| INTRIGUE AND INTRANSIGENCE |
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INTRIGUE
AND INTRANSIGENCE:
The
following article was first printed in this year's Christopher
Hitchens is a founding member of 'Friends of Cyprus' and has also written a
book on Cyprus. He is currently a contributing editor of 'VANTY FAIR' and a
columnist for the 'NATION' and the
'LONDON REVIEW of books. Looking
back two decades to the hot summer of crisis that engulfed the island and
people of Cyprus, one is struck by the ineluctable, almost slow-motion way
in which the drama, once it commenced, moved to a predestined conclusion. Ranged
against the concept of a self-determining Cyprus were the United States and
Britain, which had favored partition; the Greek military dictatorship, which
was often confused by its own propaganda but which objectively supported a
version of double enosis; and the Turkish authorities who had maintained a
consistent minimum demand for taksim, or fifty-fifty division leading
ultimately to annexation. Against this impressive lineup of force,
Makarios could count on the majority Greek-Cypriot opinion, an anthology of
United Nations resolutions, a handful of UN peacekeepers, and some
half-hearted rhetoric from the Soviet Union. A PLAN FOR ALL SEASONSOn a clear day from the top of St. Hilarion, the crusader castle in the middle of the Pentadactylos range, you can practically see the coastline of Anatolia from the centre of Cyprus. It had been very obvious to any disinterested observer for some time that if any forcible move was made by any Greek faction, the consequences would play out with all the cumulative predictability of a traffic pile-up. Every piece was in place; every contingency plan had been rehearsed thrice over. (When Bulent Ecevit consulted his generals in the aftermath of the Nicos Sampson coup, they were able to offer him a menu of invasion scerarios tailored to different times of the year, different weather conditions, and different beachheads.) It
is this overwhelmingly obvious fact that licenses the persistent suspicion
of collusion in the early summer of 1974. We know that the State Department
of Henry Kissinger and the British Foreign Office were forewarned of a coup.
We know that the Turks were in a state of readiness. We know that it was an
overriding Western priority to avoid a war within NATO. Yet a course of
action was permitted that ran the high risk of such a war. Did those who
permitted this rashness, therefore, have some reason to believe that matters
and events would follow a prearranged course? If
they did - which 1 consider to be morally certain - then like other
hubristic statesmen in the past, they found themselves subject to the law of
unintended consequences. Cyprus in July 1974 was like one of those
conjunctures described by Hegel and Carlyle, when the life and personality
of one man made all the difference. THE DUBIOUS ROLE OF THE USArchbishop
Makarios, by writing his open letter to General Phaidon Gizikis did not
succeed in derailing the mechanized conspiracy against himself. But he did
succeed in disturbing some of its inner workings, and in throwing it
slightly off kilter. The
meltdown of the Nixon presidency in Washington, which was taking place in
parallel time, was also important, though it is not true that if the United
States had been more focused the calamity might have been averted. On the
contrary, the debts acquired by the Nixon-Agnew regime to the Athens Junta,
and vice versa, were an important element in evolving the entire script of
disaster. Two years previously Leslie Finer, formerly the BBC correspondent
in Athens, had written prophetically; "It
is impossible to grasp what is happening in Cyprus now except on the basis
that the Athens regime is paying for its keep by serving a long-term
American design: The removal of Makarios." Given
American commitments elsewhere in the region, it is unthinkable that such a
design would not be concerted also with the Turkish military authorities.
And indeed we now know that in the same year that Finer was writing, there
had been a NATO meeting in still-fascist Lisbon where Panayiotis Pipinelis
and Ihsan Caglayangil had agreed on the outlines of a "final
solution" to the Cyprus problem. There
remained the difficulty of "selling" such a deal to the people who
would have to fight for it under the flag of nationalism. Here, another
death deserves to be mentioned. General George Grivas was a very stupid man,
but not a completely dishonorable one. Is it possible that, had he lived
into 1974, he would have suspected that the "Greece for Christian
Greeks" proclaimed by the junta-was in reality framing a course of
action that would place his own native village of Trikomo under Turkish
occupation? At
any rate, rather as in 1967 in Athens (the precedent and model for 1974),
the coup that occured was not quite the one that had been designed.
