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SEPTEMBER 1999, pages 58-62 Cyprus: Coping with a Quarter-Century of Separation The Cyprus Problem: Two Views
I shall start with the premise that not all situations and conflicts are equal. Countries are different, history is different, and circumstances that lead to conflicts are different. The only factors that remain constant in any conflict are: First, the human suffering that is universal in character and, second, the need for international law and international legality to remain the focus of all efforts for the solution of conflicts. People in conflict areas, and especially women and children, suffer atrocities and violations of their basic human rights and freedoms, especially if policies of ethnic cleansing are employed as a weapon of war. Uprooting of people from their homes, indiscriminate killings of civilians, rapes and disappearances are some of the abhorrent methods that are reportedly being used in Kosovo and have also been used in Cyprus in 1974. The particulars of the Kosovo tragedy of ethnic cleansing are known to all of us because we see them daily on our TV screens. Thousands of people loaded in buses or on foot crossing the borders into neighboring countries in complete misery and pain: Destitute, homeless, dispossessed, hurt in their human dignity and honor. For us in Cyprus, these pictures are all too familiar. Twenty-five years ago, 200,000 Greek Cypriots were evicted from their homes by the Turkish army during the two phases of the invasion of our country in July and August 1974 that resulted in the occupation of 37 percent of the territory of Cyprus. Many of them fled out of fear and horror about the reported conduct of the Turkish troops, or as a result of the indiscriminate bombing by the Turkish air force. Most of them were forcibly expelled, being driven in buses to the cease-fire line, many of them after being held for several days or months in detention centers by the Turkish army. Several families were separated for considerable time ranging from several days to more than a year. Killings of civilians were committed on a large scale, 1,618 persons disappeared and their fate has not yet been ascertained, women of all ages, from 12 to 71 years old, fell victims to wholesale and repeated rapes committed by Turkish soldiers. The European Commission of Human Rights documented all these atrocities in its reports following the three interstate applications of the Government of Cyprus against the Government of Turkey in 1974, 1975 and 1977. Turkey was found responsible by the European Commission and by the European Court of Human Rights for violating numerous articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, by not allowing the return of the Greek Cypriot refugees to their homes, by the forcible separation of families, by deprivation of liberty, deprivation of life, ill-treatment, deprivation of possessions and discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin and religion. I referred to some extent to those tragic events not because I want to indulge in the past, but in order to show the different standards applied by the international community to the humanitarian tragedy in Cyprus compared to its response in the case of Kosovo. A quarter of a century later, the refugees of Cyprus continue to be prevented by the Turkish army from returning to their homes, despite the adoption of numerous resolutions by the United Nations calling for their immediate return in conditions of safety. A quarter of a century later, the island and the people remain forcibly divided on the basis of ethnic criteria. A small defenseless island, of the size of Delaware, has been cut literally in two by the use of force and the military might of a powerful NATO country, with a standing army that exceeds the population of the island. To realize the magnitude of the trauma and pain inflicted it should be noted that the displaced Greek Cypriots made up one-third of the population of the island and 80 percent of the population of the occupied area. Translated into United States population terms it would involve 90 million people becoming homeless overnight. In a matter of a few hours these people were forcibly alienated from everything a person cherishes as his or her own: The ancestral home, the property, the social fabric of the village or town, the roots and cultural bonds with the past. For a quarter of a century Turkey maintains 35,000 troops in the occupied area, along with hundreds of tanks and other sophisticated weapons. Such a small area is so saturated by the Turkish military presence that the U.N. secretary-general has characterized that area as one of the most densely militarized in the world. And this despite repeated United Nations resolutions calling for the immediate withdrawal of all the Turkish occupation troops. For a quarter of a century Turkey has been illegally importing thousands of mainland settlers to the occupied area with the sole aim of changing the demographic