CYPRUS: UNIFICATION DIED PERMANENTLY IN 2004
The Times & Transcript
November 24, 2009 Tuesday
Canada
The window of opportunity actually slammed shut in 2004, when Greek-
Cypriot voters overwhelmingly rejected a United Nations plan to
reunite the divided island of Cyprus. A week later the Greek-Cypriot
government was allowed to join the European Union anyway, while the
Turkish-Cypriots, who had voted in favour of the reunification plan,
were frozen out. But some people just won’t give up.
A year ago, with new leadership on both sides, the Greek- and Turkish-
Cypriots embarked on another round of talks aimed at reunifying
the island. As late as this September, Alexander Downer, the UN
secretary-general’s special adviser on Cyprus, said that "what you
have here are two leaders who are very committed to a successful
outcome." But good intentions are not enough.
Dimitris Christofias, the Greek-Cypriot president, and Mehmet Ali
Talat, his Turkish-Cypriot counterpart, are old friends, and they both
genuinely want to put the country back together, but they have made
little progress and after 50 meetings time is running out. There
will be elections in the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus"
(TRNC) in April, and the new president there is likely to be hostile
to reunification.
Last time, in 2004, it was the Greek-Cypriot president who persuaded
the voters on his side of dividing line to reject the UN proposal.
There are bound to be times when one side or the other is led by
somebody who wants to die in the last ditch. But there are also bound
to be intervals, like the present one, when the leaders on both sides
are in favour of unification.
So why talk of windows of opportunity shutting? Even if it doesn’t
happen now, surely it will happen sooner or later. Alas, not
necessarily.
Geopolitical realities normally change as slowly as the continents
drift, but the tectonic plates are now moving fast in the eastern
Mediterranean. The chance of Turkey ever joining the European Community
is now shrinking rapidly towards zero — and without the incentive
of that goal, why would Ankara ever force the Turkish population of
North Cyprus back into a union with the Greek- dominated "Republic
of Cyprus"?
The current obstacle to EU membership for Turkey, which first applied
to join 22 years ago and has been an official candidate for the
past decade, is the opposition of the German, Austrian and French
governments. They are all conservative governments that believe a
Muslim-majority country has no place in what they still see as a
"Christian" Europe.
That is ugly nonsense, but not necessarily a deal-breaker: those
governments will probably be replaced one day by others that take
a more relaxed view of religious differences. After all, a clear
majority of EU citizens are not interested in religion at all. Greece
and the Republic of Cyprus would also veto Turkish membership today,
but a deal between the two Cypriot communities would obviously remove
that roadblock.
If anti-Muslim prejudice were the only obstacle to Turkey’s entry,
then it could still become a EU member one of these days, but the
tectonic shift is not driven by whoever is in power today in Paris,
Berlin or Vienna. It is driven by a growing concern in the EU that
global warming is going to generate huge numbers of desperate refugees
in Africa and the Middle East — "climate refugees" who will end up
trying to get into Europe.
Never mind if this is just, or even if it is an accurate vision of
the future. If this view comes to prevail in the EU, the main question
becomes: where do we hold the line against waves of climate refugees?
Should we try to control the current frontier along the eastern borders
of Greece and Bulgaria (about 300 km, 175 miles), or bring Turkey into
the EU and try to control 1,100 km (750 miles) of borders with Syria,
Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Georgia? Not rocket science, is it?
Unless it is overwhelmed by climate change, Turkey will be all right
outside the EU. It will overtake Germany in population within a
decade, and it already has a higher per capita income than several
Eastern European members of the EU. Turkey was a second-rank great
power until the end of the 19th century, and it is likely to be back
in that role by the mid-21st.
But if that is the role Turkey will be playing in another generation,
why would it want to withdraw its troops from North Cyprus and push
the Turkish- Cypriots into a single state with the Greek-Cypriots now?
Why would the Turkish- Cypriots themselves want to resume their place
as an unloved minority in a Greek-run state, rather than retain their
own state in close association with the rising regional great power?
The reply to that question 10 years ago would have been: because
Turkish- Cypriots are so poor. But the past decade has seen very rapid
economic growth in North Cyprus. The gulf in living standards between
the two parts of the island has dramatically narrowed, so reunification
no longer seems the only escape from poverty to Turkish-Cypriots.
This is not the last chance for the reunification of Cyprus; 2004 was.
Greek-speaking Cyprus is prosperous and secure, Turkish-speaking
Cyprus is approaching the same state, and Turkey itself no longer has
an incentive to support the creation of a reunified, federal state
in Cyprus.
Partition is permanent. It’s over.