Cyprus’ Greek and Turkish Populations Pulled Further Apart With Time

By Jon P. Gorvett

“Over there is the foreign ministry, and next to that the prime ministry. Round the corner there, that’s the health ministry and the presidency’s a mile or so down that road.”

My guide from the press and information office is standing next to a well-kept lawn fronting a large glass-and-steel 1970s administration building. Inside, an army of civil servants busies itself in much the same way as armies of civil servants do all over the world; there are the limousines, and a row of flagpoles; armed guards stand or sit at the entrances, whiling away the hours beneath a hot Mediterranean sun.

Yet, except for Turkey, as far as the rest of the world is concerned none of this officially exists. My guide has a passport and a birth certificate that, again, the rest of the world bar Turkey does not recognize; Murat, despite his position and wallet-full of identity cards, was never officially born. This is what comes of living in a place that on any U.N., U.S. or EU document is situated precariously between two quotation marks.

Nevertheless, the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” recently held “general elections” in which the party of the “prime minister” did rather well, while the “president” can often be seen walking the streets with his escort of “police.”

How things got to be this way is a long, long story. Indeed, ask the Turkish Cypriot “president,” Rauf Denktash, practically any political question at all and his answer probably will start at least 39 years ago.

Back then, in 1960, following a bloody five-year campaign by the largely Greek Cypriot guerrilla movement EOKA, Cyprus won its independence from its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. At that time, the population of the island was 74.7 percent Greek Cypriot and 24.6 percent Turkish Cypriot.

Originally a Greek-speaking island, Cyprus had been conquered in 1572 by the Ottoman army, with which came settlers from Anatolia, ancestors of the present Turkish Cypriot minority.

The nature of the anti-colonial struggle on the island, therefore, was quite peculiar to Cyprus. EOKA stood not only for forcing out the British, but also as a right-wing movement dedicated to the pan-Hellenic Megali Ideal. This nationalist ideology was behind Greek expansion from the mainland rump of the 1820s to incorporate most of the Aegean islands and Crete, despite the Greek defeat in the 1920s in Anatolia by the forces of the new Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

As far as Cyprus was concerned, the Megali Ideal was expressed in the form of support for enosis—union of the whole island with the Greek mainland. EOKA was also heavily supported by the Greek Orthodox Church, which in Ottoman times had been the focal point for Greek ideas of identity, partly as a result of the Ottoman practice of dividing the Empire’s citizens along religious rather than ethnic or linguistic lines.

The coup was a double disaster.

It was therefore not surprising that Turkish Cypriots had little interest in backing EOKA. Instead, the Turkish Cypriots organized their own guerrilla movement, the TMT, but were seen by the Greeks to be on the British side, or advocating a line of their own, known as taksim (partition).

With the British decision to withdraw in 1960, it was clear that the newly independent Republic of Cyprus would have enormous difficulties in surviving.

In an effort to head off future trouble, the Zurich-London agreements set up a power-sharing constitution between the two communities with a Greek Cypriot president, Archbishop Makarios, and a Turkish Cypriot vice president, originally Dr. Kuchuk, and later Rauf Denktash.

The Turkish Cypriots were given a veto over certain types of legislation, and a quota system was established to apportion government jobs. The agreements were guaranteed by Greece, Turkey and Great Britain, each of whom reserved the right to intervene unilaterally should the deal break down.

Although he had signed the agreements, Makarios did not wait long to state his real position. “Independence was not the aim and purpose of the EOKA struggle,” he said. “New bastions have been conquered and from these the Greek Cypriots will march on to complete the final victory”—this on the very day the new republic was inaugurated.

By the end of 1963, he was ready to move, and effectively barred the Turkish Cypriots from participating in the government, removing their veto powers. At the same time, Greek Cypriot militiamen moved against their Turkish Cypriot neighbors in an example of ethnic cleansing. By February 1964, thousands of Turkish Cypriots had fled their villages and towns for the comparative safety of refugee camps on the island’s main Nicosia-Kyrenia highway.

A Dubious Honor

Turkish jets then bombed Greek Cypriot positions on the island and the U.N. intervened, sending in UNFICYP, which is there to this day, giving it the dubious honor of being the longest-serving U.N. peace keeping force in the world.

