OPINION: The Prudence of Taksim and a Two-State Solution
Cevdet writes: Just because people have a number of commonalities, does not mean that they will be able to align or conjoin politically.
21 November 2020
@KorsanCevdet
November 15, 2020 marked the 37th anniversary of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (TRNC or Turkish Cyprus) unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). This year’s celebrations had greater vigour as Ersin Tatar, the National Unity Party’s former leader and prime minster was recently elected President of Turkish Cyprus on a campaign that advocated a two-state solution and closer ties with Turkey. Like most Turks from Cyprus, President Tatar is a nationalist, and Tatar has the backing of Turkey’s major parties, including President Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). President Erdoğan, MHP’s leader Devlet Bahçeli, and a number of Turkish cabinet ministers also attended last weekend’s festivities. During the celebrations, both Presidents Tatar and Erdoğan’s speeches focused on Turkish Cyprus’ independent future as a two-state permanent settlement is long overdue. President Erdoğan is committed to leveraging his network to break the isolation that has restricted Turkish Cyprus’ development for decades.
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ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATED INTEREST:
· Ersin Tatar: Turkish Cyprus’ 5th President
· Judgement Day for Turkish Cyprus’ Run-Off Ballot
· Turkish Cyprus: Presidential Elections and More
· Stress in the Eastern Mediterranean Will Only Escalate
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Following 57 years of failed UN peace talks, the Turks have had enough of fruitless negotiations; it’s time for an alternative way forward. The fact of the matter is that a forced union between Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks is neither prudent nor wise as it can only be a recipe for disaster — as was the case with the first failed 1960 experiment that resulted in the establishment of the original Republic of Cyprus (RoC). Simply put, Cyprus’s Turks and Greeks have irreconcilable differences and expectations for a permanent settlement. Neither side should play the victim card (even though both sides often do just that) because nobody actually wanted an independent bi-national island republic. The irony of today’s situation is that we are back to the future because when the Cyprus conflict first erupted in the 1950s, Cyprus’ Greeks demanded union with Greece and the Turks responded with Taksim (partition) — effectively a two — state solution. Greece and Greek Cyprus tried on numerous occasions to consummate a hard union, but failed. Greece and Greek Cyprus have nonetheless achieved a soft union through Greek Cyprus’ 2004 accession to the European Union, whereas Cyprus has been divided since December 1963, and there have been two de facto states since 1975.
Tatar’s victory and the nationalist tendencies of most Turkish Cypriots should, therefore, not be a surprise to anyone as this merely reflects the realities of the age-old Cyprus conflict. At its core, the Cyprus conflict is about how and who should govern the island. These are not trick questions; they are the common root causes of most ethnic and inter-state conflicts globally. And in line with these conflict fault-lines, Cyprus has never been a homogenous political, ethno-social or national construct. Mind you, there are volumes of revisionist material that attempt to socially engineer fairy-tale like stories; however, these bare no truth and do not reflect reality. Cyprus is divided because its two dominant peoples have very differing views on who should control the island. The conflict is all about sovereign authority and power.
Presidents Tatar and Erdoğan’s speeches last Sunday and since the failure of the Crans-Montana UN Summit in 2017 have been consistent — the prospects for a federal solution are over, and it is time to move on. For some reason, Greek Cyprus, a handful of compromised Turkish Cypriot organizations and interest groups, and the European Union are having difficulty digesting these facts. But, when we look back at history, neither Cyprus’s Greeks nor Turks ever wanted an independent, bi-national island republic. Cyprus’ Greeks see themselves as a part of a greater Greek nation and Cyprus is considered a Greek island. For Greek Cypriots being “Cypriot” means being Greek from Cyprus, including jingoistic aspirations to unite with Greece. In contrast, Cyprus’ Turks see themselves as just that — Turks from Cyprus with very close linkages to Turkey, including Kemalism as a national ideology and pride in their Ottoman Turkish history, not to mention Turkey’s role as the Turkish Cypriot’s guarantor and primary source of support.
It is imperative to recognize and accept that the island’s Turks and Greeks as equals and the founding peoples of the original 1960 RoC. A Turkish — Greek balance was achieved and supposed to be maintained in the structures and construct of the bi-national republic through a number of key institutionalized and undeniable controls. For example, the Executive Branch had two parts: i) the Head of State was to be a Greek Cypriot President and ii) the Vice President with veto powers was to be Turkish Cypriot. The Cabinet had seven Greek Cypriot and three Turkish Cypriot ministers and the republic’s House of Representatives would have 35 Greek Cypriot and 15 Turkish Cypriot members. Cyprus’ Turkish and Greek communities were to have separate Communal Chambers and there would be a 70:30 Greek–to–Turk ratio for all public departments, with the exception of the security forces which was to be split 60: 40 Greek–to–Turk. Municipalities were to be managed along separate ethnic lines, with the larger city councils having separate administrations, such as Nicosia’s Turkish Municipality. In fact, the separate ethnic municipalities had the full authority to tax and collect revenues. The RoC was thus a collaborative, bi-national construct which empowered and guaranteed the national self-determination of Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks without allowing the domination of either group. However, the experiment failed miserably as the constitutional republic barely lasted three years.
