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Why Turkey cannot recognize Greek Cyprus?


If one can continue to get away with the diplomatic fiction that it is perfectly acceptable for the Greco-Turkish Republic of Cyprus to be run solely by Greek Cypriots, then why seek a power-sharing solution with one's Turkish Cypriot compatriots at all? The thing to do instead is to get the EU to put pressure on Turkey to recognise Greek Cyprus as the true Cyprus Republic. After that, dealing with the Turkish Cypriots will be easy

MICHAEL MORAN

TDN Guest Writer

The most spectacular piece of news reported in the TDN in recent days is a suggestion by leading EU officials. The so-called Troika, consisting of the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg, who are the current and next term presidents of the EU, together with the new enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn -- that Turkey should recognize the present Greek-run Republic of Cyprus.

This suggestion, bordering on a demand, is reported to have been made at The Hague where Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül was having what was probably his final meeting with EU officials before December 17, when the crucial decision about Turkey's fitness to begin accession negotiations will be taken. It has also been widely reported that, while on a visit to Greek Cyprus earlier in the month, British Minister for Europe Dennis MacShane went so far as to say, “At the end of the day, Turkey must fully recognize the Republic of Cyprus, it is a legal impossibility for it not to do so.”

It is understood that requests and statements of this kind constitute an extremely sinister development. Recognizing the Republic of Cyprus, as presently constituted, with no participation of Turkish Cypriots in its government, is something that Turkey could not possibly do. Personally I believe it would be better for Turkey to actually abandon its historic quest for EU membership altogether than to succumb to such nonsense. After all, what surely matters most for Turkey is to continue its present impressive process of genuine democratization and economic reforms, for which the prospect of EU membership has acted as, at any rate, a powerful catalyst.

There is, of course, no difficulty in understanding why the Greek Cypriot administration itself would try to get Turkey to recognize them. From their side this would solve the Cyprus issue as they have always understood it. Turkey would not be able to recognize them as the legitimate government of the whole of Cyprus and at the same time continue to recognize the KKTC. Effectively abandoned by Turkey, the Turkish Cypriots would then surely find themselves once more at the mercy of their Greek compatriots, who, bypassing the U.N. negotiation process, would seek to treat them as, at best, a “protected” minority in a Greek state within the EU. It is sad to say, it looks as if, provided no further trouble erupts from this new situation, the EU wouldn't really mind if the Greeks succeeded in this outrageous ploy. For such an outcome would get the EU out of a considerable mess. This is the absurd position the EU landed itself in over Cyprus,originally in 1990, by seriously entertaining an application by the Greek Cypriots alone for EU membership of the whole island; and by subsequently actually granting that status to them on May1, of this year, despite their rejection of the Annan plan.
But surely trouble will erupt and more serious trouble than the EU seems to be aware of.  What would happen in Turkey? One can imagine the newspaper headlines. Above a picture of gloomy Erdog<breve>an shaking hands with a smirking Papadopoulos we might read: “Turkey recognizes Cyprus as a Greek island -- new Greek Cypriot embassy to be built in Constantinople!' (I mean, why not call things by their proper names all round.)

I would have thought that any Turkish government that recognized the present Greek Cypriot administration -- an administration (we cannot remind the international community too often) who unashamedly rejected the Annan plan for a United Cyprus, where power would be properly shared between the island's two communities -- would plunge Turkey into turmoil. Are EU officials so unaware of what the Cyprus problem is really about that they could not anticipate this?   

One thing they must surely know: the Greek Cypriots did not join the EU for economic reasons; their reasons were avowedly political. They thought that they would be able, as members, to use the EU as a battering ram in their long struggle with the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. They rejected the Annan plan because it was incompatible with their most cherished belief that Cyprus is Greek and should be run by Greeks. The last thing they have ever wanted is what the U.N. negotiations have always been about: a compromise solution, one that would include restoring the Turkish Cypriots to their proper place in the government of their country.

Another thing the EU officials surely know (though they scrupulously avoid ever mentioning) is that the Greek Cypriots originally got recognized as the Cyprus government by a combination of illegal brute force and diplomatic cajolery. The U.N. Security Council resolution 186 on March 4, 1964, incidentally, did not, as some writers in the TDN and elsewhere regularly affirm, bestow formal legality on the by then wholly Greek administration in Cyprus. For one thing, creating international law is not the function of U.N. resolutions. (So, to take another relevant example, Security Council resolution 541 of Nov. 1983, which “Considers the Declaration” of the KKTC to be “legally invalid” does not render the KKTC an illegal state. The Security Council is not an international court. All that resolutions do is to express an opinion, though a very important one to be sure). 

Moreover, in 1964, everyone (except the Greek Cypriots themselves, of course) believed that the 1960 Accords were still valid. Everyone, not least the U.N. secretary-general, acknowledged for some years after 1964 that, for example, Dr. Küçük was still legally the Cyprus vice-president.