Makarios's open letter panicked the leaders of the Greek junta into acting
too swiftly; as a result, Makarios was able not just to survive the attack
on his palace but to escape with the help of Greek-Cypriot antifascists who
had time to prepare. Instead of some quasi-respectable rightwing civilian
puppet, the junta was reduced to nominating Nicos Sampson, a third-rate
lumpen figure, as its candidate for the presidency. Sampson's record as a
Turk-killer made it impossible to expect Turkey to avoid taking advantage of
the appointment (though, in the first days of the coup, Denktash's radio
adhered to what some consider to have been a script by defining the coup as
an internal affair of the Greek side). THREE INVASIONS, NOT ONEThus,
when we commemorate the "invasion" of Cyprus we are in reality
remembering three invasions. The first, was the one carried out by the armed
forces of the Greek junta, which Archbishop Makarios himself, from the
podium of the United Nations, defined as an invasion. Some Cypriots are
uneasy with this characterization, because it can be employed to license, as
it were, the Turkish invasion. But
it is morally true to describe the junta assault as an attack by one country
upon another, and probably legally true as well. The actions taken certainly
went well beyond subversion, or the cliche about "interference in
internal affairs," and when Makarios wanted to forestall it he did not
address himself to the deluded cadres of EOKA-B but to the president of the
Hellenic Republic. In any case, to worry about whether such a description
licensed the Turks is to miss the point. The initial point of the coup was
precisely to license a Turkish landing and a subsequent share-out, though
not the landings and the partition that eventually took place. Thus
the first Turkish counterstroke was full of paradox. It actually gladdened
the hearts of some Greek Cypriots who saw at once that it was the end of the
junta. It drew a grudging endorsement from Moscow. It was in pedantic
conformity with the Treaty of Guarantee of 1960, which Greece had violated
and which Britain had shamefully refused to honour. It could have led, at
Vienna and Geneva, to a new deal for the Turkish Cypriots and to a revised
constitutional settlement for the island as a whole. Instead, while
negotiations were actually in progress, the Turkish army burst out of the
Kyrenia perimeter and established the bloody line of annexation that we know
today. ETHNIC CLEANSINGThe
scenes from that phase of the calamity - the third invasion - have become
indelible. The enclaved Greek-Cypriot communities, cut off behind guns and
wire and soon to be "cleansed" from their ancestral homes in plain
view of the television cameras and the international community. The agony
of the missing, photographed as they knelt in the sun under the rifles of
the Turkish army guards, and then never seen again. The brutal aerial
bombardment of Famagusta. The mass shooting of civilians at Kythea. The use
of rape as a weapon to create panic and flight. The strangulation of the
island's airports and harbors. Their
were other consequences, too. It is not absolutely certain VICTIM
- BLAMING BY THE WEST An
immense share of the blame for this wasted opportunity must be borne by the
governments of the United States and Britain which, having themselves been
very lenient on the Greek junta, "tilted" at the last moment
toward the emerging stronger side and in effect resolved that any partition
of Cyprus, even this flagrantly unfair and unstable version, was better than
none. Adding insult to injury, these powers have continued to insist, ever
since, that "a solution can come only from the Cypriots
themselves." This
hypocritical and high-sounding formula masks the decisive role played by the
outside powers in inflicting the present tragedy on Cyprus. By implying that
the 1974 crisis arose out of irreconcilable intercommunal frictions, the
powers-that-be are excusing their own role and engaging in a shabby exercise
in victim-blaming. It was noticeable, during both Turkish invasions of Cyprus, that the invaders did not head straight for areas of the Turkish minority population such as the region around Paphos. They made it their business to take the most profitable territory, and then to expel the indigenous Greeks "step by step" in the confidence that each separate and incremental measure could be got away with. It is impossible, in other words, to avoid the suspicion that Turkey had been acting in fidelity to a long-mediated design. First,
an aerial and amphibious landing "provoked" by the fascist lunacy
of the Greek junta. Then, a move to expand the conquered area to one that
looked more like Dr. Fazil Kuchuk's proposal for taksim in 1954 (before
there had even been any intercommunal violence). Then the phased
expulsion, after the conclusion of hostilities, of the enclaved Greeks. Then
the importation of colonists, numbering in the tens of thousands, from
Anatolia. Then I
well remember Ozker Ozgur, then leader of the Turkish-Cypriot opposition
party, telling me in 1989 on the anniversary of the invasion that he would
be reminding the voters of the original purpose of the "peace
operation." But by then, as he was constrained to admit, it was a bit
late. The Turkish Cypriots, he said, were being "dissolved like sugar
in water" by the importation of colonists and settlers and by the fiat
exercised by the Turkish Embassy and Turkish army over even the smallest
decision taken by local authorities. Mr. Denktash himself once told me
that he could not on his own initiative give me permission to visit the
closed and emptied city of Varosha, which with its vacant streets and
abandoned buildings is still one of the starkest memorials of the invasion,
as well as one of the world's greatest standing monuments to human
stupidity. THE
ECHOES OF CYPRUS IN BOSNIA At
the time, some of us wrote and made speeches saying that the bell which
tolled for Cyprus would later toll for other small nations. If a great
regional power was allowed to change the boundaries and the population of a
neighbour by force, then use were the solemn charters of the United Nations,
the now European Union, and NATO? So I was interested to see a Bosnian Serb
extremist quoted in the New York Times a few months ago when the Bosnian
Serb "parliament" declared an unrecognised and independent state.
