The Cyprus Referendum: A Divided Island and the Challenge of the Annan Plan 9780755620562, 9781848850217

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Acknowledgements

My warm thanks are due to friends who have shared information, thoughts and ideas with me on matters I have dealt with during my research. Among such friends have been: Takis Hadjidemetriou, Christos Stylianides, Zenon Pofaides, Vassilis Protopapas, Makarios Drousiotis, Symeon Matsis, Antonis Assos, Antranik Kendirian, Ahmet Cavit An and Mete Hatay, as well as political figures who have had first-hand experience of developments and have shared these experiences with me but who have not wanted their names publicized. My special thanks are due to Takis Hadjidemetriou, Vassilis Protopapas, Zenon Pofaides and Antonis Assos for reading the proofs of the Greek edition and making observations that helped me enormously in filling gaps, clarifying ambiguities, strengthening documentation where this was inadequate, and generally making the presentation, hopefully, more concise, balanced and compact. In this connection, the contribution of Makarios Drousiotis was exceptional: he provided me with documentary material from his personal archive, most important of which were the UN Secretary Generals’ reports on the period 1964–94, which are not available on the UN website, and which helped me to gain a deeper insight into the UN role in Cyprus. To Antranik Kendirian’s profound knowledge of modern Turkish history I owe the testing of ideas and insights into developments that have shaped modern Turkey. To the long discussions I had with a very dear friend, Ahmet Cavit An, I owe a deeper understanding of internal developments within the Turkish Cypriot community with particular reference to the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas and problems of the Turkish Cypriots with mainland settlers. My additional thanks are also due to PRIO researcher Mete Hatay for his willingness to translate for me passages from Denktas’s memoirs, which helped me to better understand the latter’s way of thinking. My thanks are also due to Vassilis Protopapas for making available to me his unpublished MA dissertation on Cyprus and providing me with precious bibliography covering British rule for the period 1930–50. I would also like to thank Katia Hadjidemetriou for providing me with

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sources on the early history of British rule in Cyprus, PhD student Demetris Assos for making available to me his unpublished MA dissertation, and librarian Vassilis Constantinou for the personal interest he took in helping me to gain access to relevant literature in the PIO Library. The editing of my English translation from the Greek edition was the work of James Mollison, to whom I am deeply grateful for his conscientious effort and patience. My thanks are also due to Costas Andreou for the second reading of the English typescript and his valuable comments. Last and most importantly, my warmest thanks are due to my wife, Christothea, for her sustained support throughout the whole project, her precious help in cross-checking figures and dates, and her encouragement.

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Abbreviations

AKEL AKP ANAP AP BDH CHP CIA CTP DIKO DISY DSP DYP ECHR EDEK EMU EU FP FYROM GNP KATAK KOP KYKEM MHP MNP MSP

(ΑΚΕΛ) Ανορθωτικό Κόμμα Εργαζόμενου Λαού (Progressive Party of Working People) Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party) Adalet Partisi (Justice Party) Baris ve Demokrasi Hareketi (Peace and Democracy Movement) Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party) Central Intelligence Agency (US) Cumhuriyetci Turk Partisi (Republican Turkish Party) (ΔΗΚΟ) Δημοκρατικό Κόμμα (Democratic Party) (ΔΗΣΥ) Δημοκρατικός Συναγερμός (Democratic Rally) Demokratik Sol Partisi (Democratic Left Party) Dogru Yol Partisi (True Path Party) European Court of Human Rights (ΕΔΕΚ) Ενιαία Δημοκρατική Ένωση Κέντρου (EDEK Socialist Party) Economic and Monetary Union European Union Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Gross National Product Turkish Cypriot Minority Association (ΚΟΠ) Κίνημα Οικολόγων-Περιβαλλοντιστών (Ecologists-Environmentalists Movement) (ΚΥΚΕΜ) Κυπριακό Κέντρο Μελετών (Cyprus Study Centre) Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party) Milli Nizam Partisi (National Order Party) Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party)

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MUSIAD NATO NEO NSC OSCE PASOK PEK PEO PIO PKK RP TFSC TKP TMT TPress TRNC TUSIAD UBP UCR UDI UN UNFICYP UNSC UNSG US

