Both Sides in Divided Cyprus Waiting for Outside Push for Peace

by Ian Williams

Waiting to go onto the runway at Nicosia International Airport is a Cyprus Airways jet. It has been waiting for 22 years, since the Turkish army took almost 40 percent of the island back in 1974, after the military junta in Athens had arranged a coup. Since then innumerable peace plans also have failed to take off.

Besides the Turkish-garrisoned North, 3 percent of the island, including Nicosia airport, is in the U.N. buffer zone where time has come to a halt. Winding through the back alleys of the capital, at times just 10 feet wide, the zone includes contemporary fossils like 54 “new” Toyotas trapped in a basement since 1974.

Back in January, U.S. peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke expressed the wish to do for Cyprus what he had done for Bosnia. Many observers thought that Cyprus’ problem was that it had the Dayton solution some two decades ago: legitimized ethnic cleansing and two de facto governments, even if only one was recognized internationally.

One cruelly accurate summary of the situation puts it, “The Turks can’t forget before 1974 and the Greeks can’t remember it.” As a result of these separate histories, although both sides now agree that the key issue for a settlement is security, they each mean different things by it.

Faced with the large Turkish garrison, the Greek side reputedly has been buying $2 million worth of arms a day, and recently signed a controversial defense treaty with Athens. This enhances the risk that hotheads in the motherlands, who are now some of the world’s biggest arms purchasers, could use Cyprus as a surrogate for their battles over Aegean rockswhich is yet another reason for Washington’s eagerness to get a settlement. The Greek Cypriots’ good relations with the Arab states and with the Palestinians are unlikely to be worsened by the recent public announcement of what many have long suspected: close military and intelligence cooperation between Turkey and Israel.

“The Clinton administration has publicly stated that it is time that the Cyprus problem was a priority,” Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides told the Washington Report. He added that “the U.S. realized what we have told them time and time again, that it is no use coming to talk to Mr. [Rauf] Denktash. You have to talk to Ankara. He would not move unless his back were covered by Ankara.”

Clerides says, “The framework in which a solution could be found from the Turkish point of view was not determined by Denktash, but always by Ankara. Where Denktash could react was that if international pressure made Turkey want to change that framework, and if he didn’t like the change, then his voice would be picked up by the opposition, the military, by the permanent members of the foreign office.

“The time that it is expected to take off is next June,” Clerides told the Washington Report, “I think the Americans do have a planbut they’re not going to put it on the table…I think that if they are going to do something before the elections, it will not be something that will demand maximum pressure from the United States on either side, during an American election.”

He went on to explain, “Any such plan is going to have certain things that the Turkish side doesn’t like, and others that the Cypriot side isn’t going to like. If they put it on the table, what are they going to achieve? A public debate, and then obviously our criticism of the plan would not look good in the elections for Clinton, because of the Greek Americans. And on the other hand, if the Turks dislike it, they will create some difficulties for the Turkish government, which is a minority. The Turkish government will say, what are you trying to do, bring us down?”

While not explicitly denying the rights of the Bosnian and Palestinian refugees to return, in practice both the Oslo and the Dayton agreements legitimized their expulsion. Didn’t this set a bad precedent for Cyprus? President Clerides replied, pragmatically, “It doesn’t mean that if we solve the problem, the Greek Cypriots who were living in the North are going to pack their bags and go back. They will wait and see if there is peace and security on both sides. Even then, a lot of people may not go. I do think that in Cyprus what we have to preserve is the right of freedom of movement and settlement, but I don’t say that the right will be exercised by thousands of people. They may want their properties back, but they are more likely to sell or lease them.

“If the Turkish Cypriots want to stay in the North, we will build houses for them so they can move out of the Greek houses. These things will be worked out.”

Similarly, he promised that there would be no forcible repatriation of the 45,000 settlers brought from mainland Turkey in the aftermath of 1974, but that they would be given “financial inducements” to go back. In fact, many Turkish leaders worry that the emigration of their youth and the continuing influx of illegal immigrants means that Turkish Cypriots are already in a minority in their own Republic. “They’d better come to an agreement with us quicklywhile there are still some of us left,” one Turkish Cypriot journalist asked me to warn his Greek compatriots.

Clerides’ proposal for disarmament fell upon stony ground in the North. As Atay Rasit, Rauf Denktash’s foreign minister, put it to the Washington Report, “We don’t trust multinational protection. We want Turkish protection. It took three years for international protection to intervene in Bosnia, and it cost the lives of 300,000 people theretwice our population on the island.”

While Greeks may want to move back North, Rasit says that no Turks want to return to their homes in the south. “I come from Paphos. A nice place. It was paradise for them and hell for us,” he said bitterly. For Rasit, “the main obstacle is Greek Cypriot intransigence. They are obsessed with the idea of always being the masters of the island. They are not prepared to share anything with us.”

Rasit claims that “The elements which can bring a solution are all on the table. A bizonal, bicommunal federal system, to be based on political equality, separate sovereignty, and that the Turkish guarantee will continue in accordance with the 1960 treaty.”

So would Holbrooke and the Americans make any difference? Rasit ponders, “Well, Americans are very business-like, and they have the most pragmatic approach to the problem. Not like the Europeans. But the American diplomats, especially Mr. Beatty, might make the Greek Cypriots face reality.”

On the other side, Clerides is still optimistic. He suggests that, unlike Yugoslavia, “Events in Cyprus happened over 20 years ago, and since then there have been no armed conflicts between the two communities.” Almost as important is that strong outside intervention could give the Cypriot leaders, both Greek and Turkish, an excuse to make the concessions which are politically unpalatable to sections of their own electorates but that are needed to break the logjam.

Mustafa Akinci, leader of the opposition Turkish Communal Liberation Party, expressed the need most poignantly. “We cannot continue like this. This island is not big enough to be partitioned, but it’s not so small that both communities cannot live here. If you ask me, really throughout the years, the necessary parameters have been given. The kind of solution can be found. What is needed is political will and determination—on both sides.”