Asked by the reporter whether he expected to get away with this, the
Karadzic supporter was all smiles. Why not, he said in effect. The Turks
did it in Cyprus, but the world only made noise and did nothing. Given that
the word "Turk" is usually a grave insult among Serbian extremists
(it's the word they apply to the Muslims of Bosnia), it was interesting to
see this kinship displayed in such a keenly intuitive way. The
continuation of a ratified conquest and imposed partition of Cyprus, then,
is a direct reproach to international law and to all the bodies which claim
to uphold it. It is obviously a direct challenge to the authority and
integrity of the United Nations, which actually gave birth to the Republic
of Cyprus and has since
passed over 100 resolutions concerning its independence and
demilitarization. With Namibia settled and the Palestine question in an
intermediate stage, Cyprus is the oldest issue on the international agenda,
and long overdue for more concerted attention. Yet the leading members of
the Security Council persist in viewing the problem as one of intercommunal
conciliation, rather than as a dispute between member states, one of which
is a violation of the Charter. The president of the Cyprus Republic is
supposed to negotiate with Mr. Denktash, who does not even claim to be in
command of the Turkish troops on the island. Cyprus
is also a challenge to the founding principles of the European Union, which
it would by now have joined if not for the events of 1974. The basis of the
EU is the free movement across frontiers of capital and labor. Nothing could
be more antithetical to this than the partition line in Cyprus, which
forbids
even day-trips to Cypriots, deprived of their towns and villages of
origin, and is in that sense even less permeable than the Berlin Wall.
Having met all the qualifications for membership, however, Cyprus is still
hypocritically relegated to the periphery by the European Commission and
lumped in with less-qualified peripheral states like Malta, when in fact the
Commission is merely postponing a confrontation with Turkey on the issue. The United States Congress in another body that has yet to live up to its own declared principles. In employing American weapons to invade and occupy Cyprus, and in diverting US military aid to continue the occupation, Turkey directly violates American law in the shape of the Foreign Assistance Act. It says something about official American cynicism in this matter that, despite numerous pro-forma Congressional resolutions, Secretary of State Warren Christopher at his confirmation hearings was the first senior American official to employ the word "occupation" in connection with Cyprus. THE
END OF CIVILIZATION Meanwhile,
the "creation of facts" continues. The tiny minority of Greek
Cypriots in the Karpass peninsula is getting older and smaller, and by
century's end it seems profitable that the entire north of the island will
be "Greek-free" after thousands of years of continuous
civilization. The
pillage and destruction of the Hellenic and Byzantine cultural treasury
continues, in a crude attempt to efface even the memory of former
inhabitation. Unsubtle lobbying tactics, such as those engaged in by Mr.
Asil Nadir before his enforced flight from the U.K., have taken legislators
on free trips to "north Cyprus" and allowed them access to
bargain-price villas and properties. Atlases are being produced that show
two Cypruses. The State Department and the Foreign Office refer, in private
conversation, to the North and the South or to the Turkish and the Greek
"sides," as if they were morally equivalent and as if there was
no such thing as an internationally recognized republic. The
great-power habit of looking at Cyprus as a piece of realestate, or an
aircraft carrier, or a strategic "bargaining chip," instead of as
a complex, multiethnic society, has led to one disaster and injustice
after another. While this legacy persists, it is neither decent nor accurate
to refer to ourselves as living in a post-Cold War world.
