
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Tim,
In a nutshell, the Swiss model cannot work for Cyprus, because neither the GC's not the TC's have their own specific land that they own or habitated throughout the centuries. All the Cantons of Switzerland, all 26 of them have joined the Union one by one over the last 900 years bringing with them their land and people to the Union to be part of the country of Switzerland. Had we had two distinct areas (cantons) in Cyprus also that had century old history and not what we have today where a division is forced by invasion, then I would agree with you that a confederation would be ideal, and this is what the Annan Plan wanted to do and this is what the TC leadership are after. But in order for this to even happen, the GC's will have to "gift" the northern part of Cyprus to the TC's and this land from here on will only be known as TC land, in effect to become a Canton. The south then would also become the next Canton and between the two, you can have a Swisss model created. The danger with such arrangement does not end there unfortunately, because as a Confederate state, each Canton can secede from the union just by people of that Canton holding a referendum to do so, and that's what could have happened in Cyprus and the AP passed. Besides, I'm giving you a plan based on agreed Federation of "BBF" and not Confederation based on "BBC".!