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For an ancient island, the clock
ticks
By K Gajendra Singh
"What miraculous wisdom of modern man will
resolve a conflict which, starting with the Trojan wars,
has already lasted three thousand years."
- Les rapports
Greco-Turcs: Mythes et realites, by Stephane
Yerasimos
East vs West,
the battles and wars between Anatolia's highlanders and
the people of the Aegean-Mediterranean coast and
islands, including Cyprus, stretch back to the very
beginnings of history and civilization. Peace has
reigned only when Greece and Asia Minor were both ruled
by the same power - the Ottomans, the Byzantines and the
Romans. Such today is not the case.
Covering an
area of 9,251 square kilometers, Cyprus is the third
largest island in the northeastern Mediterranean. It
lies about 60 kilometers south of Turkey, 100 kilometers
west of Syria and 400 kilometers north of Egypt, a
location that further highlights its strategic
importance for both the European Union and the
now-marauding West. Its population consists of two
ethnic groups, Greek and Turkish. The latter are mostly
descendants of Turks who settled when the island was
part of the Ottoman Empire from 1571 to 1878. The
Greek-speaking Cypriots are Eastern Orthodox Christians,
while the Turkish Cypriots are Sunni Muslims. Cyprus is
a member of the British Commonwealth and the Non-Aligned
Movement. English is widely spoken and understood as a
second language.
Island out of time
After the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 by Turkish
troops, and the occupation of more than one third of the
island by Turkish Cypriots, who form around one fifth of
the population, a separate Turkish federated state of
Cyprus was established in 1975. It made a unilateral
declaration of independence as the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus in 1983. But only its protector, Turkey,
which keeps over 30,000 troops on the island, recognizes
it as an independent state. Turkish Cypriots approved a
new constitution in 1985, with an elected president and
parliament, each with five-year terms, and a prime
minister appointed from the parliament by the president.
The highest judicial authority is the Supreme Court.
The Greek Cypriot government is based on the
1960 constitution of the republic, with an elected
president and a parliament, of which 70 percent are
elected by the Greek community and 30 percent by the
Turkish community. Since 1974, all seats have been held
by Greek Cypriots. There is also a Supreme Court.
Because of its location, ancient Cyprus was a
major trading center, with goods from the East coming
from ports in Phoenicia (Syria) for exchange and trade
with the civilized parts of Europe in the Mediterranean
and the Black Sea. Its wealthy kingdoms were under the
control and influence of powerful Assyrian traders (from
present-day Iraq) and Phoenicians. It then fell under
the influence of, by turns, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines
and, in the 7th century, partly under Muslim Arabs. St
Paul, born in Tarsus (Turkey), had preached in Cyprus,
and his assistant Barnabas was born there. Later
merchants from Genoa and Venice gained control of the
island's trade and in the 15th century it became a part
of the Venetian empire.
In 1573 Ottoman Turks
conquered it and restored the Orthodox archbishopric,
but after an early enlightened rule this lapsed into
oppression and neglect. There were serious uprisings in
the 18th and 19th centuries. By the end of the 19th
century, the British took over Cyprus from a
now-weakened Ottoman empire. The Cyprus Convention of
1878 between Britain and Turkey allowed the former a
base under Ottoman sovereignty to protect the latter
from Russian designs. But in 1914, when they were at war
with each other, Britain annexed the island. The
annexation was ratified under the Treaty of Lausanne
(1923), and Cyprus became a crown colony in 1925.
But despite the occupation of the island by the
British, the Greek population had always hoped to join
(Greek enosis) Greece, while the Turkish
population was always opposed to this. Greece refused
the British offer of transfer of Cyprus to it in 1915,
as the attached conditions were not deemed acceptable to
Greece. After World War II, during which Cyprus received
only a few air raids, the new Labour Party government in
Britain published in 1947 proposals for greater
self-government. But the Greek Cypriots were for
"enosis and only enosis".
