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Can the Cyprus problem
ever
be resolved?
By Zenon Stavrinides 1.
Introduction
“The Cypriots”, wrote the Hungarian
-British humorist George Mikes in 1965
, “know that
they cannot become a World Power; but they have succeeded in becoming a World Nuisance,
which is almost as good.” The small island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean
comprising 9,251 square kilometres
–
roughly the size of Lebanon or Puerto Rico, and less than half the size of the Brazilian state of Sergipe
–
has hit from time to time the world's headlines, and consumed valuable time and effort of a succession of UN Secretaries-General Under-Secretaries and lesser officials, and a considerable number of world statesmen and commissioners of the European Union (of which the Greek-ruled Republic of Cyprus is a member-state), because trouble, acrimony and occasionally violence has broken out between on the one hand the Greek Cypriot community (population just over 800,000), and on the other hand the Turkish Cypriot community (population about 250,000), in close association with its defender and funder, Turkey (just under 80 million), situated 75 kilometres beyond
the island’s northern coast.
Cyprus has been divided on its territory and in the collective minds of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities since the intercommunal hostilities which broke out in December 1963, three-and-a-half years after the island gained its independence from Britain under a bicommunal, power-sharing and highly controversial constitution. In fact the implementation of certain provisions of the 1960 constitution lay at the heart of the intercommunal dispute which led to the breakdown of the constitutional order. It is no exaggeration to say that in the past half century the Republic of Cyprus has lived through a permanent crisis of constitutional legitimacy which the international community has had to take account of. Turkey very nearly went to war with the Greek Cypriots in 1964 and 1967. Between 1968 and 1974 negotiations were carried out by representatives of the two communities under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General for the purpose of finding a new constitutional arrangement, but these made little headway. On 20 July 1974, following a military
coup
d’etat
by the Greek Cypriot National Guard against the President of the Cyprus Republic Archbishop Makarios, Turkey invaded the island, brought the northern region under its military control, caused the flight of terrified Greek Cypriots who had lived there, and
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collected the Turkish Cypriot community in the north where, nine years later, its leader Rauf
Denktash declared the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. In February 1977 Makarios,
Denktash and the then UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim met together in Cyprus and agreed to search for a new settlement to the Cyprus problem in the form of a bicommunal (and effectively bizonal) federation, through a new negotiating process under UN auspices. In the following decades some 12 series of negotiations were undertaken by successive leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities without success, despite encouragement and advice from the United Nations, other international bodies and major powers. Cyprus remains today divided between a Turkish north and a Greek south, each with its own ethnic community, government and state apparatus (despite a small but increasingly sophisticated bicommunal movement of Greeks and Turks who seek reconciliation). By the early years of the 21
st
century, both communities have more or less adjusted to the division, and life in the two halves goes on at a regular pace, with its little pleasures, its little achievements, its hopes, its anxieties and difficulties, and the constant reminders issued by politicians and the media
that ‘we’ have suffered injustice by ‘them’, and if ‘they’ are brought to their senses by the
international community and abandon their unjust and unreasonable demands and yield to the claims of justice, the protracted negotiating process can succeed and create a win-win situation for both communities. It goes without saying (and this is something that annoys foreign diplomats and UN officials) that
it is always the ‘other’ side which is at
fault, and each side maintains a body of politicians and civil servants, supported by ethno-nationalistic
media, one of whose main aims is to obstruct the ‘other’ side’s efforts to gain international
recognition for its cause and to advance its own interests. Against this background, it is no wonder that the negotiations for a federal settlement to embrace the whole country and society under a common constitution and government have proved ineffective, and from time to time the uneasy peace is punctuated by worrisome provocations and nervous reactions which affect adversely relations between Greece and Turkey. Can the Cyprus problem, which has been festering in Cypriot society for most of the lifetime of most Greek and Turkish Cypriots now alive,
ever
be resolved? The answer is, in a way, simple: it all depends! If the basis of the solution and the UN-sponsored negotiations aimed at achieving it stay as they have been for more than 40 years, and if the beliefs, attitudes and calculations of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots/mainland Turks persist, then the Cyprus problem will remain in an
impasse
, and relations between the parties to the dispute will remain indefinitely in a state of unfriendly immobilism. If on the other hand there is
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substantial change in the basis and methodology of the solution, or if the factors determining the thinking of the negotiating sides are modified as a result of changes within Cypriot society or outside it, then it is possible
–
just possible
–
that the dispute can be resolved to the satisfaction of the majority of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and consequently a new state of affairs may begin on the island and its relations with Turkey, Greece and the European Union. Such changes would be welcome to many Cypriots in the two communities and unwelcome to many, perhaps very many, others. In this paper I will attempt to identify some of the main elements of the intercommunal negotiations and the goals and expectations with which the negotiating sides have approached them during successive rounds of negotiations held since 1974. The main idea of this paper, put bluntly, is that until recently each side to the negotiations and the community it represented aimed
to achieve, under the banner of a ‘just solution’, a set of constitutional,
political and economic arrangements which reflected its own ideas of justice, legitimate interests, security needs and wishes, with scant regard for the ideas, interests, needs and wishes of the other community. And failing to achieve its aim through negotiations and associated diplomacy, each community used its power and influence to refute the claims and interests of the other community and undermine its chances for raising its political status, welfare and potential for social fulfilment, not appreciating that its decisions and policies, and its manner of justifying them publicly, have the double effect of inflicting cruelty on the other community and also making its own people complicit to this cruelty.
2. Greek and Turkish Cypriot aims in the intercommunal negotiations
Greek Cypriots have never been happy to negotiate with Turkish Cypriots for a settlement in Cyprus, as that could be taken to imply that they accept that the Cyprus problem is an
intercommunal
dispute. As Greek Cypriot politicians like to put it
, the ‘essence’ of the Cyprus problem was Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Cypriot territory and the tragic
consequences flowing from that fact. It would have been less bad if Greek Cypriots could negotiate with Turkey, for it itself was the real violator of
Cyprus’s sovereignty and the
rights of its people. But even that would not be entirely correct: violations of international law, or crimes of any kind, cannot be settled through
negotiations
between the victim and the culprit, especially as negotiations can only result in a compromise which inevitably favours the stronger party. For Greek Cypriots a
‘
just
’
solution of the Cyprus problem, a
really
‘
just
’
