Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2002, page 50

Talking Turkey

 

Unexpected Overtures Raise Hopes That 2002 Finally May Be “Year of Cyprus”

 

By Jon Gorvett

In the deserted compound of Nicosia International Airport on a grey, windswept winter’s day, the leaders of the Turkish and Greek communities on the island of Cyprus met early in the new year.

The object of their Jan. 11 talks was a grim one: to discuss identifying mass graves around the island that are believed to contain some 1,480 Greek Cypriots missing since Turkey’s 1974 military intervention, and some 803 Turkish Cypriots missing since pogroms against the Turkish Cypriot community began in 1963.

The “disappeared”—one of the major issues dividing the two parts of Cyprus—are a still-open wound in the Greek Cypriot-dominated Republic of Cyprus to the south. There, in the decades since Turkish troops first stormed ashore in the north, nationalist politicians and groups often have used their emotive power to block chances of reconciliation with the internationally unrecognized Turkish Cypriot-dominated Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

The two leaders who met at the airport under U.N. auspices—Glafkos Clerides of the Republic and Rauf Denktash of the TRNC—discussed the issue for 45 minutes. Although this was not the first time they had done so in the past 27 years, if many observers in Turkey are correct it may turn out to be one of the more significant occasions. The end of 2001 saw some frantic activity on the island and in Turkey that have led many to believe that 2002 most definitely will be the “year of Cyprus.”

The first signs of a significant change in the Turkish/Turkish Cypriot position came in November, with the broadcast on the CNN Turk station of a series of TV programs by the respected Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand. These contained interviews with groups of Turkish and Greek Cypriot youth, during which a remarkable convergence of opinion emerged. Both sets of young people—who had been born since the 1974 war and therefore had no direct experience of each other, as the frontier between the Republic and the TRNC has been closed de facto since then—expressed strong desires for “a solution,” for something that would enable them both to lead normal lives. Surprisingly, this was then taken up in two more interviews by Birand—this time with Clerides and Denktash themselves.

Perhaps the most surprising participation of all was on the Turkish Cypriot side. Denktash had been following a position for over a year of refusing to take part in any kind of talks with Clerides—direct or proximity—before the TRNC was accorded “equal status” in the negotiations. His argument was that, because only the Republic had international recognition, talks on the island’s future always were weighted against the Turkish Cypriots.

Such a recognition of equality, however, would be to grant the TRNC a status that many Greek Cypriots believe Denktash has wanted for decades, that of an independent country—in other words, legitimizing partition. They argue that Denktash is simply the representative of a minority group on the island and should receive no extra status beyond that, making the Cyprus problem an internal matter for the Republic.

The two positions had been at an impasse for months, with the clock ticking on the Republic’s EU membership process and Turkish threats—repeated by Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in November—that any move to integrate the Republic with the EU would be met by Ankara “integrating” the TRNC with Turkey—even to the point of annexation.

Then, an abrupt change. Following his interview with Birand, Denktash wrote an open letter to Clerides calling for a face-to-face meeting. The Greek Cypriot leader’s first response was to reject the offer. After some frantic maneuvering in Athens, Ankara and both sides of the divided island capital of Nicosia, however, he agreed, provided that U.N. special Cyprus representative Alvero de Soto also was in attendance. Denktash agreed, and the three met Dec. 4 in the U.N.-occupied buffer zone (see Jan./Feb. Washington Report, p. 28).

The meeting seems to have been highly cordial, with Clerides accepting Denktash’s invitation to the TRNC for dinner later, making his first visit in years to what the Greek Cypriots see as “occupied Cyprus.” Clerides then reciprocated, and a few days later Denktash traveled south. A new meeting date was set for mid-January and this, too, went well. The two leaders agreed to continue their discussions at regular weekly meetings with a relatively open agenda.

Of course, the two meeting face to face has also happened before—repeatedly—without any real movement. What makes people think this is different, however, is that Denktash’s move was so unexpected, and that it may be the result of pressure on him from two—or even three—different sources: Ankara, Washington and, perhaps for the first time, Turkish and Turkish Cypriot public opinion.

“People here are for the first time asking a lot of questions about their true identity,” says TRNC columnist Huseyin Alkan. “People also don’t feel quite so grateful toward Turkey as they used to, especially since the economic crisis.”

The result has been growing disenchantment among an increasing number of Turkish Cypriots with Denktash’s position of non-negotiation, and with the prospect that the Republic indeed may join the EU—perhaps as early as next year—condemning them to becoming a province of an economically challenged Turkey. No one, it seems, has really asked the Turkish Cypriots if they want Ecevit’s “closer integration” or not.

There also are historical and cultural forces at play with the Turkish Cypriots. Most of them are the descendants of Turkish settlers brought to the island in Ottoman times, after Cyprus was taken from the Venetians by the Ottomans in 1570. In 1878, the island was handed over to the British. It gained independence in 1960, then blew apart a few years later.

The Turkish Cypriots thus have a radically different history from Turkish mainlanders, and this is beginning to show. The Cypriots see themselves as definitely European and are very Anglicized, with more Turkish Cypriots currently living in London than on the island itself. By and large, they would rather be in the EU than become another region of Turkey, and with the Republic heading to Brussels at full speed, they are getting mighty worried that they are going to miss the boat.

Throw into this the economic disasters of the last few years and there is a potent mix for change. The TRNC’s economic troubles surfaced well before Turkey’s, with the collapse in August 2000 of several Turkish Cypriot banks, which led at the time to the occupation of the TRNC parliament by a crowd of angry civil servants and depositors.

This was not helped by Turkey’s own banking crisis in November that year and in the following February, which saw the Turkish lira devalued by around 80 percent—hitting the TRNC hard, too, as it uses the Turkish currency as its own.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Cypriot left has been active, recently protesting over the detention of several teachers’ union leaders and what it sees as the harassment of left-wing activists and the leftist paper, Avrupa, which has been raided and closed by TRNC police.

The police operate under the command of a Turkish general appointed by Ankara—although in this instance they most likely were operating on instructions from rightist Denktash advisers who are members of the Turkish nationalist and partly armed group the UHH, or National People’s Movement. These represent a strong tradition as well, based on the partitionist Turkish guerrillas of British colonial days and, later on, pro-Ankara elements of the Turkish Cypriot militias that defended the island’s Turkish communities against Greek Cypriot attacks in the 1960s and ‘70s.

So the pressure—and the potential for trouble—certainly exists in the north. It also seems clear that there is a debate in Ankara about how far to go in supporting Denktash. Turkey is keenly aware that annexing the TRNC would put an end to its own plans for EU membership, as well as to the still-fragile Greek-Turkish rapprochement. Meanwhile, there is a strong feeling that the U.S. would like this issue finally resolved, more so than ever since Sept. 11, as the issue has the potential to cause extensive grief to the U.S. and Israel’s number one Muslim ally.

Whatever the case, the mere fact that Turkish newspaper columnists now can openly write about “finding a solution,” while Turkish Cypriots complain of being “occupied,” represents a radical shift from only a few months ago. The question now is how far that change really can go.

Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

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