In 1955,
Lieutenant-Colonel Georgios Grivas (also known as
Dighenis), an ex-Greek army officer, began a concerted
campaign for enosis under the National
Organization of Cypriot Struggle (EOKA). This consisted
of bombing public buildings and killing opponents of
enosis, Greek Cypriots as well as British. Many
proposals for self-government were discussed at
different times and rejected. But the EOKA attacks
continued. In March 1956, Archbishop Makarios III took
over the national aspirations of the Greek Cypriots. He
was deported to the Seychelles and, when not allowed to
return on release in 1957, he moved to Athens.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Cypriot minority, led by
Fazil Kuck, alarmed at the clamor for enosis,
demanded partition and/or accession to Turkey. Public
opinion in Greece and Turkey was much aroused in support
of the two communities, resulting in riots and
expulsions of Greek residents in Turkey. The United
Nations tried but could produce no agreed solution.
An independent republic
In February
1959, the Greek and Turkish governments reached an
agreement in Zurich and, at a conference in London a few
months later, a Greek-Turkish agreement was accepted by
the British government and by representatives of the
Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities, led by
Makarios and Kuck, respectively. In 1960 this agreement
was ratified by formal treaties agreed to in Nicosia;
Cyprus became an independent republic.
But the
UK retained sovereignty over the two military bases at
Akrotiri and Dhekelia, sovereignty which it has since
kept. But for the continued violence and the de facto
partition of Cyprus, the UK would surely - as elsewhere
- have been forced out of the bases by now. The bases
provided the US and NATO a strategic presence against
the USSR and its allies in this important region. One
wonders whether the UK or the West seriously promoted a
solution, even with Greece and Turkey being members of
NATO. A non-aligned Cyprus under Makarios would have
asked for the removal of the bases. Now, when Cyprus
joins the EU, the bases are there to monitor and control
the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
The
1959 Cypriot constitution also stipulated that the
republic could not ask for political or economic union
with any other state, nor would it be partitioned.
Greece, Turkey and Britain guaranteed the independence,
integrity and security of the republic. Greece and
Turkey also agreed to respect the integrity and
sovereignty of British air bases. It is a complicated
constitution, with decisions of the cabinet binding on
the president and vice president, either of whom could,
however, exercise a veto in matters relating to
security, defense or foreign affairs. Turkish Cypriots
were given some concessions. Forming around 20 percent
of the population, they received a 30 percent quota in
the civil services and a 40 percent quota in the army.
They were also given 30 percent of the seats in the
parliament. A joint Greco-Turkish military headquarters
was to be established. After an election held in
December 1959, Makarios became president and Kuck vice
president.
Coup d'etat and
occupation
On July 15, 1974, the Cypriot National
Guard, led by some Greek mainland officers, carried out
a coup d'etat to assassinate Makarios and establish
enosis. Makarios narrowly escaped being killed,
after which a former EOKA leader, Nikos Sampson, was
proclaimed the president of Cyprus.
The Turkish
forces then invaded the island, and by the time of a
ceasefire a month later had under control more than a
third of the northern part of the island. The occupation
of Cyprus in 1974 can be seen as resulting from a siege
mentality in Turkey. At the peak of the Cold War, even
with both Greece and Turkey being members of NATO, there
were (and still are) many problems between them. The
West's natural sympathies are always with Greece, the
ancient land and fountainhead of Western culture,
civilization and theories of government.
Crete,
which had rebelled in 1900, expelled all Muslim Turks
after its enosis with Greece in 1913. Italy had
taken Rhodes and other southeast Aegean islands,
including Dodecanese, from the Ottomans in 1913, which
were then passed on to Greece in 1948. Many Greek
islands are very close to the Turkish coast, forcing
Turkish ships to take detours to reach their own
coastline and islands. Some of these Greek islands have
been fortified. The Turks, therefore, rightfully
distrust the West in its disputes with Greece.