structure of the country, while the Turkish Cypriots are continuing to emigrate in the thousands. For a quarter of a century Turkey has pursued a policy of cultural cleansing by plundering the cultural heritage of that area, destroying a civilization that had lasted for more than 9,000 years. The purpose of such policies was to create two ethnically and culturally cleansed areas, one of which would be an homogeneous Turkish-populated area that has never existed in the centuries-old history of the island. For a quarter of a century the two communities, consisting of 82 percent Greek Cypriots and 18 percent Turkish Cypriots who have lived peacefully together for 400 years, remain forcibly separated. It is tragic to realize that Greek and Turkish Cypriot youth up to the age of 25 have never met people from the other community. And they share the same homeland, the same way that they should also share the same future, the same prospects for a better life in peace. Cyprus cannot remain the only exception to the rule that it is only natural for people from different ethnic or racial or religious backgrounds to live together. It is only natural that they can coexist and cooperate in their common homeland. This is the case in the United States. This is the case in Europe. This is the case being pursued now for Kosovo. The position of the United States and of other countries concerning Kosovo is that the Kosovar refugees should be able to return to their homes and have full autonomy within the borders of Yugoslavia and live in Kosovo with the Serb population. As it is unnatural and anachronistic to keep people forcibly divided in Kosovo, because they happen to be of a different ethnic or religious background, it is similarly unnatural and anachronistic to tolerate the occupation and forcible division of Cyprus on the basis of ethnic criteria. The refugees of Cyprus should therefore also be able to return to their homes in conditions of safety. The territorial integrity of Yugoslavia must be safeguarded as well as its internationally recognized borders, the same way that the territorial integrity of Cyprus must be safeguarded. The international community has rejected the attempted secession of the occupied part of the Republic of Cyprus and any solution to the problem has to respect that very principle. The international community supports the withdrawal of all the Serb forces from Kosovo and the presence of an international force there to secure the return of the refugees and the implementation of the agreement that will hopefully be reached. Similarly, we have long proposed the demilitarization of the Republic of Cyprus with the withdrawal of the Turkish occupation troops, the disbanding of the National Guard, the handing in of all the weapons to the United Nations and the establishment of an international force to guarantee the implementation of the agreement that will be reached. In both Kosovo and Cyprus policies of ethnic cleansing were shamefully pursued. The international community should equally condemn both as unacceptable and intolerable practices. Turkey has ignored over the years numerous resolutions adopted by the United Nations. And she has ignored them with impunity. Such a defiant attitude, if tolerated, would set a dangerous precedent, because no country has the right to claim special grounds for putting itself beyond the rules of international law. If Turkey, because of perceived strategic or other interests, evades this rule, then “might is right” will prevail and lawlessness and aggression will then be the rule, and the fate of small countries will especially be in jeopardy. Since the framework for a solution in Cyprus already exists in the numerous resolutions adopted by the United Nations, what is urgently needed and what would really constitute the only prospect for a solution in Cyprus and peace-building, is for the necessary influence to be exerted on Turkey to end the forcible division of the island and to comply with the international community’s decisions. As we are approaching the dawn of a new millennium, we should send a loud and clear message to all those who can help bring about the necessary changes, that the shameful and anachronistic policies of ethnic cleansing can no longer be tolerated in any part of the world. Such policies should not be allowed to shatter our hopes and expectations for a new era, for a more just and humane world order in the new millennium. Other more intractable problems around the globe have seen their way to a solution. The people of Cyprus deserve to have the same opportunity to see their children’s future in peace, prosperity and security in a reunited, demilitarized country, member of the European Union. This is our dream and our vision for the new millennium, which I put today before you. Ambassador Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis is the Cypriot ambassador to the United States. This article is based on her May 10 remarks to the Women’s Foreign Policy Group in New York.
