After the passage of three years since the April 24, 2004 Annan plan referendum it is now clearly visible that the side punished by the international community is the Turkish Cypriots, who voted “yes,” ra-ther than the Greek Cypriots, who rejected the plan. It cab be observed that the international isolation and embargo of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) and of the Turkish Cypriots is still on with hopes for finding a solution to the Cyprus problem becoming increa-singly slim.
The Greek Cypriot administration, with the assurance of being a full member and sitting on the decision-making side of Turkey’s EU accession talks — currently going off track — suggests a possible solu-tion under the auspices of the UN.
Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, with an active and tough attitude toward the Cyprus problem, declared the Annan plan to be in the depths of the history, somewhere untouchable.
Turkey’s “Cyprus Action Plan” dated Jan. 24, 2006 aimed to form a basis for a solution, but was turned down by the Greek Cypriot ad-ministration and Greece in the first instance. The attitude of the inter-national community toward the Greeks’ position concerning the April 24 referendum was that of “mutual understanding,” further boosting the Greek disagreement.
The leader of the Greek Cypriot administration, Tassos Papado-poulos, strengthened support for his policy in the parliamentary elec-tions held on May 21, 2006 and is now talking about the abandonment not only of the Annan plan but also of a federal solution on the island, giving signals that his final target is a “unitary state in Cyprus.”
Different surveys held in Greek Cyprus in March 2006, May 2006, December 2006 and February 2007 revealed the drop of support for the Annan plan to just 1 percent. The consistent increase in opposition to the Annan plan and the stability of the support given to Papadopoulos reveal that the Greek Cypriot people think no differently from their leader or the Greek Cypriot administration.
The latest bargaining chip in the negotiations is the “Gambari proposals.” The Greek Cypriots concocted this to erase the negative sentiments originating from their rejection of the Annan plan. They grasped it like a political lifeline to keep their heads above water.
Unfortunately this plan was stillborn.
Initially the Gambari proposals were to establish subcommittees to handle humanitarian problems between the two peoples of the isl-and.
After the murder of a Turkish Cypriot family in the southern terri-tories the Greek Cypriot police possessed the evidence while the Tur-kish Cypriot police had the suspects. Their political denial of each other led to their refusal to cooperate while bringing charges and thus the suspects were released due to lack of evidence.
Bird flu was the second trigger to forming subcommittees han-dling humanitarian problems in between the two communities.
This is how forming committees was put on the table and pro-posed to both leaders by Ibrahim Gambari.
But the Greek Cypriot leader forced the property issue onto the agenda of the committees and killed the baby before it was born.
The property issue is one of the main or core subjects of the Cy-prus problem and should be handled as global compensation or set-tlement after the mutual agreement of both sides on an acceptable and sustainable solution to the Cyprus problem.
Against such a backdrop is a “solution in Cyprus” possible?
If the two peoples of the island cannot come to an agreement on humanitarian problems, how then will they solve the Cyprus problem, which stretching back to 1796 and the Megali Idea.
The new and the coming advancements in EU do not seem too good for Turkey.
And the proceedings for the accession negotiations are not ad-vancing as well as in the honeymoon days.
The first change took place in Germany.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder passed his seat to Angela Mer-kel. She hotly backed the idea of a “privileged partnership” for Turkey during her leadership campaign and got elected.
After Schröder the Italian prime minister also left the stage. He was one of the two backers of Turkey during its accession framework talks.
On the night of Oct. 3, 2005, when talks broke down and the Turkish delegation stood up to quit, he was one of the two who managed to convince them to return to the table and proceed.
The other of the two backers was British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He is also on his way off stage.
And finally French President Jacques Chirac. Although he wasn’t very sympathetic toward Turkey, he was still in favor of Turkey from time to time. He is to be replaced by Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the French right wing.
Probably with Patrick Devedjian, advocate of the notorious Ar-menian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), Sarkozy will try his best to keep Turkey out of the EU.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is also on his way out of poli-tics. I think this will be the biggest loss for Turkey.
Putin addressed the Duma, Russian Parliament, for the last time in the third week of April.
One of his dreams is to establish a Russian-Turkish Eurasian Union. He is trying quite hard to bring this to life and in his last speech made a call to Turkey for participation as a “full member.”
He made it clear that the Russian people are quite sympathetic toward Turks and that Turkey is the leading country for intermarriages between the two countries. He made a friendly call and asked Turkey to leave the EU and come hand-in-hand with Russia to establish the Russian-Turkish Eurasian Union.
Russian strategists managed to convince Putin to look toward Turkey after sensing that the negative sentiment toward Turkey in the EU was growing stronger.
Now after all the obstacles to Turkey on the road to unification with the EU and the unwillingness for partnership with an Islamic country, it seems the Eurasian Union is more understanding of Turkey than the EU is.
