Cyprus Dispute: 25 Years of Deadlock

By Jon P. Gorvett

It is 25 years ago this July that Turkish troops first stormed ashore on the coast of northern Cyprus to begin an operation that to this day remains for Greek Cypriots an invasion, and for Turkish Cypriots an act of liberation.

The summer also marks 25 years of effort by the international community—principally the U.N.—to reunite this one-time scenic and cultural gem of the eastern Mediterranean and to remove the border that currently divides the island between the largely Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus and the largely Turkish Cypriot and unrecognized “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (TRNC).

Yet 25 years on, this effort, which in recent years included a high degree of involvement from the U.S. and the EU, seems no nearer resolution. It has also proved itself a dangerous flash point not only between the 750,000 residents of Cyprus, but also between more than 10 million Greeks and 60 million Turks, and even between the tens of millions of Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims living along the shifting historical confrontation lines of the region. This reality was underlined in April by Turkish Cypriot intentions to use empty Greek Cypriot property in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus to house mostly Muslim refugees from Kosovo, while Greek Cypriots bombarded the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia with tomatoes to protest the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, another Christian Orthodox country.

Last year also threatened to end in armed conflict between the two populations of Cyprus and their larger Aegean big brothers. The government of Turkey had threatened to respond to a planned deployment of Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) by the Greek Cypriots by attacking the missile sites. After heavy pressure from the U.S., the Greek Cypriots backed down, with the missiles now stored but not deployed on the Greek island of Crete. (The Turkish government said it would attack the missiles on Crete if they were actually deployed there.)

In addition, the capture by Turkish commandos in Kenya of the Turkish Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, whose Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) fighters have been battling for the last 15 years with the Turkish army for a separate Kurdish homeland, also served to heighten tension on the island. Turkish intelligence spokespersons displayed a Greek Cypriot diplomatic passport with Ocalan’s picture in it allegedly found on the PKK leader when he was nabbed. Turkey has long thought that Greece and the Greek Cypriot support the Kurdish separatists, widely seen in Turkey as terrorists. The Turkish charge is denied in Athens and Nicosia.

With April’s general elections in Turkey resulting in increased support for a strongly nationalist party and its leaders, and December 1998’s general elections in the TRNC likewise seeing a drop in support for parties in favor of negotiating the reuniting of the island, political prospects for new initiatives on Cyprus look increasingly bleak.

Since the 1974 Turkish military intervention, aimed at protecting Turkish Cypriots from a pro-Greek military coup, split the island into a Greek Cypriot southern two-thirds and a Turkish Cypriot northern third, international efforts have consistently sought to bring about the creation of a single, bizonal, bicommunal federation. Although both Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaderships previously have supported this goal, since the collapse of U.N.-sponsored talks in the United States and in Switzerland last year the Turkish Cypriots have moved away from this position.

Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash argues that with the beginning of the EU accession process for the Republic of Cyprus, which is almost exclusively Greek Cypriot although it continues to be recognized internationally as the sole government of the island, intercommunal talks no longer make any sense. To resume the negotiations, Denktash is now demanding recognition for the north as a separate state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In addition, through an association agreement with Turkey, Denktash has said that the Turkish Cypriots will match every step taken by Greek Cypriots to integrate their republic with the EU with an identical move to integrate the north with Turkey.

Given that international recognition of the north as a separate state is highly unlikely, this policy has meant the end of Turkish Cypriot participation in intercommunal talks. It also excludes the Turkish Cypriots from any role in the EU negotiations, which EU and Greek Cypriot representatives have been unsuccessfully trying to secure. Further, it has led Turkish Cypriot authorities to block nascent intercommunal links that were being established under U.N. and U.S. auspices.

U.S. Cyprus negotiator Richard Holbrooke had put quite a lot of effort into developing some of these nongovernmental contacts—in particular between businessmen and -women from the two sides. However, the breakdown in Greek-Turkish relations that resulted from the Ocalan crisis effectively ended these efforts, with Turkish business leaders from the Turkish-Greek Business Council breaking off all contacts in February.

Current diplomatic efforts involve secret shuttle diplomacy by the new U.N. permanent representative on the island, Dame Anne Hercus, and backstairs contacts between Turkish Cypriots and the EU. That none of this is being done openly suggests the difficulty of the question even being aired publicly in the current political climate.

Support for Partition

So there has been a considerable strengthening of the traditional conservative Turkish support for partition, even though such a division in many ways condemns the north to isolation and further economic decline. Turkish Cypriot opposition leader Mehmet Ali Talat also sees in such a policy the gradual “dissolving” of the Turkish Cypriots themselves.

There is no “Turkish Cypriot” nation. It has always been a case of being “Turkish” and “Cypriot.” Without the reuniting of the island, Talat fears that the Turkish Cypriots will lose their identity.

In fact, many have already left and have been replaced by Turkish settlers. In an effort to give Turkish Cyprus a national identity, Denktash may ironically be causing it to disappear.

Yet Turkish Cypriot actions are also consistent with grave historically based fears of Greek Cypriot intentions. Decades of intercommunal violence, in which the Turkish Cypriot minority usually came off worse, were to a great degree ended by the Turkish army in 1974. Recent proposals by the Greek Cypriots to demilitarize the island are thus seen by the Turkish Cypriots as an attempt to remove the Turkish military guarantee that they see as having provided them personal security as well as keeping the peace since then.

On both sides memories of 1974 and before still linger on—in fact, are officially encouraged. It was also in 1974 that British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously declared that Britain had been “within a few hours” of going to war with Turkey as Turkish troops advanced on the main airport, occupied at the time by British soldiers from the island’s two UK bases.

The island’s conflicts thus have a far wider pull. Indeed, the S-300 issue exemplifies this. Greek Cypriot soldiers practiced launching the SAMs in Astrakhan, and the Russian government suggested it would deliver the missiles on board an aircraft carrier and a battle cruiser that would sail from the Baltic—avoiding the troublesome Turkish straits, a sight that would undoubtedly have sent shivers down the spines of many older U.S. officials who spent most of the Cold War trying to keep the Russians well out of the region.

Yet an armed conflict on and over Cyprus is unlikely to provide any great benefit to either side. Militarily, the Turks have the upper hand, while diplomatically and economically the Greeks dominate.

It may be that in order not to give up these respective advantages, both sides will simply continue as they are, drifting further and further apart while entertaining a stream of foreign diplomats trying to launch yet more initiatives through increasingly narrow channels of communications.

But with the island sitting on the southern end of a regional fault line that runs up the Aegean into the Balkans, a spark on Cyprus could readily ignite both ancient antagonisms and modern conflicts of interest. Last year a CIA report given coverage in Turkey went so far as to say that a Turkish-Greek war was one of the new millennium’s most likely possibilities, and that Cyprus would be a determining factor in this.

July 1999 marks the 25th anniversary of the last time that the island echoed to the sound of gunfire. In July 1974 many were killed, and thousands more lost their homes and possessions, and to this day the fate of the hundreds who went missing in that conflict remains unresolved. Thus the broad psychological wounds across Cyprus remain even more polarizing than the narrow, heavily militarized Green Line that divides it into two incompatible parts.

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