The conflict that keeps on giving
By Adar Primor
Tags: Israel news
NICOSIA - The poodle raises her lazy head, hesitates and then jumps off the heavy armchair to make room for the interviewer whose appearance has interrupted her repose. The dog snuggles into another couch beside an old picture of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Not that she has many alternatives: Ataturk's image appears in every corner of this house in the center of Turkish Nicosia. "The father of the Turks" is without a doubt the undisputed hero of the house's owner who, in the eyes of his people, is himself a living myth.
Rauf Denktash wears a bright white shirt and a red tie. He is short and round with a pleasant face, and very relaxed. For more than 40 years the lingering dispute in Cyprus has been identified with him, and it was he who largely shaped its image. As the founder of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and its first president, the 86-year-old Denktash would be viewed by some Israelis to be the "Ben-Gurion of Turkish Cyprus." As the person who led the Turkish underground during British colonial rule, he would be considered by others to be the local version of Menachem Begin (who headed the Jews' pre-state Etzel underground and later became prime minister). And there are those Israelis who would be more likely to relate to him as the divided island's Yitzhak Shamir (the hawkish former prime minister who would not compromise with the Arabs).
"Mr. No" has been Denktash's nickname because of his hard-line stances. To a large extent, he is considered responsible for the fact that the dispute between the island's Greek and Turkish populations became the curse of international diplomacy.
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The "last-gasp" talks - how familiar - that are being held now between the two sides indeed seem to be an attempt to take advantage of a "rare window of opportunity" in Cyprus. Never have the island's two sides been governed by two moderate leaders like Mehmet Ali Talat, the Turkish Cypriot, and Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot. Nor has there ever been such a supportive atmosphere in both Ankara and Athens.
Cyprus was split in 1974, when the Turkish army invaded the island, hard on the heels of a Greek-Cypriot coup d'etat. The leaders of the latter sought to unite with Greece and were backed by the colonels who at that time ruled in Athens. On November 12, 1983, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared independence, but to this day, the only country that recognizes it is Turkey. Indeed Turkey is its source of oxygen.
"In order to understand the roots of the dispute," Denktash explains, "one must go farther back." He goes on to list all the sins, one by one. There is the old sin that he attributes to the Greek-Cypriots who pushed the Turkish-Cypriots out of their joint government in 1963. That was when the state split, only three years after gaining independence under an agreement that provided for complete equality between the two founders. Adding insult to injury, in 1964, the United Nations decided to recognize the Greek-Cypriot administration as the island's legitimate government. And the ultimate sin was the European Union's decision to extend membership to the Greek side only. This was part of a failed tactic designed to pressure the island's Turks to accept then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan's unification plan. The odd result was that the Greek-Cypriots, who rejected Annan's plan in a 2004 referendum, are today full-fledged Europeans while the Turkish Cypriots, who ignored a directive from Denktash and voted by a large majority for that plan, found themselves with an unsatisfied craving for Europe.
The finest writer of theater of the absurd could not have dreamed up a bigger anomaly than this: The Republic of Cyprus is a member of the EU, while at the same time, Turkey - NATO's second biggest army and an aspiring EU state - is in control of the north. The Greeks' aim, says Denktash, has always been to Hellenize Cyprus and implement enosis (unity with Greece). That wish was fulfilled when Cyprus joined the EU.
The international community has, nevertheless, been saddled with a dispute that arouses familiar associations: "Settlers" who were brought to the island are facing demands that they leave; "refugees" want to "return" to their lands; "land for peace," "compensation," "occupation army," "green line." Some people here think of the Turkish-Cypriots as "the Palestinians" in the island's dispute, and there were even those who likened Denktash to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Denktash himself rejects the comparisons, "since the Cyprus issue is the result of breaking up 'one state for two nations,' and the ejection of one of the nations in that partnership - the Turkish Cypriots." As for Arafat, Denktash recalled having congratulated the Palestinian leader after his historic address at the United Nations in 1975. Arafat responded: "Are you out of your mind? You're jealous of my presence in the UN? You have land and Turkey's protection, but if I die, I won't have even a plot in which I can be buried."