The giants and tigers of Asia are already on their way toward uni-fication, or at least cooperation, in the form of the Shanghai Five. In the Eurasian Union alliance Turkey’s prestigious and decisive seat, especially compared to “privileged partnership,” seems to be the best option for Turkey in the long run.
The world is gradually shifting from a single superpower gover-nance to a bipolar power-sharing.
While the US and EU form one pole, the giants of Asia, China, India, Russia and Turkey, together with the Turkic countries, will form the other.
It seems now that the fog is melting away and the new direction of Turkey is becoming crystal clear — the East and the Eurasian Union.
The destiny of Cyprus might have been settled along with all of the other problems between Greece and Turkey ages ago if the notorious “Megalo Idea” (The great project) of the Hellenic nation hadn’t poisoned the minds of the Greeks and Greek Cypriots. The peace between the two peoples of the island of Cyprus was painfully destroyed first by the Greek population transfer in the middle of the 18th century, and then again following the Greek independence.
The British Empire put the island in a deep freeze after acquiring it from the Ottomans in 1878. As common members of the British Empire, the local Greeks and Turks seemed to forget that they were supposed to be killing each other in the following decades.
The Greek Cypriots were unfortunately poisoned by the idea of unitary sovereignty quickly enough after the British left, and the 10 years following independence in 1960 were as bloody as anything in the Balkans before Sarajevo, with Turkish Cypriots as the sole target.
In 1963 Makarios raised Turkish fears by proposing constitutional changes that aimed to abolish power-sharing arrangements, violating the existing written agreements and Constitution. After the rejection of the proposal by the Turkish Cypriots, inter-communal violence erupted immediately and the less-populated Turkish side was removed from the power-sharing in the post-1960 Cyprus government by the brute force of Greek Cypriots.
Many Turkish civilians were killed by the Greek militants. Many Greeks had come to the island to help in the annexation of Cyprus to Greece; the Greek aim was to force Turkish people to immigrate to Turkey.
Around spring of 1964, United Nations peacekeeping forces were set up, but the UN forces could not stop the violence. Although Turkey alerted the international community about the massacre of Turkish civilians, the Greek Cypriots were not stopped from continuing their militarization.
The curtain lifted on the final scene of the conflict in 1974. After the coup d’état organized by the Greek government to overthrow President Makarios, Turkey stepped in to save the lives of the Turkish Cypriots.
The following decades, however, didn’t bring the hoped-for return to peace. The new president, Tassos Papadopoulos, made his name in the Greek/Turkish fighting in the ‘60s as deputy leader of a bloody outfit called Akritas and sees himself in the Greek Cypriot tradition as the leader of Greek Cyprus, or Cyprus Hellenism, as President Makarios used to put it.
The developing relationship between the European Union and Turkey has also caused problems for the Turkish Cypriots. In a 1994 decision that could be considered a great mistake by the EU, the European Court of Justice ruled that all direct trade between northern Cyprus and the EU to be illegal. This vicious sanction left the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), as recognized by Turkey, isolated from the world. With the Greek claims of total sovereignty, the Turkish communities find their forced isolation to be so complete that they cannot even send letters abroad.
The EU lists Cyprus as a member, in spite of the border problems. Normally the EU agreements do not allow membership to a state with border problems. Moreover, the Founding Agreements of Cyprus do not allow Cyprus to enter any international organization without Greece, Turkey and the UK’s permission.
Over the years when first Greek, then Cypriot, then Turkish applications to join the EU moved to the top of the political agenda, many argued that this would at last offer an opportunity to settle the Cyprus problem. Although some of the leading members of EU tried to present first to Greece, then to Cyprus the proposition that entry into the EU would be conditional on a Cyprus settlement, it has been met with little success. The EU works by consensus, but this cozy diplomatic expression is another way of saying that everybody has a veto, which makes these issues more difficult to resolve than ever.
Once Greece was a member of the EU, it could hold everything up until (Greek) Cyprus got in; once Cyprus joined, it could hold everything up until it was considered as a united whole.
The time bomb is ticking under Cyprus. If it explodes due to the pressures from Greeks, the EU will lose Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots, as well as the northern territories of Cyprus that were declared part of the EU on May 1, 2004.
If this is what you think of the presidential elections in Turkey, you are singing the wrong tune.
This very election will help Turkey’s democracy to deepen, to be more stable, rest on a solid basis and widen the borders of the rule of law in Turkey.
If democratic rules are breached in Turkey, the consequences will, like a domino effect, deprecate the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.
This presidential election is now a major test of democracy in Turkey; everybody should respect the democratic process.
The election of the Turkish president should be made according to democratic rules and Turkey’s Constitution. The world has a strong belief in Turkish democracy and its democratic institutions.
As per the existing constitution the Turkish Parliament — that is, the Turkish Grand National Assembly — is the only and sole organization to decide who is to be Turkey’s next president.
