By Saudi gazette
SIX months of talks over the reunification of Cyprus have ended in failure despite the high hopes with which they began. This is a tragedy for all sides in a dispute which has now divided the island for 43 years.
For many generations, Turks and Greeks had lived side by side generally in amity. But during the fight for independence, British divide-and-rule tactics set the two communities at odds. Greek EOKA terrorists led by George Grivas attacked Turks as well as the British, which forced Turkish Cypriots toward supporting the colonial power. The inter-communal divisions sowed suspicions which came to the fore as London finally inked an agreement on independence in 1960. The island was to have a power-sharing government. But to ensure its success, Greece, Turkey, Russia and the UK guaranteed they would intervene should the status quo be threatened.
This happened in 1974 with a coup backed by Greece’s then military junta government. While London and Moscow wrung their hands and called for the coup to end, Ankara acted decisively and sent in troops. They occupied the north of the island. Tens of thousands of Greek-Cypriots fled south while a smaller number of the minority Turkish-Cypriots fled north.
Turkey could ill afford the expense of maintaining a substantial military presence on the island but insisted it was legally as well as morally bound to protect Turkish-Cypriots. The irony was that over the years, there were less and less of these people to protect. Taking advantage of citizenship concessions granted by the UK in the independence deal a significant number decided that there was no future for them on their island and moved to London, where they form a large community. With the population in the north collapsing, Ankara had to move in Turks from the mainland, offering them generous help to take over abandoned Greek-Cypriot farms and businesses.
Nine years after the Turkish invasion, the Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash declared the formation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a new state that was recognized only by Turkey. Denktash repeatedly spurned approaches about reunification from the Greek-Cypriots. But by the turn of the century opinion in the north of the island was moving away from his hardline. The Greek-Cypriot part of the island was seeking EU membership, with all the economic and political advantages it could bring. But as the Turkish community began to reach out to the Greeks, they found the old welcome mat withdrawn. Confident of their future in the EU, it was the Greeks who adopted the old arrogance of Denktash. They rejected Turkish proposals.
There is a strong argument that the failure of these last six months of talks in Switzerland was actually brought about back in 2004. Brussels had a unique opportunity then to insist that as part of Cyprus’ accession to the EU, its two communities had reunified. It seemed certain that nothing could have banged Greek and Turkish Cypriot heads together more effectively. But for whatever reason, and fear of Muslim Turks in both Cyprus and on the mainland, which had itself applied for EU membership in 1987, was arguably present, Brussels threw this chance up. The powerful lever that could have been applied to both communities was never used. It is now clear that this was an appalling mistake.