The roots of the Cyprus problem can be traced back to the rise of Greek nationalism in the early 19th century. Throughout the British period (1878-1960), the Greek community in Cyprus, led by the Greek Orthodox Church and by political agitators from mainland Greece, expressed their desire for enosis (political union with Greece) through constant lobbying and increasingly violent demonstrations. This culminated in the terrorist activities of EOKA in the late 1950s, designed to get the British out of Cyprus. Union with Greece, however, was not a destiny with any natural appeal to the Turkish Cypriots (about one-quarter of the island’s population); nor could it appeal to Turkey, which had no intention of allowing a potentially belligerent Hellenic state to be formed in a large island only 40 miles from her southern shores—an island which, until unceremoniously annexed by Britain in 1914, had been an Ottoman Turkish province. So when Britain gave Cyprus “independence” in 1960, a series of sui generis agreements had to be reached designed to cater to the conflicting interests in the island not only of the Cypriots themselves, but of Britain, Greece, and Turkey as well. Already, then, the situation in Cyprus had taken on a certain complexity and any problems that arose there would inevitably have international dimensions. As formally founded in 1960, the Republic of Cyprus was not a unified state but a political partnership between the two main Cypriot communities, each of which retained its own language, religion, and cultural traditions. Both communities had close ties with their “mother countries,” and the latter were even permitted, under the 1960 Accords, to keep small military contingents permanently on the island. Along with Britain, Greece and Turkey had granted themselves the status of “guarantor powers” in relation to the new, supposedly independent, republic. This was, of course, primarily to protect their own interests in the island and included their right to intervene militarily if those interests were threatened. Moreover, under the 1960 Accords, 99 square miles of Cyprus remained British sovereign territory in the form of two military bases. These were, in effect, NATO bases which, together with other facilities granted to the British in the new Republic of Cyprus itself, enabled the Western alliance to eavesdrop electronically on the Soviet Union. Enosis was expressly proscribed by the 1960 Accords, but the Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, regarding himself as having signed those accords under duress, saw the partner Republic merely as a stepping stone to Greek hegemony in the island and to eventual enosis. This was entirely in accordance with one of the main politically disruptive forces acting on Cyprus: the ideology of Greek nationalism. For, according to this, Cyprus’ historic mission was to become part of a much larger Greece that would eventually include all the soon-to-be “redeemed” Greek lands that had once formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Makarios regarded the Turks in Cyprus as a decidedly alien and insignificant minority who should never have been given partnership status with the Greeks, as laid down in the 1960 constitution, a constitution he was determined to destroy. Consequently in 1963-64, by a series of drastic and uncompromising maneuvers, he forcibly ousted the Turkish Cypriots from all their positions in the new government. Most significantly, during the ensuing chaos on the island Makarios managed to obtain from the U.N. Security Council a resolution (186 of March 4, 1964) which effectively endorsed his (by then purely Greek) administration as the “government of Cyprus.” With these events, the international dimensions of the Cyprus problem widened and the conflict on the island itself became hardly susceptible at all to any amicable solution. Because of the inevitable intercommunal violence, sparked off by Makarios’s carefully planned actions, the U.N. sent a peacekeeping force to Cyprus, which has had to remain there ever since. Throughout the 1960s Turkey was frequently on the point of intervening militarily because of Makarios’s ill treatment of the Turkish Cypriots and the constant threat of enosis. Much to the consternation of the United States, a war between Greece and Turkey—both important NATO allies, to whom the U.S. was supplying arms—frequently seemed imminent (as it still does, from time to time). Hence U.S. “shuttle diplomacy” became a regular feature of the “Cyprus triangle” made up of Nicosia, Athens, and Ankara. Because of the British bases there, Russia rightly came to see Cyprus as a threat to her own security and did everything she could to exacerbate the situation on the island. This included supplying funds to the large Greek Cypriot communist party, AKEL, and simultaneously providing arms to Makarios and making overtures of friendship to Turkey. But if Cyprus had thus become something of a major strategic pawn in the Cold War, it also became deeply implicated in the activities of those (largely Third World) countries who were seeking neutrality, or at any rate relief from domination by the superpowers. For tactical purposes of his own (his real goal being, of course, eventual enosis with NATO member Greece), Makarios had early cultivated the nonaligned movement. He created an image of himself in that movement as the archetypal embattled leader of a newly independent, Greek-speaking country heroically striving to free itself from the residual fetters of colonialism. By the early 1960s he was regarded as an inspirational figure in the worldwide struggle for “self-determination.” He was on excellent terms with such—to Western tastes—unsavory nonaligned leaders as Tito and Nasser, and did not hesitate to form alliances with certain members of the Soviet bloc. These affiliations irritated the United States. Yet they served Makarios’s purpose well enough. They gave him considerable power in the U.N., especially in the General Assembly, to which he regularly resorted in his continuing attempts to further marginalize the Turkish Cypriots and prevent Turkey from intervening militarily in order to restore the constitutional rights he had illegally wrested from them. In 1974, however, the ultra right-wing regime of the “Colonels” in Greece made a fatal blunder. They launched a coup d’état against Makarios in a misguided and premature attempt to declare enosis. This time Turkey had little choice but to intervene. The coupists were put to flight, the despotic regime in Greece collapsed, and Cyprus was divided much as it is today, with the Turks in the north and the Greeks in the south. Negotiations, under U.N. auspices, to form a new bizonal federal republic began in 1975 and have been through many phases. Practically every sort of possible federal arrangement has been discussed in considerable detail, culminating in the U.N. secretary-general’s “Set of Ideas” in 1992 and the comprehensive “Confidence-Building Measures” devised a little later.
