Failing Talks |
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Prof. Dr. Ata ATUN |
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Failing Talks
It seems that a “Big Fail” is waiting the Cyprus talks because of the negative attitude and reluctance of the Greek leader Nikos Anastasiades.
From first day of his presidential days, he was quite reluctant to sit down with Dervish Eroglu, the President of TRNC, and discuss the problems blocking the way to a sustainable solution to the almost 51 years old Cyprus dispute.
The Greek Cypriots obviously are not willing to share the government and the governance of the existing so called “Republic of Cyprus”. Actually it is not the same Republic of Cyprus founded on August 16, 1960 where the Turkish Cypriots were the founding partners of the Republic and constituting the 30 percent of the civil servants and 40 percent of the Military force.
The then president Archbishop Makarios, after a dense and inhuman armed assaults to Turkish Cypriots with the intention to wipe them out from the island, realized that he cannot get rid of the Turks in the island by force and decided to find an alternative method.
Upon this failure he invented a rule titled “Law of Necessity” and unilaterally amended the 1960 Constitution of Republic of Cyprus with the votes of Greek Cypriot MP’s only in the Parliament and cancelled all the constitutional rights of Turkish Cypriots.
Of course this method was totally against the 1960 Constitution of Republic of Cyprus as any amendments in the Constitution or in any law, needed “absolute majority” of the Turkish Cypriot MP’s as well.
This is the main reason why Republic of Turkey does not recognize Republic of Cyprus as the continuation of the 1960 Republic of Cyprus.
The last long meeting of the leaders, which were supposed would give a push to the talks for a faster pace, on the contrary gave a slowdown as if somebody hit the brakes. The Greek leader “introduced new areas of disagreement, which all of them related to the “Procedure” and “Substance”.
President Anastasiades rejected the Talat-Papadopulos, Talat-Christofias and Eroglu-Christofias convergences and wanted the talks to start from the scratch. This means a further 50 years of discussions and is not acceptable by the Turkish Cypriots. On the last meeting he expressed his opposition to the rotating presidency and reportedly made a “president and vice-president” proposal where this concept never took place in any report of the Secretary General of the UN.
Anastasiades also demanded the submission of proposals on all the Chapters of the Cyprus Problem, which included “Territory” and “Security”.
Both of these chapters are the last ones in the “order of discussions” defined by the UN and cannot be discussed earlier than the planned stage.
It is obvious that the Greek Cypriots are not sincerely willing to end the four decades long discussions and trying to create artificial blockages to delay the negotiations, till a chance comes on stage to capture or overtake the island under Greek Cypriot hegemony as was before 1974, where the Turkish Cypriots had no political rights and human rights.
Ata ATUN
ata.atun@atun.com
http://www.ataatun.com