"He was right," says Denktash. "Were it not for Turkey's intervention, there wouldn't be even one Turkish-Cypriot here. Go and see what is written on the T-shirts of the new recruits undergoing basic training on the other side: 'A good Turk is a dead Turk.'"
'A pleasure to be Turkish'
Some of this nationalist fervor can be seen from the ninth floor of the old Merit Hotel: On the slope of one of the mountains surrounding Nicosia is a huge red-and-white flag of northern Cyprus, made of small lights. Beside it is Ataturk's slogan: "What a joy to be Turkish." But from this elevation, it is difficult to tell where the so-called green line runs through the "last divided European capital." It is difficult to tell where the north ends and the south begins, where the EU begins and ends, where they're selling shawarma and where the Western-style cafes are, where one pays in Turkish lira and where one pays in euros. From the height of the Merit Hotel, one cannot see that the Greeks enjoy McDonald's while the Turks, because of the international boycott, have to make do with an imitation called "Bigmac." Nor can one tell that the per-capita gross domestic product on the Greek side is 50 percent higher than in the north, or that the feelings of contempt and hatred are still alive.
In the villages of Murataga and Sandallar, half an hour's drive east of Nicosia, time seems to be frozen. In 1974 Greek-Cypriots massacred 89 children, women and elderly men there, just a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed, wounded or expelled during the 1960s and '70s. Not far from the mass grave, the classroom of the murdered children has been left the way it was on the eve of the massacre. Rows upon rows of orphaned wooden desks and walls are covered with pictures of the children who never returned. One of them was called Erdogan.
Historic pictures adorn the walls of Denktash's home, too. Besides his own portrait there are pictures of almost all the leaders of modern Turkey. Special honor is reserved for the thick-mustached Bulent Ecevit, who was behind the island's invasion in 1974.
The absence of one leader is especially striking: Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was Erdogan's support of the 2004 Annan peace plan that forced Denktash to step down. Erdogan wanted to solve the Cyprus issue in order to facilitate Turkey's membership in the EU.
The bad blood between the two leaders is evident. When asked whether Turkish Nicosia can still trust Turkey, Denktash hesitates for a moment and says: "I trust the Turkish people."
His meaningful answer corresponds with the assessments of several commentators who have followed Erdogan's dramatic distancing from traditional Kemalist policy: The Turkish prime minister has initiated a historical reconciliation with the Armenians and is now advancing far-reaching reforms that would grant Turkey's Kurds cultural autonomy. When he fulfills these goals, these commentators say he might turn to the Cyprus issue and work out some significant compromises at the Turkish-Cypriots' expense.
Denktash rejects this analysis: "First of all," he says, "Erdogan still hasn't concluded an arrangement [with either the Armenians or the Kurds], and it is not clear how those disputes will end. In any case, if Erdogan abandons Cyprus, he will hugely antagonize his voters. He will not have an electorate on which to rely. He will be finished."
Besides that, he continues, many people today know that even if there were no Cyprus issue, the EU would not open its doors to Turkey. To his thinking, the union is a "Christian club" that does not intend to change its character. The lingering dispute in Cyprus only serves its purposes, and is being used as a fig leaf.
"When I was president, the EU's officials acknowledged that they feared Turkey would become a fundamentalist state within 10 to 20 years. Paradoxically, the union's conduct is what may lead Turkey away from Ataturk's principles of secularism and democracy."
Most of the people interviewed here, including Denktash, see a direct link between Turkey's deep disappointment with the EU and Erdogan's closer embrace of Iran, Syria and other neighboring countries. However, they do not believe the Turkish prime minister is seeking a rupture. "He is trying to do the two things at once," says Denktash. "Get closer to the Muslim world without turning his back on the West."