Apart from Greece, Turkey felt the nearness of
hostile neighbors in other directions: Bulgaria; a
Soviet-dominated Black Sea, with the USSR beyond; the
Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan;
historically inimical Iran; and Syria, a Soviet protege,
in the Middle East. Only with Iraq had Turkey a history
of good relations. Thus the Turkish coast near Cyprus
provided strategic breathing space, which the government
did not want to lose.
The complicity and
stupidity of Greece's ruling military junta was quite
clear. When Britain, the other guarantor power, hemmed
and hawed, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit ordered
an invasion of the island five days after the
declaration of enosis to remove the government of
Nikos Sampson. Despite some vigorous resistance, the
Turks were successful in establishing a bridgehead
around Kyrenia and linking it with the Turkish sector of
Nicosia. On July 23, 1974, Greece's junta fell and was
replaced by a democratic government under Konstantinos
Karamanlis. Sampson was replaced by Glafkos Clerides, an
automatic successor as the president of the parliament.
The three guarantor powers, Britain, Greece and
Turkey, met as required by the treaty for discussions in
Geneva. As no solution was reached by August 16, a
renewed Turkish advance gained control of the northern
37 percent of the island. They had occupied more area
than planned, as the Cypriots put up little fight, and
decided to maintain this extra territory for use in
negotiations. In retrospect, it seems clear that the
Turks won easily due to their sheer larger numbers and
superior firepower. As to the quality of their fighting
... in the confusion, they had bombed their own
destroyer and sank it.
Bhagvat Geeta and the
Cyprus problem
During a 1974 British television
interview, Bulent Ecevit was asked what gave him the
courage to do things that his predecessors had not
dared. Apart from other reasons, he replied that he was
fortified in his decision-making by the teachings of the
Bhagvat Gita. If one was morally right, one should not
hesitate to fight injustice against the mighty, and even
against near and dear ones. When the Gita, along with
Jawaharlal Nehru's Glimpses of World History,
were pointed out in Ecevit's library by an interviewer
from the International Herald Tribune, he said that the
two works had influenced him profoundly. While Ecevit
was quoting Gita, Indian diplomats, being on the other
side of the Cold War divide, were denouncing the Turkish
invasion in the United Nations and elsewhere.
In
1992, Ecevit further elucidated his philosophy and
decision-making process to this writer. Turkey, as one
of the guarantor powers of the Cypriot state and its
constitution (along with the UK and Greece), could act
to restore the situation if a change was sought. Greece
had conspired with Cyprus, which had declared
enosis - that is, union with Greece - and the
British had dithered. So, despite US pressure, Turkey
had sent the troops to protect Turkish Cypriots and its
own strategic and other interests (the Indian leadership
could learn a thing or two here). Ecevit added that he
abhorred violence in politics and in international
relations, but he was convinced that the situation would
have led to tensions and even a war with Greece.
Never-ending talks
Talks between the
two communities in Cyprus have been going on almost
since independence. After the rioting and violence in
the early 1960s, the Turkish community lived in cantons
administered by an entity known since 1967 by Turkish
Cypriots as the provisional Cyprus-Turkish
Administration. From 1968 to 1974, inter-communal talks
between Glafkos Clerides for the Greeks and Rauf
Denktash for the Turks continued inconclusively, with
the Turkish side demanding and the Greeks rejecting a
bi-zonal federation with a weak central government.
After the invasion of the island, Denktash
announced in early 1975 that the Turkish Cypriots' goal
was not independence but an equal federation. Talks were
resumed in Vienna in 1976 under UN auspices and have
continued off and on since then. After Makarios' death
in August 1977, Spyros Kyprianou, speaker of the
parliament, was elected unopposed as the republic's
second president for a five-year term in January 1978.
He was re-elected in 1983, but lost in 1988 to Georghios
Vassiliou.