Since December 1963, the bi-communal Republic of Cyprus has been an exclusively Greek Cypriot affair in its administration. Since then, too, the Turkish Cypriots have by and large been administering themselves. Makarios’ Cyprus was also a curious entity on the international stage. The archbishop flirted by turns with the Warsaw Pact countries—buying arms from Czechoslovakia—then with the non-aligned movement and then with the West.

By the early 1970s he had also become an embarrassment to Athens, which after the colonels’ military coup in Greece became increasingly hostile. Makarios’ island became something of a refuge for many fleeing the junta’s persecutions, and the archbishop, who seemed increasingly comfortable with his status as a “non-aligned” world leader, began to be a troublesome priest for the colonels.

Finally, in July 1974, they decided enough was enough. A coup was launched on the island under the leadership of Nicos Sampson with the double objective of getting rid of the archbishop and of achieving enosis.

The coup was a double disaster. Makarios managed to escape an armed attack on his palace and fled abroad. As for enosis, although much of Sampson’s work was taken up in killing his Greek Cypriot opponents, ethnic cleansing of Turkish Cypriot enclaves drew a strong response from Turkey, which invaded the island, citing the 1960 guarantor agreements. The resulting cease-fire line is still in place today, splitting Cyprus in two.

Another result of the 1974 war was the ending of Cyprus’ heterogeneous character. Previously, although there were areas of the island in which one or the other of the two communities predominated, there was also a degree of intermixing.

In 1974 though, the Greek Cypriot militia’s attacks on Turkish Cypriot villages and the Turkish army’s attacks on Greek Cypriot areas created two waves of refugees. Some 200,000 Greek Cypriots fled south while 50,000 Turkish Cypriots fled north. Since 1974, therefore, the area north of the cease-fire line has been almost exclusively inhabited by Turkish Cypriots, augmented by farmers brought in from the Turkish mainland. South of the line, the inhabitants are Greek Cypriots.

A String of Initiatives

Since then, the efforts of the international community have been focused on trying to put the Cypriot Humpty Dumpty back together again. The U.N. has been in the lead in this, launching a string of initiatives over the last 24 years, none of which have broken the deadlock.

In the early years following the cease-fire, progress looked more likely. In 1977, Makarios and Denktash agreed on a set of four guidelines: for a bi-communal federal republic; a territorial division based not only on population but on economically viable areas; the discussion of freedom of movement, settlement and the right to own property—the “three freedoms”; and central government powers that would ensure unity while respecting bi-communality.

These principles were reaffirmed in 1979, but ran into trouble on the fourth point. In 1984, an initiative under the auspices of U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar put some meat on the bones, with a proposed reduction in Turkish Cypriot territory from the one-third occupied following the invasion to 29 percent of the island; an agreement on federation; an acceptance in principle of the withdrawal of foreign forces (there being around 35,000 Turkish troops on the island); the reopening of the international airport; and working groups on the three freedoms. These were accepted in toto by Denktash, but rejected by Greek Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou.

In 1990, talks broke down again, with Denktash for the first time advancing the idea of two “peoples” existing on the island rather than two communities.

In 1992, Perez de Cuellar’s successor as U.N. secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, advanced a Set of Ideas, which drew a map of future territories, gave refugees the right to return home and guaranteed the three freedoms.

For the Turkish Cypriots, the Set of Ideas represented a move toward the Greek Cypriot position, and Denktash rejected them. Then when Glafkos Clerides replaced George Vassilou as Greek Cypriot president in 1993, Clerides also rejected the proposals, placing his faith in a solution to the dispute being forced through the application of the Republic of Cyprus for membership of the European Union (EU), in which freedom of movement, settlement and ownership would be guaranteed.

In 1993 the U.N. introduced 14 Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) for discussion. These involved more concrete, on-the-ground proposals for reducing tensions and solving several smaller disputes as a step toward a more substantive political settlement. U.N. strategy continued to follow this line with the Vienna meetings in 1994, though these also produced no progress.

The then-U.N. resident representative on Cyprus, Gustav Feissel, then attempted to restart negotiations with his Five Talks in 1995, a series of informal gatherings between Denktash, Clerides and Feissel to discuss the CBMs. Ultimately, however, Feissel’s initiative produced no breakthrough.