The RoC’s constitutional order collapsed in December 1963 following the Greek Cypriot leadership’s failed attempt at revising the constitution that would remove the enshrined checks and balances. When the constitution was not amended through negotiation, the Greek Cypriot leadership resorted to the coercive usurpation and occupation of the republic’s institutions, structures, and effectively transformed the bi-national island republic into a Greek Cypriot state.
Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks are equals, and if a mutually acceptable resolution cannot be agreed, then they have the right to pursue a clean break from one another as they both negotiated the establishment of the original 1960 RoC and have since been empowered to negotiate the future fate of the state’s structure — but to no avail. The problem is that Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks have irreconcilable differences and cannot reach mutually acceptable terms for a shared, common future with lasting peace — as demonstrated by the consistently unsuccessful UN negotiations.
In case any of these facts have become a little hazy, let’s quickly recap the fundamentals:
· In 1950, Cyprus’ Greeks overwhelmingly voted in favor (95.71%) of uniting with Greece. This was rejected by the Colonial British Authorities, Cyprus’ Turks, and Turkey.
· The Cold War’s security and containment priorities (e.g. US vs. Soviet) forced Turkey, Greece, Britain, and Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks to accept a compromise, resulting in the establishment of a bi-national, independent island republic. The RoC was to safeguard the interests of all its citizens without prejudice and effective checks and balances in place to ensure the equality, legitimacy, integrity and security of its two founding peoples.
· The bi-national island republic only lasted three years (October 1960 to December 1963) because the Greek Cypriot political leadership did not accept Cyprus’ Turks as equal partners and were not willing to share the sovereign authority.
· In December 1963, the bi-national republic was forcibly taken over by arms by its numerically larger Greek population. Cyprus’ Turks became refugees in their own homeland and were forced into enclaves and ghettos — effectively an apartheid system — in which they were systematically not permitted to take up their positions within state structures. The checks and balances ceased, and the once-legitimate bi-national republic became an unconstitutional, failed state.
· Between December 1963 and the summer of 1974, Cyprus’ local ethnic conflict was active and brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war on numerous occasions.
· A NATO-only UN Peace Keeping Force (UNFICYP) was deployed on March 4, 1964 and remains to this date, albeit arguably ineffective.
· The Greek Cypriot House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution on June 26, 1967 that declared the House would not suspend its struggle to unite the island, undivided and whole, with Greece. The RoC’s anthem was officially replaced with Greece’s national anthem.
· On 15 July 1974, a coup backed by the junta in Athens overthrew the Greek Cypriot leadership, replacing the Greek Cypriot community’s political and spiritual leader, Archbishop Makarios with Nicos Sampson, a terrorist henchman, that was going to declare Cyprus’ union with Greece. Cyprus’ Turks were also targeted, and Turkey had to enact its guarantor obligations and militarily intervene to confront the existential threat to Cyprus’ Turks.
· Turkey’s military intervention was a game-changer because the junta in Athens collapsed, civilian rule was restored in Greece, Sampson was replaced by Glafkos Klerides as (acting) president, and the failed RoC was permanently changed as the grounds for a two–state future was established.
· Similar to the population exchange agreed to by Eleftherios Venizelos and Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa Atatürk, a parallel Greco–Turkish exchange occurred in Cyprus in which north Cyprus became Turkish and south Cyprus became Greek.
Subsequent to the events spanning July and August 1974, Cyprus’ active conflict has become cold, and with the exception of a handful flare-ups across the Green Line, Cyprus has had a relatively stable peace. Cyprus’ competing and conflicting peoples have a number of commonalities, but this is also true for Turks and Greeks across Turkey and Greece and many other conflicting peoples that have fought wars despite great commonalities, including Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs across the former Yugoslavia, India–Pakistan, peoples from across the Arabic speaking Middle East, Maghreb and Levant, Kurds across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, Bahasa speaking Muslims in rival Indonesia and Malaysia, and the list literally goes on and on. People should not make the grave mistake of confusing the political with the personal — these are very different levels of analysis and involve significantly different dynamics of behavior and conflict. Just because people have a number of commonalities, does not mean that they will be able to align or conjoin politically.
Between 1968 and 2017, Cyprus has seen approximately 50 years of failed, headlined attempts from a number UN Secretary Generals, including Antonio Guterres, Kofi Annan, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Since Chapter 1, Article 1, Section 2 of the UN Charter underlines the need to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination and to take appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace, why is it that in the case of the constitution and institutional structures of the 1960 RoC that are supposed to guarantee Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks the right to national self-determination without hindrance, prejudice or dominance of one nation over another, no power other than Turkey has intervened to restore and guarantee Cyprus’ Turks?
Let’s not be naive and try another experiment that is bound to fail due to the clearly irreconcilable differences between Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks. Political and ethnic conflict is no joking matter and must be taken seriously without stoking greater regional instability, volatility and potentially causing war across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean. Cyprus’ Turks and Greeks are joint founders and owners of the original 1960 RoC and can live as peaceful neighbors in two separate, sovereign, equal, and mutually independent republics on their common island.
This is a tale of two republics. Cyprus’ recognized and permanent partition is prudent and the only means to achieve a just and permanent peace — Turkish Cyprus to north and Greek Cyprus to the south.