The reasons for this failure to solve “the Cyprus problem,” over such a long period of time, seem to be the following: (1) There is no common agreement about what the problem is. Nor is it easy to see how there ever could be such an agreement, not at least between the two Cypriot communities. For the Turkish side, the Cyprus problem revolves around the fact that the Turkish Cypriots live on an island inhabited by a majority of highly politicized Greeks who are determined to see Cyprus as theirs, and the Turks as at best a “minority” in a Greek state. With this apparently ineradicable perspective in mind, the Greeks were perfectly prepared to massacre Turks in the recent past and there is every reason to think they would do this again, if they had the military power. Fortunately, the presence of the Turkish army in the north since 1974 has effectively prevented any further attempts at Greek hegemony over the whole island by force of arms. Nevertheless this situation may not be as stable as it looks. For some years now the Greek Cypriots have been engaged in a massive arms buildup in the south. They are spending more than $2 million per day for military purposes. More ominous still is their so called “Defense Pact” with mainland Greece. In the implementation of this they have, among other things, built a base in Paphos for the use of the Greek air force. Knowing that they themselves have not the slightest intention of making any incursion into the Greek part of Cyprus, the Turkish military are not impressed by the claim that all this Greek weaponry is necessary for purposes of defense. They naturally see these developments as the possible overture to another highly dangerous Greek exercise in self-assertion. Greek aggressiveness being what it is, the Turkish Cypriots are now quite skeptical about the possibility of achieving a federal solution in Cyprus. Despite the lack of international recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), eventually established by the Turkish Cypriots in 1983, and all the difficulties created for it by the various embargoes imposed by the Greeks and, more recently, by the EU, the Turks in Cyprus would not be unduly disturbed by the prospect of continuing to live in a firmly divided island. They would prefer a confederation. But if confederation with the Greeks cannot be formed on the basis of a genuinely agreed and respected political equality—an equality, and share in the sovereignty of the island, that reflects the one originally envisioned and guaranteed in the 1960 Accords—then the Turkish Cypriots must inevitably see their best chances for the future in even closer links with their mother country. They have no alternative. The Greeks, however, do not accept the Turkish interpretation of the original Accords. Encouraged by the international community’s fortuitous recognition, they consider themselves to be the now fully legitimate government of Cyprus. On this view, they have merely temporarily lost de facto access to and control over the north because of an unjustifiable military “invasion and occupation” by a foreign power. For the Greeks, the “Cyprus problem” is therefore essentially the need to find the means of expelling the Turkish army from Cyprus, reducing the Turkish Cypriots once more to merely minority status and assuming full control of the island. Federalism was never what the Greeks really wanted; it was merely something they felt they had to agree to in principle in order eventually to get the Turkish army out of Cyprus. Moreover, since they are already the recognized government of Cyprus, how could the Greeks really want to share that sovereignty with someone else, least of all with the much-despised Turks? (2) Not only is there no obvious basis for rapprochement between these two Cypriot positions, there is also no obvious way that the many external powers with an interest in Cyprus—the three guarantors, the U.N., the EU, the U.S., Russia—could compel the Cypriots to change the present status quo, expressing as it does the almost inevitable outcome of a long historic impasse. The (much-interrupted) U.N. negotiations are conducted on the basis that agreement is being freely sought by discussion between two “politically equal” communities. The notion that the Turks in Cyprus are a political minority has been explicitly rejected by the secretary-general. No wonder, then, that the Greeks see little point in further pursuing a “solution” with the aid of the secretary-general. And the latter, exercising his “good offices,” can only try to bring the two sides together to negotiate. He cannot make them talk, let alone make them agree. The same is true of the other external powers. They can bring certain pressures to bear on the Cypriots and on Turkey and Greece; they can facilitate discussions; but they cannot force the two sides to reach a compromise. Even if they could, would an enforced compromise—in which one or both sides might feel intolerably frustrated—bring peace and stability? (3) A crucial, though frequently neglected, point is the following one. Agreement has been made even more difficult by the existence of a major incoherence in the U.N.’s own grasp of the Cyprus problem. While, in the U.N.