In some ways the problem is
deep-rooted, somewhat like the issues dividing India and
Pakistan. In India, a minority Muslim elite ruled over a
majority Hindu population, as did the Ottoman Muslims
over Christian Cypriots before the arrival of the
British. What was attempted in the Cypriot constitution
after its independence was tried in India at the end of
the 1930s and early 1940s. But, with distrust and
suspicion growing between the Congress party and Muslim
League, and with finance minister Liaqat Ali Khan making
it impossible for the federal government to function,
the Congress party reluctantly accepted the idea of the
partition of the subcontinent, which happended in 1947.
The post-independence violence in Cyprus should
be an eye opener to those dreamy-eyed Indians who had
opposed the idea of a partition of the Indian
subcontinent, or to those Hindutva fanatics who still
dream and demand Akhand Bharat - a greater
undivided India. Many diplomats from Pakistan and
Bangladesh point out that since the 11th century, large
parts of Hindustan were never ruled by Hindus. If a
united Cyprus could succeed only after both Cyprus and
Greece joined the EU along with Turkey, then peace in
the subcontinent could come only when India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and others form a larger economic
organization embracing south and central Asia. But
Turkey, in spite of the recent hoopla, is unlikely to
gain admission to the EU in the near future.
Outlines and obstacles
After de facto
separation of the two communities since independence in
1960, and almost de jure separation since 1974, the EU
decision at its December 2002 Copenhagen summit to
accept the Greek-ruled portion of Cyprus as a new member
in 2004 if no agreement was reached on reunification
gave activity and urgency to the negotiations.
The basic outline of the revised UN plan include
the reunification of the island into a single country
and the creation of a federal government with two equal
states. It would have a president and a vice-president,
posts that would rotate between the two communities; a
48-seat senate, with half its members from each
community; and a 48-seat lower chamber, in proportion to
their populations. The Cypriot army would be dissolved.
Greek and Turkish army units would police the agreement.
Cypriots, mostly Greeks, who lost property in 1974 would
have the right of return, if the property fell within
areas under "territorial adjustments". Others would be
compensated.
An optimistic climate for solving
this longstanding problem was created and fostered
through many meetings and statements from major players,
including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the
leaders of Turkey, Greece, Europe and the US. But the
situation has not been made easier by the election of a
new hardline president in Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, a
former member of EOKA. Denktash has publicly accused
Papadopoulos of trying to kill Denktash in the 1960s.
Papadopoulos had not even take over officially on
February 28, 2003, the first deadline in the latest UN
plan, which was then extended to March 10. The Greek
community has been less than sanguine about the
possibility of joining the EU along with the Turkish
community. The Greek part of the island has flourished
economically, while the Turkish part has remained
stagnant. Per capita income of the Greeks is nearly four
times that of their Turkish counterparts.
Then
there is still the good old "President" Rauf Denktash,
the old intransigent Turkish leader, who has said
nyet more often than Andrei Gromyko, the once
Soviet ambassador to the UN. He has remained obdurate in
spite of massive rallies attended by the youthful
Turkish population in support of EU membership and
against his continuance in power. At the time of the EU
summit in Copenhagen, Denktash was apparently too ill to
attend following heart surgery. He has commented that
"the European Union's interest is to delay Turkey and to
take Cyprus, to possess Cyprus and to build something
like a Christian fortress around Turkey".
To
Kofi Annan's optimistic observation that the two
community leaders had agreed to come to the Hague and
convey their agreement for simultaneous referendums on
March 30 to let their people decide if they wanted to
unite and join the EU, Denktash retorted that he had
agreed only to go to the Hague - not hold a referendum.
He is supported by the conservative establishment and
the Turkish pashas (military leadership), who
oppose reunification for strategic reasons as well.
Also, many wealthy Turks have bought or leased fancy
real estate properties in Cyprus, and some of it might
be lost.
According to the EU timetable, if the
two communities do not unite and come together, then the
Greek Cypriot part alone will join the EU in 2004.
Turkish leaders have made no secret of their threats to
annex the Turkish part if the Greeks joined alone.
