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by **Jerry** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 11:29 am

Interesting and revealing article in Cyprus Mail about Ergolu.

Dervis Eroglu: a sense of déju vu?
By Simon Bahceli

DERVIS EROGLU may have been swept from power six years ago, but now he is back. After six years in retirement, having relinquished the leadership of his National Unity Party (UBP) “to make way for younger blood”, the 72 year-old Turkish Cypriot politician is once again in the ‘prime ministerial’ seat he occupied for 17 out of the 19 years between 1985 and 2004. Having won a healthy 44 per cent of the vote, he now eyes the ‘presidency’ of the north – a position that would make him the leader of, and chief negotiator for, the Turkish Cypriot community in UN-sponsored reunification talks.

Although many on both sides of Cyprus will know his name, few outside his party and family circle really know who Eroglu is or what he actually stands for. So what are his plans for the next five years? And, more importantly, as many assume, will he seek to derail the ongoing peace talks aimed at uniting the island?

The last time I saw Eroglu (apart from at his election victory rally last Sunday night) was in April 2004. He was speaking, along with former Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, at a rally that sought to dissuade the community from backing the UN’s latest reunification effort, the Annan plan. The crowd, bigger even than those at the memorable ‘yes’ rallies, was bulked by Turkish soldiers who had been allowed to grow their hair out and take the day off (so long as they went to the rally). As Eroglu spoke, my eyes were drawn to a banner just beneath him which read “You can’t skin pigs, or make friends with Greek Cypriots. The only friend of a Turk is a Turk”. Hardly indicative that Eroglu and his party were interested in taking the Turkish Cypriots towards reconciliation with the Greek Cypriots, or towards European ideals. Rather, the aim was to keep the north as closely tied to Turkey as possible.

Unusually for a politician, Eroglu is a quiet man who does not appear to relish public speaking. Neither does he appear to be troubled by burning ambition or ideological passion as he sits behind his bare desk calmly explaining how he easily won 44 per cent of last week’s poll, trouncing the outgoing Republican Turkish Party (CTP).

“The CTP made too many promises that they couldn’t keep,” he says, referring to the outgoing ‘government’s’ declared aim of securing a solution to the Cyprus problem and EU integration for the north. I ask if he doesn’t also want those things.

“We’ve supported EU membership since 1980, unlike the communist CTP, which only began supporting membership after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he says.

“And we’re not against a solution,” he adds, reminding me that he was ‘prime minister’ when the de Cuellar agreement, and other abortive attempts to reunite the island, were instigated.

If that were the case, why was he so vehemently opposed the Annan reunification plan in 2004? “We were against the Annan plan because it would have led to conflict between our peoples. It would not have brought peace,” he insists. His main criticism of the plan is that it was not based on an actual agreement between Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaderships, but had been cobbled together by “foreign powers” after the leaders failed to agree.

Rather than having a vision of what a future settlement of the Cyprus problem should look like, Eroglu allows himself to entertain the possibility of the Cyprus problem never being solved. He also allows himself to dwell on solution models different from the bizonal, bicomnmunal, federal setup currently under discussion. This he does despite warnings from Ankara that the parameters for negotiation have been set and that they must continue.

“We can’t say it will be 100 per cent like that because there will be give and take at the negotiating table,” he says.

However, Eroglu knows very well what he doesn’t want, and that is an agreement based on the absorption of the north into the Cyprus Republic. It has to be a virgin birth, a new state of affairs, he says. He is also not willing to negotiate away Turkey’s right to intervene militarily on the island.

“Right now we have two states, two peoples, and two democracies. A solution has to reflect this reality,” he says, triggering, not for the first time during our interview, a sense of déjà vu.

So Eroglu is different from the outgoing ‘government’ in that he believes the Turkish Cypriots need “alternatives”. He opposes the CTP’s approach of “solution or bust”, but what his alternatives are remain to be seen, probably even by him.

Is Eroglu then an ultra nationalist in the vein of hardman Rauf Denktash? Eroglu insists he isn’t.

“Some see us as Denktash’s party, but we are not, although he did form the UBP,” Eroglu says, adding however that he and Denktash “parted” in 1992. The main difference between himself and Denktash, he says, is that Denktash could never contemplate any kind of deal on Cyprus other than a two state one.

So unlike the CTP, Eroglu can contemplate settlement models other than that of bizonal, bicommunal federation, and unlike Denktash, he can contemplate models other than a two state setup.

But doesn’t the choice depend very much on political ideology? I ask Eroglu if he wishes to share his people’s existence with the Greek Cypriots on the island, and whether he wants to see integration of the community within the EU.

“Seventy per cent of our people want a separate state, and a similar number of Greek Cypriots say they don’t want to live with Turks,” he says. “We don’t have to have an agreement. We want one, but there are alternatives”.

Naturally, it was not only the Cyprus problem and EU membership that played important roles in Eroglu’s election victory. Indeed, it is reported that an even larger part was played by an ongoing decline in living standards and a rise in unemployment. Eroglu is therefore aware that because his success comes very much on the back of the CTP’s failure to protect the Turkish Cypriots from the ravages of the global recession and the collapse of its once-lucrative property market, he will have to do something to turn things around or face the same public anger now being directed at the departing administration.

“We’ll cut taxes,” he says. “People are spending their money on the Greek Cypriot side because they perceive it as being cheaper. So we’ll cut taxes to make ours cheaper, and this will keep money within the economy and this will generate growth,” he says.

Eroglu himself has never visited the “Greek side”, “but that doesn’t mean I have something against them. I just haven’t had a reason to go”.

So why has Eroglu suddenly reappeared as ‘prime minister’ in the north, despite having announced his retirement four years ago? Are there unfulfilled ambitions or does he really express some kind of wider political agenda?

“The younger party members would come to me every day asking for me to come back as leader. In the end I couldn’t say no,” he says, almost apologetically. Will he run for ‘president’ in 2010, making him chief negotiator for the Turkish Cypriot side. He says, “People want me to, but I’ve taken on a difficult job here with the economic problems we’re having”. That probably means he will if they ask him to.

While Eroglu’s approach may have been the standard and the norm for the north in the 1990s, it today sounds outdated and regressive. Of course, one should never cease from seeking to come up with new ideas, but are Eroglu and the UBP really going to do that, or will they merely be content to see the reunification talks dragged into the quagmire while they dish out funds from the Turkish government and other friends in Ankara?

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009