What happened in 1964 was that the main western powers at first simply tolerated a manifestly unconstitutional government in Cyprus because it was politically impossible for them to do anything else. The general hope and belief at that time was that the Cyprus problem would be solved quite soon -- perhaps within a year at the most -- and a properly constituted government put in place once more. Read, for instance, the British Foreign Office documents of the time, or the text of the debates in the British parliament, and you will see how uneasy guarantor Britain felt about the now all-Greek Makarios regime. It was perfectly clear to British diplomats that a single community government in Cyprus could have no long-term legitimacy and that its various enactments, made in the absence of the Turkish Cypriots, to change the 1960 constitution to suit its usurpation of power on the island, were illegal. But Makarios had powerful friends. Both among the Non-Aligned countries (now increasingly dominant in the U.N. general assembly) and in the Soviet Union and its satellites, he had allies he could rely on to support his bid for Greek hegemony on the island.
For different reasons of their own, none of these states were enamored with the 1960 Accords. And, because of a possible military reaction by the USSR, Turkey was prevented by America from intervening in Cyprus, as was its right under the treaty of guarantee, to restore the Turkish Cypriots to their proper place in the Cyprus government. Britain decided her priority must be to keep her bases there functional, which could be done only with Greek Cypriot cooperation. Consequently, by the end of the 1960s, for these and other reasons -- none of them to do with international law -- everyone was treating the Greek Cypriot administration as if it was indeed the legitimate Cyprus government.

It is important to notice, furthermore, that this is something that occurred without any proper formalities. For the 1960 Accords to be changed -- especially so radically as to exclude the Turkish Cypriots from the government altogether, so that they had in fact no political representation in their own country, which is precisely what the Greek Cypriots did to them between 1964 and 1974 -- would surely require a formal decision on the part of all five signatories of the 1960 Accords. This has never happened and as everybody knows, or should know by now, a major cause of all the trouble in Cyprus is precisely this outstanding fact: that the Greek Cypriots seized power in 1964 and seem determined to hang on to it at all costs. Even now, it would appear, their surprisingly effective propaganda-machine still befuggles EU commissioners.

I would like to end this letter by drawing your readers' attention to two documents which may serve to bring home to them more vividly both the very dubious legitimacy -- notwithstanding their factual international “recognition” -- of the purely Greek administration of the Republic of Cyprus, and also the lengths they are prepared to go to keep themselves in power, despite the pressing need for a compromise solution on the island which, surely, the EU itself must, in its more reflective moments, genuinely desire.
On March 1, 1964, at the very time resolution 186 was being formulated at the U.N. in New York, Archbishop Makarios wrote a top “secret” letter to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou containing the following paragraph:
“Our aim ... is the abolition of the Zurich and London Agreements, so that it may be possible for the Greek Cypriot people ... to determine in an unfettered way its future. I am a signatory of these Agreements ... In my personal opinion, in the conditions then prevailing (in 1959), ‘naught else was to be done.’ But not for a moment did I believe that the agreements would constitute a permanent settlement ... Since then the international and local conditions have changed and I think that the time has come for us to undertake to rid ourselves of the agreements imposed on us, (i.e., the 1960 Accords, solemnly signed by the two Cypriot sides and the three guarantors) ... The unilateral abrogation of the Agreements without process of law and without agreement of all the signatories will possibly have serious repercussions. But we shall not proceed with such action without prior agreement with the government of Greece.”  
In fact, of course, Makarios had already “proceeded” by making it impossible for the Turkish Cypriot MP’s, their three ministers in the Cyprus government and their vice-president, to continue attending parliament. Therefore, when, in accordance with resolution 186, the U.N. peacekeeping forces arrived in Cyprus, the operative administration had only Greek members. Nevertheless, acting as he most candidly admitted, unilaterally and illegally, Makarios got much of what he wanted.

My second passage comes from Papadopoulos's televised “Declaration” of April 7, 2004 urging the Greek Cypriots to reject the Annan plan, which had been regarded very positively by practically the whole international community and which, just over two weeks later, both the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey accepted. The wording and tonality of the passage -- indeed of the speech as a whole -- is curiously reminiscent of Makarios's own rhetoric:
Thinking of the possible repercussions of rejecting the Annan plan, we have to weigh the dangers of what the Annan plan entails ... We have to think hard about the price we are called upon to pay through the acceptance of a plan that does injustice to the Greek Cypriots ... We are called upon to abolish the Republic of Cyprus, the only foothold of our people and the guarantee of our historic character. Shall we do away with our internationally recognized state exactly at the very moment it strengthens its political weight, with its accession to the European Union? ... Collapse of the Federal State (the joint state of the United Cyprus proposed in the Annan plan) would mathematically lead to what we all want to avoid partition through the international recognition of the constituent states.

Yes, indeed, if one can continue to get away with the diplomatic fiction that it is perfectly acceptable for the Greco-Turkish Republic of Cyprus to be run solely by Greek Cypriots, then why seek a power-sharing solution with one's Turkish Cypriot compatriots at all? The thing to do instead is to get the EU to put pressure on Turkey to recognize Greek Cyprus as the true  Republic of Cyprus. After that, dealing with the Turkish Cypriots will be easy.


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[-mikkie2-]

An article laced with plenty of Turkish propaganda!

[metecyp]

An article laced with plenty of Turkish propaganda!

Maybe so, but how do you answer the last paragraph? Don't you think that it's a little weird to insist on the recognition of the RoC while also stating that the A plan is not dead and it needs to be renegotiated?

[-mikkie2-]

My guess is so as to force Turkey to work at resolving the problem quickly, ie before actual negotiations for EU membership begin.

It cannot be possible for Turkey to start negotiating with the EU when it does not recognise Cyprus. Therefore the question of recognition is used to force the hand of Turkey.

Turkey wants to buy time and to push the problem into the distant future, ie 10-15 years from now. It is part of her bargaining chip for eventual EU entry.

However, Cyprus cannot wait that long.