Latest concessions
In the latest
revised plan for a solution, Kofi Annan went the extra
mile to entice and persuade the Turkish side, which had
felt that Greek Cypriot refugees would migrate to the
Turkish zone "too soon and in too great numbers" and,
with their right to vote, would upset the balance in the
Turkish zone. Therefore the arrival of the Greek Cypriot
refugees, which was to begin six months after the
signing of the agreement, was delayed first by four
years, and then by six. During this six-year period, no
migrants under the age of 65 would be allowed to cross
into the northern Turkish-controlled Cyprus.
The
original plan called for limiting the number of refugees
returning to the Turkish side in the first 10 years to 7
percent of the population, reaching 18 percent only 15
years. After that, it was to be limited to 28 percent.
In the final proposal, these ratios were reduced to 7
percent, 14 percent and 21 percent. Thus the number of
Greek Cypriot refugees arriving in the Turkish zone was
estimated to be no more than 12,000 in all. Also, the
Greek Cypriots returning to the north would not have the
right to vote, and they would have to abide by all the
rules set by the Turkish administration.
Of the
Greek Cypriot refugees to be settled in the vacated
part, at the insistent objections of the Turkish side,
especially the armed forces, the entire Karpaz area
(considered of strategic importance) was left to the
Turkish side. This, however, made it difficult to
demarcate the border lines between the two sides. The
initial plan was to give 28.7 percent of the territory
to the Turkish side; this was finally raised to 29.2
percent. The first proposals had allowed Turkey and
Greece to keep on the island a maximum 10,000 troops
each. This was raised to 12,000. Finally, no reduction
in the Turkish military presence was required until
Turkey became a full member of the EU. The Turkish side
would also keep 60,000-65,000 Turkish nationals from the
mainland who settled in the Turkish sector. They would
ultimately become Cypriot citizens. The 18,000 Turkish
university students were to get special status so that
they could complete their education.
Another
highly important change was that the Turkish side was
being acknowledged as a "constituent state" as opposed
to a "partner state", thus allowing it consideration as
a separate and sovereign entity as part of the Cyprus
Republic.
Failure of negotiations
On
March 11, though, peace talks between the Greek and
Turkish leaders of Cyprus collapsed and the UN announced
the end of its efforts to reunite the island before it
accedes to the European Union. "Regrettably these
[peace] efforts were not a success. We have reached the
end of the road," said a statement by Kofi Annan.
The EU was upset over the failure of
negotiations. There was deep disappointment and stunned
disbelief, although it was tempered by some optimism
that an agreement would be reached eventually. The EU
said that the Cypriot membership remained on track. At
EU headquarters, Jean-Christophe Filori, a spokesman for
Guenter Verheugen, the EU enlargement commissioner, said
that Turkey ought to consider the consequences for its
membership application. "If by the end of 2004 there is
still no settlement on Cyprus, we will be facing this
rather weird situation where a candidate country
knocking at the door does not recognize one of our own
member states."
Without an agreement, 30,000
Turkish soldiers would remain on part of the territory
of an EU member state - the "Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus" - when Cyprus joins in May next year.
The Turkish government, led by new prime minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, has promised to continue to work for a
solution, but the influential military establishment
remains opposed. It is too early to go by the statements
coming from the Greek and the Turkish sides to decipher
what they really mean. Before half a millennium of
Ottoman Turkish rule, the inhabitants of Turkey lived
under Byzantine rule for a millennium, and they have
inherited some of the traditional Byzantine culture of
intrigue.
Turks and the AKP leadership would
like to see what they can get in exchange for a
solution. In any case, at the moment Turkey is too
engrossed in the all-consuming US-Iraq crisis to be able
to deal constructively with the Cyprus question. Thus
Cyprus remains another of the world's several Gordian
Knots, yet to be untied.
K Gajendra
Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as
ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996.
Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan,
Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the
Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.
(©2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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