Mustakil Sanayici ve Isadamlari Dernegi (Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (ΝΕΟ) Νέοι Ορίζοντες (New Horizons) National Security Council Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ΠΑΣΟΚ) Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) (ΠΕΚ) Παναγροτική Ένωση Κύπρου (Pan-Agrarian Union of Cyprus) (ΠΕΟ) Παγκύπρια Εργατική Ομοσπονδία (Pancyprian Labor Union) Press & Information Office Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) Turkish Federated State of Cyprus Toblumcu Kurtulus Partisi (Communal Liberation Party) Turk Mukavemet Teskilati (Turkish Resistance Movement) Turkish Press & Other Media (issued daily by the Cyprus PIO) Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Turk Isadamlari ve Sanayiciler Dernegi (Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association) Ulusal Birlik Partisi (National Unity Party) United Cyprus Republic Unilateral Declaration of Independence United Nations. United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus United Nations Security Council United Nations Secretary General United States

Asha

Lysi

Acheritou

TURKISH CYPRIOT STATE

Morphou

Limassol

GREEK CYPRIOT STATE

Galini

0

Potamia

Larnaka

Kondemenos Skylloura NICOSIA Gerolakkos

20

Pergamos

Kontea

Kilometres

Pyla

40

Kalopsida

The British sovereign base area

42 months

36 months

PHASE 5 PHASE 6

30 months

15 months

PHASE 3 PHASE 4

6 months

104 days

Time

PHASE 2

PHASE 1

Phase

The six phases of territorial adjustment

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North

Agia

Agia Triada Melanarga

Rizokarpaso

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Pafos

Kyrenia Lapithos Larnakas

Gialousa Agios Andronikos

IC Limnia LPeristerona B U Syrianochori Prastio Kato Pyrgos EP Pyrga Morfou Kokkina Gaidouras R US Famagusta R Limnitis Vatili Argaki Katokopia Varosha YP Galini Arsos Lysi C Zodhia D Tymbou Xeros Lefka Petra Acheritou ITE Pentagia Pyrogi UN Achna Louroujina Pyla

Kormakitis Diorios Agia Irini Myrtou

United Cyprus Republic: showing the territorial adjustments proposed in the Annan Plan

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North

Galini

Morfou

Avlona

Limassol

0

Zodhia Petra Lefka Pano Zodeia AG Georgios

Soli

Syrianochori Kato Pyrgos

Kyrenia

10

Potamia

Kilometres

20

Larnaka

Peristerona

Lysi

40

Achna

Acheritou

Varosha

British Sovereign Base Areas

Areas to remain under Turkish-Cypriot administration

Areas to come under Greek-Cypriot administration

Buffer Zone

AG Nikolaos

Famagusta

Pyrga Prastio Limnia

Louroujina Pyla

Asha Agia Arsos

NICOSIA

Larnakas Kondemenos Skylloura Gerolakkos

Lapithos

Agia Triada Melanarga

Rizokarpaso

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Kokkina

Kormakiti Diorios Agia Irini

Gialousa Agios Andronikos

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ˆ

Map of Cyprus taken from Ghalis’s ‘Set of Ideas’, 1992

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Introduction

The result of the referendum of 24 April 2004 might be seen as a confirmation of an Epimetheus-type1 collective behaviour on the part of Greek Cypriots that had been in evidence since the beginning of the twentieth century, and in particular since the Cyprus Problem resurfaced and became internationalized in the 1950s following the Second World War. The NO vote in opposition to the plan of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan unveiled a fundamental inability of Greek Cypriots, during this period, to reflect on the contemporary political reality and interpret it in purely political terms, and thereby to shape a longterm solution strategy. Such a stand negates the collective wisdom that has allowed them to survive through ages of dramatically adverse conditions. Functioning within an emotionally charged, anachronistic European nationalism, a direct offshoot of the Grand Idea of Greek irredentism, Greek Cypriots showed themselves incapable of following the post-war transformation of Europe, which, after leaving behind the utter destruction of nationalist wars, was step by step building the new European dream. Within such a ‘heroic’ political climate, where nation state values, seen through the prism of irredentism, were converted into mainstream ideology, no room was left for reconciliation with the notion of an evolutionary process that might have transcended nationalism and allowed a common anti-colonial struggle with the smaller but still self-conscious ethnic communities. It would certainly have been an oversimplification to put forward a onedimensional explanation of the Greek Cypriot rejection of the Annan Plan as a by-product of nationalism. The 76 per cent NO vote by the Greek Cypriots at the referendum of 24 April 2004 should be seen as the result of a complex internal process, which led to that particular decision being taken under the influence of a variety of factors. Such factors should first be sought in the Greek Cypriot political and party system and in the way the majority of the citizens internalized the proposed solution. A second set of influences should be sought in the role of external forces in their effort to steer matters towards a settlement, in particular the UN Secretariat, the United States, Britain and the European Union (EU).