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TO
BIND UP THE WOUNDS OF CYPRUS by
Costa Carras Costa
Carras is a founding member of 'Friends of Cyprus' and has participated in
most of 'Friends of Cyprus' conferences. He has also written papers on
cross-voting as a way of intercommunal integration and confidence-building
in multi-communal states. "You
abolished our government, annihilated our laws, suppressed our authorities,
took away our lands, turned us out of our houses, denied us the rights of
men, made us outcasts and outlaws In our own land"... Thus
a Cherokee Indian In the 1840's speaking to white Americans regarding the
earlier forced expulsion of his people from Georgia. He had obviously
learnt to draw from the well of British and American moral eloquence In
order to cauterize the hypocrisy with which that moral eloquence is,
regrettably all too often, associated. It Is not surprising that "ethnic cleansing" is an older phenomenon than Its title, which It seems to have obtained after 1991 In Yugoslavia. It Is Indeed far older than the white American treatment of the Cherokees dating back at least as far as the Assyrian Empire, If not further. Horrifying In human terms It remains, but while our sense of horror must not be moderated, whether the phenomenon occurs In Bosnia or Cyprus, It Is equally Imperative to grasp that It Is not historically, unlike genocide, a rare phenomenon but on the contrary the classic expression of raison d'etat against feelings of humanity. Why? Where
military resistance to superior power Is not based on firm support for that
resistance by the civilian population, the power In question, whether
Imperial or national, has a reasonable chance to secure a lasting peace In
the territory It seeks to control either by persuasion ("winning hearts
and minds") or alternatively by reaching an uneasy modus vivendi with
the civilian population concerned. Where however a substantial proportion
of that population Is consistently committed to the forces engaged In
resistance the Imperial or national power must either concede defeat or move
the population. In short "ethnic cleansing" results from the
victory of the logic of power over humanitarian principles in pursuit of
territorial control. It
Is worthwhile to make clear the distinctions and connections between
"massacre", "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide".
Massacres may be unplanned and occur because of a loss of control, but they
may also be planned specifically to Induce a subject population rebelling
against an existing modus vivendi with a superior power to accept that the
consequences of such challenges to established authority will be so painful
they had better be avoided. Periodic massacres may, within an empire, be
consistent with a high level of tolerance so long as the status quo Is not
challenged. "Ethnic
cleansing" is equivalent to a planned massacre In Its primary
intention, namely to assert or retain control over a particular territory,
but Is In other respect very different. First It calls for a sufficient
degree of Inhumanity and violence (which will differ from Instance to
Instance) as will persuade the civilian population to leave their homes,
something which In normal circumstances people would not do. Second It
depends on Intolerance of the "other", either for strategic or
punitive reasons (the more frequent cause In the past), or alternatively
because democratic modern states need to be based on shared allegiances and
identities especially If representative democracy Is to be easily operable
(the prevalent though not sole cause of "ethnic cleansing" In the
last two centuries). Genocide
In principle applies the techniques of massacre to the strategic aim of
ethnic cleansing seeking a total or final solution that can never again be
challenged because there will be no one left to challenge it. Unusually In
the instance of Nazi Germany Its purpose was not strategic but stemmed from
an Ideology of hate. Why
have these phenomena, by no means uncommon In other parts of the world -
from Amerindlan populations In many parts of the Americas to Ruanda to Nazi
Germany - been frequent also In the Balkans and the Near East? In order to
answer this question It helps to look at examples where differing peoples
have succeeded In living together and collaborating politically. Switzerland
is one example where peoples of differing linguistic and religious
backgrounds coalesced over a period of centuries so as to give individual
cantons the strength they
could never have achieved on their own to maintain their independence
against much more powerful neighbours. England,
Wales and Scotland were
bound together with some difficulty into a British body politic by a
common dynastic allegiance, a common Protestant faith and a common outward
orientation, both trading and imperial. Ireland however with its
majority Roman Catholic population did not willingly adhere Closer
to Britain than to Switzerland is Belgium, a country where a shared
political history and a common religion has bound together a society divided
in this instance by language. Like Britain therefore Belgium is a body
politic with a faultline. That faultline has shown clearly enough in the
present generation, as it is showing today in Canada. Belgium is fortunate
to be part of a larger European Union in which diversity is no longer a
threat but, as in Switzerland, if for different reasons, a cause of pride.
