by donyork » Sun Jan 07, 2007 2:51 pm
Here is another addition to press comment...the January edition of Parliamentary Brief, a respected and influential political journal which is read by UK parliamentarians, the EU and the US. The issue comes down to this: GC policy on the maintenance of sanctions against the North is the enemy of reunification and partition the price of it. Accordingly the best the EU can do to save the GCs from themselves is to bring about the ending of economic isolation — though clearly some of the more strident contributors to this site will not understand that when in a hole stop digging.
AFTER TURKEY A TEST FOR EUROPE’S GOOD FAITH ]
The EU may have stepped back from the brink in its punishment of Turkey for its refusal to open its ports to Greek Cypriot traffic but the damage thus done to EU-Turkish relations is considerable nonetheless. The pro-Europe elements in the world’s most powerful Muslim nation have been weakened at the very time when Europe needed them most. What folly.
The Greek Cypriots have successfully stirred the pot, but those countries which have taken up their cause have not done so for Greek Cyprus — of which they care little if anything — but as an excuse to derail the process of accession by Turkey to the EU. That in the end there was no ‘train crash’ is not to their credit, for at least the many were not prepared to allow that. Yet the few have nonetheless done harm enough.
Yes, on paper they were right. Ankara had signed a treaty which obliged them as part of the process to open its ports to the Greek Cypriots. But the EU knew full well that at the same time it had its own political commitment to end the economic isolation of North Cyprus — its reward for having backed the 2004 UN plan on reunification of the island, foiled only because the Greek Cypriots rejected it.
A treaty and a political commitment may not have the same legal weight, but it is humbug to pretend, as the EU did, that one has no bearing on the other. Cause and effect cannot be so easily separated in the real world.
So what should be done now to repair matters? The answer is blindingly obvious. Britain and those who share its world viewpoint must no longer simply repeat the promise to North Cyprus but insist that the promise is honoured.
There are two compelling reasons why this should be done. Firstly, because when Europe gives its word it must keep it; secondly, because keeping its word would send the right signal to Turkey — that the standards it demands are the same standards it observes itself.
And the result of that? Why, the Turks would then open their ports to Greek Cypriot traffic, and the accession proccess would return to its normal course.
However, the Greek Cypriots will certainly do everything they can to thwart any action which opens North Cyprus to the world and indeed using their EU membership as a veto they will continue to block all moves to that end unless the wider EU faces them down.
Nonetheless the EU cannot simply ignore the issue as it has done since 2004 — by making Turkish refusal such a test of their good faith the EU has put its own good faith on the line, a problem the German presidency cannot welcome but cannot now dodge.
The Greek Cypriot argument — that lifting economic sanctions would be tantamount to recognising the North as a legitimate state — does not stand scrutiny. Spain has just ended its equally long-standing
economic siege of Gibraltar but without yielding up its claims of sovereignty over the Rock. If Spain, why not Greek Cyprus? There is no good answer to that in the bunkers of Nicosia — nor for that matter in the corridors of Brussels.
Indeed, there is a good case for arguing that lifting sanctions against North Cyprus is a political necesssity whatever the furore in the South for otherwise there is the very real risk of partition if the EU tests the patience of the North to destruction.
While the North remains publicly committed to reunification that commitment is in large part a measure of its faith in the promises of the EU. That faith is not boundless and if Greek Cypriot policy prevails over Brussels good sense then partition may appear the only course left to the North — particularly if Turkish mainland opinion also swings decisively against the EU. If that happens, Greek Cypriot policy will have proved itself, if proof be needed, to have been entirely self-defeating.
There is nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing the North to remain shackled for no reason other than the ill-will of the bully-boys in the South. The question, however, is whether the EU has the guts to say so.
If not, then what point would there be in yet another UN plan for reunification — for having been double-crossed once, why on earth would the Turkish Cypriots want to say Yes a second time?
There are plenty of countries in the Islamic world eager to see Muslim North Cyprus as an independent state. The North would prefer to remain as part of Europe. But it would be a mistake to take that as a licence to prevaricate. Time has run out.