Exaggerated fears of a nuclear Iran remind Denktash of past concerns that Iraq "was supposedly planning to destroy the world with an arsenal that it did not have at all." He observes that "this is all propaganda" and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's harsh words and declarations about wiping Israel off the face of the earth are nothing more than "an expression of his fears that the United States would use Israel to attack his country."
His analysis of the current crisis in Turkish-Israeli relations combines understanding with rare criticism: "It is in the interest of every civilized state to caution another country that acts disproportionately. Whoever expresses feelings at seeing pictures of dead women and children, or people who have lost their homes, is not necessarily 'anti' the country that he criticizes, and is definitely not 'anti' the people [in whose name their government operated]. However, there was no reason to bring matters to a crisis in the way it was done."
About Erdogan's statement that "a Muslim cannot be responsible for genocide" and that therefore he would rather meet Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir than Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Denktash says: "Sometimes he shoots from the hip. It would be better had he not said those words."
Cyprus' Peres and Shamir
"International diplomacy's cemetery," is the unflattering nickname ascribed to the prolonged dispute in Cyprus. The Turkish-Cypriots' main fear is that, with an agreement, the Greek-Cypriots who abandoned their homes during the Turkish invasion in 1974 would return en masse to the north. By doing so they would accomplish their "real" goal, of Hellenizing the island and turning the Turkish-Cypriots into a minority even in the third of the island that they now control.
On the other side, the Greek-Cypriots are mainly concerned about the settlers who immigrated from mainland Turkey in the last 35 years. Their numbers are estimated from some 50,000 (by Turkish count) to 120,000 (according to the Greeks). The Greeks maintain that the northern part of the island is not controlled solely by a few tens of thousands of Turkish-Cypriots, but rather by a regional power, Turkey, that represents some 80 million citizens and deploys some 40,000 soldiers there. If one adds to that the economic gap between the two halves, the Greeks' reluctance to finance the island's unification and especially the cultural gap (the Greeks boast that "We are Europeans, they are Asians"), then it is clear that the road to an arrangement is complicated and long.
"Complicated, but possible," strongly insists the incumbent northern Cypriot president Mehmet Ali Talat. "Totally nonexistent," stresses his prime minister Dervis Eroglu. The two are partners in a "cohabitation" regime, similar to that of president Jacques Chirac and prime minister Lionel Jospin, who governed France from 1997-2002. In Israel they might be seen, and not for naught, as Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir (who formed an uneasy national unity government and rotated the premiership between 1984 and 1988). To go by separate interviews the two gave to Haaretz, it appears that the comparison is almost accurate.
According to the leftist president, Talat, the negotiations with the Greek side are progressing positively. The negotiators have reached understandings regarding a joint government, the economy, relations with the EU, and, to a large extent, also about property issues. Discussions on security and the disputed territories have been left to the end because of their sensitivity, "but it won't take long until we have solved them, too," Talat predicts. He foresees Cyprus as one, unified island that comprises two nations and two integrated economies, both of which are members of the EU. "It is going to happen in 2010," he promises.
According to the nationalist prime minister, Eroglu, though, the president is not a prophet but a dreamer. Since the Greek-Cypriots are already members of the union, they have no incentive to reach a settlement. From Archbishop Makarios, who was the island's first president, right through to the veteran Greek-Cypriot president Glafcos Clerides and the incumbent Christofias, the "moderate" southern president - the Greeks, in his view, are the same Greeks, and the sea is the same sea.
As Eroglu sees it, the solution is establishment of two independent states. One can assume that this will be his goal right after the presidential elections, next April, in which he is expected to depose Talat. "Our citizens have lost all hope for an arrangement. Seventy percent of them are not interested in the present negotiations and 80 percent prefer to live separately," Eroglu says.
A journalist who met Eroglu later said that when the prime minister was asked about the president's "impending agreement," someone in the room said it would happen only "when a white elephant flies past the window." The joke was greeted with complete appreciation.
I'm shocked!