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In order that one might fully comprehend the guiding principles of the Annan Plan as well as the reception of the Plan by the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot communities, one should examine the Plan within the broader political framework in which it was shaped, more particularly against the background of the regional and world developments that converged towards making the solution an imperative. One should also examine the degree to which this framework was internalized by the people concerned during the process through which the Plan unfolded. This political framework begins to take shape when US foreign policy turns decisively towards solving the Cyprus Problem and the Greek–Turkish disputes through the interconnected process of the accession of Cyprus and Turkey to the EU. The starting point in this process was the 6 March 1995 Agreement whereby the EU was committed to starting accession negotiations with Cyprus six months after the Intergovernmental Conference scheduled for 1996, while, on the other hand, Greece gave its consent to Turkey’s Customs Union with the EU. The principal players involved in advancing this process were initially the United States, the EU, Greece and Turkey. Following the Helsinki EU Presidency Conclusions (December 1999), the UN Secretariat took the initiative and shouldered the main tasks involved in the process. In fact, the whole process was generated by a wide-ranging and longterm political planning of regional application but with a much wider – one might say, a worldwide – scope. Significantly enough, it was the first time since 1974 that political planning by world powers favoured a solution of the Cyprus problem. This planning was connected with Middle East developments and was targeted at the safeguarding of energy sources in Eurasia and, simultaneously, at neutralizing the adverse effects of anti-West Islamic fundamentalism. At the centre of that planning was Turkey. Here, however, a storm of internal developments dramatically changed the balance of power by undermining the Kemalist established order to such an extent that the ensuing and threatening internal instability acted as positive feedback on the broader instability in the region that endangered the West’s vast interests. The changes in Turkey were the outcome of a social transformation that was set in motion, on the one hand, by the revival of Islam, and, on the other, by the liberalization of the economy brought about during Turgut Ozal’s premiership (1983–9). Interwoven, these apparently unconnected developments became the driving force for deep-seated change that was accelerated following the acceptance of Turkey as an EU candidate member state in the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions. The convergence of events following Helsinki, within the triangle involving Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, in the direction of settling disputes and normalizing relations made the European paradigm a key component and the inter-

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INTRODUCTION

xvii

nalization of this paradigm a substantive prerequisite for a positive conclusion to this process. A new orientation leading to the understanding and internalizing of the European paradigm might have exercised a catalytic influence on the people of Cyprus with regard to the search for a solution of the Cyprus problem, a solution that presupposed readiness of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots to transcend their ethnic conflictual past and compromise on the basis of common interests. The above constitutes the rationale stated in Chapter 1 of this book, which provides a brief presentation of the European paradigm. The author believes this might have contributed to a deeper understanding of the developments that came to a head at Lucerne, Switzerland, in March 2004. Had the Greek Cypriots internalized the European paradigm, they might also have been helped to make a politically sound assessment of the situation as a whole, and equally sound forecasts with regard to the consequences, at the time of the referendum of 24 April 2004. The following chapters examine the review of Greek foreign policy relating to Turkey, the reorientation of US foreign policy in the triangle involving Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and internal changes in Turkey that work in the direction of dismantling the Kemalist system of power while, at the same time, setting forth new priorities for Turkey’s foreign policy. The reasoning behind this presentation is to give the reader a deeper insight into the broader political framework – the regional and world environment – within which the UN peace initiative in Cyprus was born and shaped. Furthermore, the conception of the solution is examined as it was perceived by the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, and as it was gradually shaped under the influence of conflicting irredentist nationalisms. Within this framework, Chapters 5 and 6 examine how the two communities were led apart by divergent aspirations, and how political separation was organized at a specific point in time following the intercommunal clashes of 1963–4 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Protracted UN peacemaking in Cyprus is then examined, with special emphasis on the Annan Plan, which is seen as a critical point in developments and largely a final outcome of the long UN mediation effort. Finally, the last two chapters give a detailed account of the main provisions of the Annan Plan as these were gradually shaped into final form in version five (31 March 2004). These chapters also examine the course of events that led to the referendum of 24 April 2004. The Plan is set against the background of the regional and world environment with which it was closely and irrevocably connected. Accordingly, the prospects for successful implementation and the final outcome of the whole venture are assessed in the light of the regional and world environment. Also interwoven is a detailed examination of the developments that led to the