In the Constitution Turkey is tailored as a democratic state, meaning that civil organizations and civil politics fulfill their responsibilities in a free environment, free of all kinds of interference.
Any kind of interference will be a setback for Turkey’s Western civilization aspirations, set as one of the main objectives of Turkish Republic by the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
The election process is a critical moment in Turkey’s role in the world.
A possible intervention will not help Turkey’s critical role in one of the most complicated regions of the world.
If there is such an attempt in Turkey, this will be perceived as an attempt against democracy and an extremely clumsy contribution to an extremely important democratic process.
Stability and democracy in Turkey is pivotal for the free world. Secular democracy holds a very high value for the European Union and was at the core of Turkey’s Europeanization project.
The decisions taken by the Council of Europe on the summit meeting on Dec. 17, 2004, paving the way for accession talks, clearly state that negotiations with the EU could be suspended if democratic rules are breached.
Painful experiences have proven how non-democratic approaches harmed Turkey in the past.
The rich historic background of Turkey will help to resolve these political issues in their own way, in a way that’s consistent with the Turkish secular democracy and the constitutional provisions.
Every political dispute or problem in Turkey could now be handled and resolved within the legal framework and democracy, contrary to the methods of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
This very presidential election will probably lead to a start of a “new era” in terms of Turkey’s democracy, a democracy on good terms with headscarf, rule of law and foreign policy.
Abdullah Gül’s nomination as president will probably prove to be a development heralding a transition in Turkey from a democracy of fears to a republic of freedoms and, if elected, this new president may pursue a more “dynamic foreign policy,” due to his Western and Eastern background and duly inject a new dynamism into Turkey’s relations with the EU, US and Middle East.
In the Greek Cypriot version of history, Greece’s national issue, the “Megali Idea” (Mega Idea), the wish of “Enosis,” — meaning the annexation of Cyprus to Greece — stands firm.
The Enosis concept, based on the map of the Megali Idea drawn in 1791 and encapsulating the island of Cyprus in the territories of Greece, which at the time was under Ottoman rule, has stayed on the agenda ever since. This problem, led by Cypriot and Greece Orthodox Churches within their own historical evolution, has various stages.
1st stage: The problem called “Cyprus” actively appeared for the first time after the mapping of the Megali Idea in 1791, release of Enosis manifesto on 1821 and the uprising of Greeks under the leadership of Greek Orthodox Church.
2nd stage: The period between 1878-1914, when the active sovereignty of Cyprus was handled by the British. During this period, Turkish Cypriots were compelled to migrate in huge numbers, prompted by bloody attacks organized by swarms of Greeks and the properties owned by the Evkaf (Turkish Foundation) were confiscated. The origin of the property issue, still on the agenda today, goes back to this era.
3rd stage: The period covering the days after the unilateral annexation of the island by the British. In 1921 and 1950, Enosis plebiscites organized under the patronage of the Orthodox Church and Enosis helped with an uprising that took place in 1931, and 1955 the EOKA started an armed campaign steered by Greece.
4th stage: The period covered after the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960 till 1974. Greek Cypriots attempted to knock down the republic by changing the constitution and enforced the AKRITAS Plan on Dec. 21, 1963, where Mr. Papadopoulos was one of the masterminds.
The international community, blaming Turkey for an occupation, seems to be forgetting the fact that Greece had sent secretly a division of 20,000 troops to the island in 1964.
As a result, Turkish Cypriots had to evacuate 103 villages and were squeezed in “ghettos” covering barely 3 percent of the total land. They were forced to survive under unemployment, economic sanctions, restricted right of movement, no property rights and even massacred.
During the 4th stage, two fronts, actually both aiming for Enosis as the final target but differing in timing and procedure, came on scene. The EOKA-B, supported by the junta in Greece, was willing to achieve Enosis via short cut by overthrowing President Makarios, took over the administration by a military coup on July 15, 1974.
During the internal clashes within the Greek community in this period, 2,000 Greek Cypriots were killed and Nikos Sampson installed as the new president. Makarios, in his speech on July 19, 1974 at the UN Security Council stated that “the July 15 coup was organized by the Greek government and is an occupation threatening the independency and sovereignty of the island.”
All of these, based on written material, bring up the existence of a cluster of problems on the island, founded and governed by Greece before two centuries and finally aimed to overtake the administration.
The 1974 military intervention by Turkey based on the Treaty of Guarantee is not the factor that created the Cyprus problem, but actually, on the contrary, aimed to end it and became a turning point by opening a passage for finding a political solution.
Alongside the statement of Makarios, the existence of the ruling of Supreme Court of Greece dated March 21, 1979 and ref 2658/79, stating, “The intervention of Turkish Army to Cyprus is fully legal, the responsibility totally belongs to Greek officers” are by no means the best testimonials to clarify the picture.