The Issue of EU Membership

Since 1994, discussions between Greek and Turkish Cypriots have been increasingly overshadowed by the progress of the Republic of Cyprus toward membership in the European Union. This has been facilitated in part by the Turkish government’s eagerness to sign a customs union agreement with Brussels. At the end of 1995 the then-prime minister of Turkey, Tansu Ciller, reportedly dropped her objections to the Greek Cypriot application in return for the union agreement.

In essence, the two sides have had little in the way of concrete dispute over the idea of a future bi-communal, bi-zonal Cyprus. The positions from which that is being negotiated, however, have led to one breakdown after another.

Clerides imagines that EU membership will solve the problem of the three freedoms because to him the whole island still belongs to the Republic of Cyprus. Thus EU law applies everywhere—even in areas currently “occupied” by Turkey. In his view, the Turkish Cypriots are a minority within that republic, an internal problem, and as such have no automatic right to representation and certainly no right to be delegates in negotiations with other countries, or with the EU.

The international community’s continued recognition of the Republic of Cyprus as the sole government on the island has thus obviously benefited the Greek Cypriots, enabling them to impose an economic embargo on the north, sealing it to maritime and air traffic on the grounds that planes landing there or ships docking are doing so without permission from the island’s government and are thus performing an illegal entry.

Produce from the north is similarly treated, and therefore has to be shipped via Turkey to reach outside markets. Visit the island now, and you may pass from south to north, but not the other way. Arrival at a Greek Cypriot checkpoint with a Turkish Cypriot arrival stamp in your passport is taken as evidence of an illegal act.

On the other hand, the Turkish Cypriots have not recognized the Republic of Cyprus as their government since 1964. In 1975, the Turkish Cypriots declared that they constituted the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus. In 1983 they declared independence as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Denktash’s current demands that the Turkish Cypriots be recognized as a state before they will resume negotiations with the Greek Cypriots are thus an extension of this whole argument.

His critics would argue that his demands are a return to the original Turkish Cypriot idea of taksim—partition. The north is dominated not only by the Turkish military presence, it is also increasingly dominated by Turks.

The economic situation of the northerners is poor. The average annual income of $3,500 is around a fifth of that in the south. In recent years there has been industrial and agricultural shrinkage. Massive aid from Turkey, the distribution of which—often in the form of subsidies to prop up agricultural prices and secure the support and continued presence of farmers—is in some ways the principle battlefield of domestic politics.

Along with the subsidies, the currency is also Turkish, bringing with it the 70-80 percent inflation levels of the mainland. Many Turkish Cypriots have left. According to recent estimates, the Turkish Cypriot population in London now exceeds that on the island. The Turkish and Turkish Cypriot governments have attempted to redress this loss by encouraging mainland Turks to immigrate to Cyprus. This policy, of course, contributes to the Turkification of the north and the gradual erosion of what remains of any Turkish Cypriot identity. Turkish Cypriot intellectuals often bemoan the fact that now the old cannot remember how to speak Greek, and it is a language the young have never learned; bi-communal Cyprus is already an historical curio.

What does it mean, therefore, to talk about a reunited, bi-communal, bi-zonal Cyprus? Since the collapse of 1997’s U.N.-brokered talks at Troutbeck in the U.S. and Glion in Switzerland, the Turkish Cypriot government has been increasingly clear in saying that these ideas, the basis of the U.N. negotiations since 1974, are now well past their sell-by dates. To them, the south is now heading for the EU and they are heading for Turkey. This amounts to partial taksim and partial enosis, both at the same time.

These contrary gravitational pulls were in full swing when U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke arrived on the island last year as part of President Clinton’s latest U.S. effort to make 1998 the “year of Cyprus.” When Holbrooke’s considerable diplomatic skills were unable to produce any shift, he commented that “If progress is to be made, both sides must engage in give-and-take in serious negotiations. This is not the current situation.”

Yet the island is still a potential time bomb, as recent events have shown. Slotted into the wider picture of Greek-Turkish antagonisms, it is the kind of flashpoint which could plunge the region into the abyss. A series of regional and international fault lines criss-cross on this beautiful eastern Mediterranean island, a part of the world where earthquakes, regrettably, are not uncommon.

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