Czechoslovakia by contrast was an easy candidate for a "velvet
divorce". The
inevitable conclusion is that a diversity of identity within a society
represents a serious potential challenge to its unity, a challenge which may
be latent for generations only to emerge once again in a dangerous form much
later. It was not for nothing then that many nation states followed a policy
of centralization, assimilation and active discouragement of any
particularistic sense of identity. It is equally clear however that the task
is not impossible: either the existence of an outside danger (Switzerland)
or some common identity and a common project (Britain) or a long shared
history (Belgium) can bridge differences that might otherwise separate
peoples. Why
has this not so far occurred anywhere in the An
imperial despotism based on religion will not differ from others in
principle as to the methods that may be used to retain control. Harsh but
rational repression for those who stray beyond the limits set by the
imperial ruler is one prescription: arbitrary punishment to strike terror
into the subjected is another. When following the latter prescription the
Ottomans were bloodily effective but with consequences they might have
guessed. Genuine religious tolerance was cancelled by a political
despotism based on religious distinctions. Two
examples of this phenomenon will suffice. The common word in Greek for
someone who changes his religion to Islam was "he has become a
Turk" (etourkepse). Nor is it by chance Serbs, however unjustly, call
Bosnian Muslims "Turks" to this day. And the story of a particular
massacre bears this out. During the Kotsonis uprising For the executioners their action was an effective and perhaps necessary means of reestablishing political control. The infidels had to know that if any of them revolted, any of them might or would suffer. One of those about to be executed however shouted out to the bystanders, just before he was cut down, that he was dying for Christ and his faith. The irony is that in their way both the executioners and the executed were correct. That
irony has become the evil genie bending over all
subsequent Balkan and to some degree Near Eastern
history. Since, first, the Ottomans when
they reacted to Western power in the nineteenth century proved incapable
of developing a new form of polity which would be both
popularly In
the process it may be fairly said that the Armenian people suffered the
harshest fate, but nearly all Balkan peoples, including the Turks, suffered
at some times and places the harsh treatment of massacre and/or forced
ethnic cleansing. Almost everywhere humanitarian principles were sooner or
later overridden by the logic of power. The
Second World War has made our world far Before
explaining why this may be so however, I must meet an important objection.
If the logic of history has been, for the reason
I have explained, against the existence of multi-communal states, in
this part of the world, then why not accept the logic of separation
everywhere? This is the argument of the Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia and the
official Turkish position on Cyprus. Why are they mistaken? There
are broadly three reasons: Second,
instability. Human beings can and do customarily accept a good deal of
injustice, sometimes without any hope of redress, more frequently with
the hope of a gradual improvement. It is hard to predict in advance which
particular injustices especially those which by separating peoples look
neat on a map, will prove acceptable in the long term and which will not. It
is sufficient to point out that seemingly "elegant" partitionist
solutions
very often bring decades of trouble in their train. Ireland, India and
Palestine are three examples typical of our century. In
the Balkans because all states followed the same policy to a greater or
lesser degree, and there were not just enforced but negotiated exchanges of
population, more injustices have proven acceptable than elsewhere. Even so,
no one can say that all Balkan frontiers are unquestioned, though majority
opinion in the less aggressive states clearly wishes them to be so. What
is clear is that the degree of injustice involved in Bosnia and in Cyprus
has led those at the receiving end to refuse to accept it, using methods
of aimed and diplomatic resistance in the one instance and of legal,
political and economic resistance in the other. The
issue of illegitimacy has been of crucial importance since the UN Charter,
and even more so since the CSCE Treaty of 1975 decreed borders to be
inviolable. One may dispute which borders are relevant in instances of
former empires like the ex-USSR, or of countries that have partly fallen
and partly been pulled apart, like ex-Yugoslavia, but one cannot dispute
what is meant in the instance of Cyprus, nor that the junta coup and Turkish
occupation since 1974 have been in glaring contradiction to both the UN
Charter and the CSCE Treaty. The
challenge to the world community is clear. The choice is either to let
international law go by the board or to support the Republic of Cyprus. The
Western powers have in fact followed two different policies. One,
particularly influential between 1964 and 1974, was close to the first
option: it favoured agreed partition between two NATO members. The other
represents the official line since 1974, a line that probably came into
harmony with actual western intentions only after about 1990. This policy
supports the integrity of the Republic of Cyprus precisely because the
breach of international law involved in foreign occupation, UDI and
partition cannot be condoned. It has operated to date however within
diplomatic parameters that call for silence regarding foreign occupation (so
as not to offend Ankara) and hence for pressure on the community composing
eighty percent of Cypriots to accept the consequences of that ocupation,
namely either effective partition or satellite status or both. It
was therefore not at all surprising that when a particularly glaring example