-sponsored Cyprus negotiations, the U.N. has evidently taken some cognizance of the 1960 Accords and recognized the two Cypriot sides as “politically equal,” the Security Council and the General Assembly have not followed this important lead. Relying simply on the international community’s interpretation of Resolution 186 (1964), they still recognize the Greek side as “the government of Cyprus.” Hence the many U.N. resolutions which seem to support Greek perceptions about the supposedly unprincipled “invasion and occupation” of the “sovereign state of Cyprus” by Turkey, and which have also deemed the declaration of the TRNC to be “legally invalid.” But one must ask: “If there is nothing wrong with the present (purely Greek) government of Cyprus, why is the U.N. trying so hard to assist the two Cypriot communities to negotiate with a view to forming another (federal and bizonal) government in which both sides would once again share sovereignty on the basis of equality?” So far, the U.N. and the international community at large have preferred not to answer this question. (4) The current situation has been aggravated rather than helped by the Greek Cypriots’ application in 1990, using their U.N.-backed title of the “government of Cyprus,” for full membership of the EU. Rather surprisingly, in view of the ongoing U.N. negotiations aiming at the formation of a new federal Cyprus republic, the EU expressed a favorable view about this unilateral application in 1993 and negotiations for the accession of “Cyprus” began in 1998. Now it is a remarkable fact that these momentous arrangements were entered into without the Greek side or the EU first consulting the Turkish Cypriots. When the Turks presented their very cogent objections to the Greek application for membership—an application made, it must be emphasized, on behalf of both communities by just one of them—the EU simply ignored these representations and maintained that they could deal only with the “government of Cyprus.” None of these ill-considered antics can improve relations between the two communities. In fact, it seems obvious to the Turkish side that the Greek Cypriot EU application is merely another familiar piece of “aggressive diplomacy” with the real aim of getting the Turkish army out of Cyprus, demolishing the TRNC, and reducing the Turkish Cypriots to minority status in an Hellenic state. Moreover, through EU membership a sort of updated version of enosis with EU member Greece would undoubtedly be effected. And Turkey—herself unlikely to be admitted to full EU membership for another decade, if at all—would find her ability to defend her longstanding interests in Cyprus undermined, perhaps irreversibly. So, despite the fact that the conventional wisdom of the West holds that EU membership for “Cyprus” provides a new and attractive opportunity for solving the Cyprus problem, anyone acquainted with the actual facts in Cyprus, with the extraordinarily persistent antithetic positions taken by the two sides, and with the profoundly antagonistic relations between Greece and Turkey, will see that there is little reason to be optimistic on that score. A genuine application by both communities would, of course, be something else.
A minimal requirement for any successful Cyprus initiative must be that it shows sensitivity to the major concerns of both sides. And the only major concern the two sides seem to have in common is physical security. While the Greeks may genuinely fear that the Turkish army will one day advance and take the rest of Cyprus—the rest of their country, as they see it—the Turkish Cypriots fear that without the protection of the Turkish army they will once again be at the mercy of the destructive power of Greek nationalism. This is the basis of the current “crisis of confidence.” And, in brief, these are the factors that those members of the international community who are keen to facilitate a settlement in Cyprus need to bear in mind. Whatever legitimate stake the Greeks have in Cyprus, the equally legitimate Turkish interests cannot be ignored or simply wished away. As the aftermath of the signing of the 1960 Accords has shown the Turkish Cypriots, formal agreements with the Greeks in Cyprus have so far constituted no guarantee that Turkish interests will be respected. Nor, they now realize, are “guarantor powers” (with the exception of Turkey) to be relied upon. The history of modern Cyprus shows one thing quite clearly: persistent ignoring of legitimate Turkish interests there simply perpetuates confrontation. This does no one any good and the international community can hardly wish to encourage it. Neither Cypriot side has a monopoly of truth or justice. A more scrupulous even-handedness in dealing with them could create an atmosphere conducive to compromise. Well-intended compromise, provided it is sincere and realistic, could create some movement. It can certainly do no harm. Michael Moran is a former lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sussex in England. He is the editor of a compilation of Rauf Denktash speeches at the United Nations, and of another book on Cyprus, Sovereignty Divided. |
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