>> Hürriyet

DISCORD BETWEEN TALAT, GOVERNMENT AMID PEACE TALKS

Hürriyet - July 21, 2009 As Cypriot leaders continue negotiations to reunify the island on the 35th anniversary of its division, a political battle is taking place in the north. Pro-reunification President Mehmet Ali Talat is pressing for a referendum ahead of the presidential elections, while Eroğlu’s government has no faith in Talat nor in a solution that could result from the talks by Goksel Bozkurt A Turkish Cypriot awaiting a flight at the tiny Ercan Airport in the north of the island recognized only by Turkey offered his summary of his homeland’s troubled history 35 years on from de facto partition: “My grandmother grew up amid war and the negotiating process, like my father and me,” he said. “My son will soon be eligible to vote. And negotiations are still ongoing.” Another Turkish Cypriot, Kamil Meriç, who was taken prisoner during the 1974 Turkish military intervention on the island, said: “No way, we can’t live. There must be two separate states.” These few words are enough to sum up the lack of confidence in the north. Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat, who leads reunification negotiations with the Greek Cypriots, aims for a settlement in 2010 before the presidential elections. He wants to craft a plan in which he will agree with the Greek Cypriots and put it to referendum. But the new right-wing government led by Derviş Eroğlu walks a different line. Although Talat wants to go for a referendum by the end of this year, there is no concrete plan that concerns the six negotiating chapters: administration and power sharing, property, EU issues, economy, territory and map, security and guarantees. According to what Talat says, progress has been made on the administration and power-sharing chapter, but no compromise has been reached so far. Talks on property have started recently, while the parties remain firm on the guarantees issue. Talat maintains that Turkey’s guarantorship does not contain an element of threat for the Greek Cypriots and will not be a matter of debate. While this is the picture, the question that needs to be answered is why Talat is insisting on a settlement plan by the end of this year or early 2010. It appears the Turkish Cypriot leaders wants to strengthen his hand before the presidential elections set for April, an opinion voiced by the government. If the plan fails to come alive, many believe it will be difficult for Talat to be reelected. In the last election, he was supported by around 20 percent of the voters. If a plan is put to a referendum, all the balances in the north will turn upside down, presidential elections could be delayed, and this could buy Talat time, whereas the tension between him and the government opens the way for crisis and dents the negotiations. The last crisis happened when Talat visited Ankara last week when he was not accompanied by Turkish Cypriot Foreign Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün. Talat said the minister was absent because he had work in the parliament, but it appears this is a result of a psychological war. Some ministers argue they are not informed about the course of negotiations with the Greek Cypriots. “Everything we discuss with Mr. Christofias, every paper we give one another in negotiations, and even speech notes are conveyed to the government. As soon as the meeting with Christofias ends, I convey everything to the government in 10 minutes,” Talat said. A second Annan plan? It appears Talat does not fully believe plans on a settlement and referendum will come true given the Greek Cypriot reluctance, and instead he has come up with a different proposal and is urging the United Nations to be more active and play the role of an arbitrator. This proposal is interpreted as the emergence of a second Annan plan on the island; the Greek Cypriots voted down the first one in a 2004 referendum. Greek Cypriots are not warm to this idea. Talat’s remarks – “I believe Christofias wants a solution, but he has weakness in convincing Greek Cypriots” – strengthen this thesis. Turkey supports Talat, as is evident in recent statements by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu: “This status quo will either change through negotiations or all together we’ll have to think about other alternatives.” Eroğlu’s position While Talat is walking toward his target, what’s the government doing? No doubt, the domestic political battle is growing each day. It appears this will escalate as Foreign Minister Özgürgün implies that even if a referendum is agreed upon, the government would oppose it and lead a “no” campaign. The Eroğlu-led government is not making concessions on such issues as bi-zonality, political equality of the parties, and guarantees. His government’s pulse is beating on policies on recognition of northern Cyprus by the international community, instead of a settlement plan. “Our teenagers cannot even play a match of friendship with the world. We cannot send out letters to the world, they are dispatched via Turkey. When the postmen in Turkey see the ‘Mersin 10’ on envelopes sent to the north from other parts of the world, they understand these letters will be delivered to northern Cyprus,” said Özgürgün. The government is not directly interfering in the Talat-led negotiations, and the war is for the time being going on at the domestic political level. If no referendum takes place, there are serious expectations that Talat and the Eroğlu government could settle accounts in the presidential election process. What's in a name? The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or its Turkish acronym KKTC, are the names used in Turkey and in the northern third of the island to describe the Turkish-controlled portion that declared its independence in 1983. Internationally, the Greek administration in the south is recognized and the island is referred to as the Republic of Cyprus. Once part of the Ottoman Empire, the island formally became a British colony at the end of World War I, with Turkey relinquishing its sovereignty in 1923. In 1960, the island became an independent republic. Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom were made guarantors of that independence under the accord that granted the island its status. After repeated outbreaks of violence between the Greek and Turkish populations, the military government of Greece launched a coup in 1974 seeking to annex the island to Greece. After a failed bid to gain U.K. intervention to turn back the coup, Turkey intervened itself. The resulting division of the island has remained to this day. In a 2004 referendum, Turkish Cyprus accepted a European Union-backed plan to unify the island. The ethnic Greek community rejected it. The legally awkward result was entry of the Greek-led Republic of Cyprus into the EU as representative of the whole island while the KKTC was subjected to a continuing EU economic blockade. For purposes of clarity, the Daily News generally uses the terms Turkish or northern Cyprus and Greek Cyprus to refer to the two administrations.

Segnala questa pagina