of such pressure emerged this summer after the May Vienna meeting between
the UN, US, Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriots, the President of the Republic
of Cyprus communicated with the President of the United States and the Prime
Minister of Great Britain, indicating his intention to resign in October if
pressure were applied to accept the changes to the UN document of March 21st
then being discussed. One might have thought some Western
journalist would have thought the concept of a President of a sovereign
state first communicating his intention to resign to the heads of
administration of two other states, would at least be worth reporting. In
any event it was an act of supreme realism. Cyprus is not just a prisoner of
Turkey (nor in another sense is Turkey of Cyprus) but also of the deep
uncertainty of the US and UK in what direction they want the Cyprus problem
to develop. Just
a little thought of the consequences of 1974, not just in the relationship
between Greece and Turkey, but in the precedent created for the treatment
of Muslims by the Communist regime in Bulgaria, for the fall of Yugoslavia
and then of Bosnia, and for the exclusively military solution being
attempted by the Turkish Army to the Kurdish problem should persuade anyone
of sound judgement that the semi (or effectively) partitionist road so far
followed has been a tragic error. It is true there is a genuine problem with
multi-communal states, and particularly given the historical memories of
those countries once ruled by the Ottomans. It is also true however that
there has been a sort of 'trahison des clercs', in refusing to face up to
those problems on a theoretical level: and
an analogous 'trahison des hommes politiques' in refusing to face up to them
on a practical one. The
"partitionist" prescription which almost welcomed ethnic
cleansing in Cyprus is arguably not just simple but simplistic. Peter
Sellers' film "Carlton-Browne of the FO" which satirized the
diplomat who came up with the brainwave of the partition of an island while
being massaged by an exotic dancing girl, caught the destructive banality
of the solution proposed better than can any rhetoric. So
what is the alternative, for Cyprus and, by extension, for other states in
similar or potentially similar situations? There are three elements to
such an alternative policy. One is the necessity to create rapidly a sense
of security, which in Switzerland, Britain and Belgium evolved over
centuries. The second is to create a common enterprise, which can unite the
energies of both (or all) communities. The third is the need for
constitutional structures that will create a political leadership
dependent on the other community (or communities) and not just their own,
for political preferment, whether by election or patronage. In
respect of security there are only two alternatives. One is that of one or
more interested states acting as a regional policeman; the other of the
region itself acting as a policeman. In Cyprus the long term presence of
Greek and Turkish troops is - and should have seen, even in 1960, inevitably
to be - destabilising, first because it ties Cyprus' politics, to that of
the other two countries, in particular to the political attitudes of the
Greek military in the past and the Turkish military in the present; and
second because Greece and Turkey The
other solution however, that of the region as a policeman, demands
an act of will on the part of the Western community. It is not the
institutions that are lacking: both NATO and the WEU It
is not there are no benefits that will flow to Greece and Turkey from a
withdrawal from Cyprus of forces under their own command: these indeed are
so self evident that were the Western powers actively working in that
direction there would soon be many Turks who would follow them in seeing the
merits. It is the political will which has been lacking to date. Second,
there is the question of a common enterprise for both communities. It is
here that the European Union has an immense role to play and seems indeed to
be beginning to play it. The enterprise would be precisely the creation of a
Western European multi-communal society in the hub of the Near East to the
economic and social advantage of both communities and particularly perhaps
of the Turkish Cypriots. For this reason the EU should not admit Cyprus as a
favour to Greece, though Cyprus has been fortunate to have had Greece as its
effective sponsor. The EU should work for Cyprus' adhesion in is own
interests,
because this is a country that is not just European in geography but in
economic and social structure. If the EU as a whole takes the initiative
the possibility of a favourable response from members of the Turkish Cypriot
community is considerably increased. If the experiment succeeds This is important because Cyprus faces three alternative scenarios in the next few years. The pessimistic, and marginally more likely one, is that the Turkish leadership is unable to wean itself away from its" nationalist approach to the Cyprus problem unless or until this is overtaken by an Islamicist approach which will be even worse. If this occurs Cyprus must not be left a hostage, but nor must Turkish-Cypriots be left without assurance that if an opportunity for a dramatic change occurs (who in 1979 in Eastern Europe could have predicted what occurred only ten years later?) the constitutional provisions to which the EU and the Greek Cypriots are committed are genuinely bi-communal ones. The
optimistic and less likely scenario is that the Western powers make clear to
Ankara not their wish but their will no longer to play around over Cyprus
and Ankara ultimately responds positively to proposals for a regional
security structure and a genuinely bi-communal constitution for Cyprus as a
federal sovereign state. The
third and least likely, but not impossible, scenario however is of a
public divergence between the majority of the Turkish Cypriots and Ankara.
It is armed force and Anatolian settlers who make this the least likely
scenario: the divergence itself already exists. Genuine Turkish Cypriots
vote by majority for parties that effectively support both the Confidence
Building Measures and a federal For
this to occur however the EU must move forward fairly rapidly, particularly
perhaps in the period up to the next election of the leader of the Turkish
Cypriot community in April 1995. The Turkish Cypriot community needs to know
the process is not being organised against them, but for them as well as for
the Greek Cypriots. On the economic side this should not be hard to
demonstrate. Politically there will be a need for a compact between the EU and
the Republic of Cyprus on the main elements of a bi-communal solution as and
when the Turkish Cypriots are able to join. One
element in such a constitution should be an equal and substantial voice (say
one third) of each community in the elections of the other. The best political
reward for moderation is not a word of praise by a foreign journalist or
diplomat, but an increased chance of election! Conceptually too this is
crucial: a democratic state based on two for more) communities needs to have a
different sense of what constitutes "a majority" than a normal
democracy, and the absence of this concept has been one of the most damaging
features in such countries to date. Effectively we are speaking neither of
traditional self-determination nor separate determination but of cross
determination. It
goes without saying that such an arrangement can marry perfectly with the
already agreed federal legislative structure for Cyprus, an upper house
divided equally between the two communities, and a lower house elected
(broadly speaking) on the basis of the vote of individual citizens. It will
additionally, if members of the two legislatures from each community also
sit separately as the legislatures of their federated states, effectively
help ensure each federated state remains under the control of the community to
which it is allocated, even if, over the years, as is both desirable and
inevitable, freedom of settlement is introduced, so that ethnic cleansing of
the past is gradually reversed. Where
the executive is concerned what has been agreed to date is regretttably out of
line with what is required for an effective sovereign state and bi-communal
constitution. The idea of a President being head of one community and the
Vice-President of the other is a prescription for disaster. Clearly each will
be faced with cries of "treason" if he or she dares to serve the
whole rather than the part. The position of the Vice-President, whose only
power under the present system is negative, is particularly unsatisfactory. The
fundamental decision is whether to opt for a If
the response to a strong executive is negative the electorate as a whole might
directly elect members of the cabinet, with each community having a one-third
say in the election of the other. The disadvantage of such a system is that
the cabinet would then be too close to a legislature in composition and
concerns. Finally
there will be need for a regional involvement not just in the security
aspect of a settlement but also in its judicial aspects, most specifically
the constitutional court, so that under no circumstances could anybody bring
the constitution to a halt. Since the international community would be
responsible for security, it would and should have a say in crucial
constitutional disputes. It
has become clear to many people that the political development of the world
community is at a critical stage, with regrettable prospects of regression
in the aftermath of the collapse of communism. The temptation is to
concentrate exclusively in a journalistic or fire brigade manner on the crises
where lives are currently being lost. Precisely where passions are at a height
however it is even harder to make lasting progress. Given
the difficult situation in Turkey immediate progress of the sort we would all
like on Cyprus is also not very likely. There are however certain moves that
can be made which would in fact amount to progress. First, since the issues
are now clear, the Western powers can and should decide to move forward
determinedly in the ways just described. Let us hope this autumn will witness
a new clarity and decisiveness. Second, Western journalists should start
informing themselves concerning and reporting on Cyprus again. If these two
changes do not occur the loud condemnations and lamentations over horrors
such as ethnic cleansing will sound like the loud splash of crocodile tears,
and we shall see more such horrors with every year that passes. |