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rejection of the Annan Plan by President Papadopoulos and the final NO vote by the Greek Cypriots at the referendum of 24 April 2004. The prospect of successful implementation of the Plan is also examined in the light of the dramatic changes within the Turkish Cypriot community in 2000–3, which finally led to the downfall of Rauf Denktas, as well as against the backdrop of the historic coming-together and reconciliation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots following the opening of checkpoints along the ceasefire line in April 2003. Finally, the referendum itself, examined in the light of the convergence of events towards a unique end, is valued as the moment for the historic compromise that would have abandoned a static past built on ethnic conflictual notions and led to a reunited Cyprus. In this context, the island’s multicultural character, far from being a cause of friction, would have tested the ability of its people to internalize the European paradigm of ‘unity in diversity’.

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Chapter 1

The European Paradigm 1.1. The European Union: an evolutionary process The development of the European Union (EU) has always been an evolutionary process advanced by the vision of a united Europe. It is a process that started as a visionary concept put forward by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann in 1950, and materialized through the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 with six participant states: France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The successful cooperation of the six in the fields of coal and steel led the process gradually, through a ‘spillover effect’,1 into other fields of the economy. Then, over time, and after long and continuous negotiation, economic cooperation spilled over into the political field. The result was the diffusion of the unifying process into the fields of internal institutions, individual rights, foreign policy, defence and security. In the years following 1951, through this ‘spillover’ process, the ECSC developed into the European Economic Community (EEC) with the Treaty of Rome (1957), and subsequently set up the basic institutional organs (1967) that are still functioning at the time of writing. It then proceeded to direct election of the European Parliament (1979), and achieved a higher level of unity with the Treaty of Maastricht, whereupon it changed its name to the European Union (EU) (1993). It further deepened integration through the Economic and Monetary Union, introducing the Euro as common currency for some of its members (2002). Two years later, through extensive dialogue, it arrived at the stage of finalizing a constitutional treaty; although this is still pending, it does represent a further step forward in the direction of political integration.2 The European paradigm suggests a first really postmodern governing institution,3 which is moving gradually from the clearly defined characteristics of modern nation state (‘hierarchy’, ‘homogeneity’, ‘centralization’) towards the postmodern characteristics of ‘anarchy’, ‘diversity’, ‘eclecticism’ and ‘decentralization’.4

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In the move from the Middle Ages to the modern era, the centre of gravity was steered from church to science, from feudal to market economy, and from warrior kingdoms to nation states. In a similar development, today: • orthodox science is being shaken by new ways of understanding and organizing nature; • the market economy is being challenged by a new network model for organizing trade; • the nation state is steadily making room for regional and global forms of governance.5

1.2. The European Union: a postmodern institution The starting point for the first visionaries might be traced back to the primarily negative idea of avoiding the spectre of the experience of the Second World War . However, in progress towards European integration, a new positive approach has evolved in the way foreign policy is exercised, based on a new perception of national interest. The European peoples, in an expression of a postmodern notion of the state,6 have moved beyond the logic of violence in settling disputes. Instead of focusing on their differences and narrowly defending their national interests, they seek, bring to light and gradually upgrade their common interests.7 Building on their common interests, they approach their differences in a spirit of consensus and compromise that eases tensions and defuses crises. They are gradually abolishing the distinction between foreign and domestic policy by accepting mutual intervention and monitoring. Security is, from now on, based on transparency, on mutual opening of borders, on interdependence and, through all these, on predictiveness of political behaviour. Frontiers are gradually losing their importance. There are no longer safe borders. ‘Acquiring territory is no longer of interest. Acquiring subject populations would for most states be a nightmare. [. . .] What is completely new is that Europe should consist more or less entirely of states which are no longer governed by the territorial imperative.’8 The term ‘multiplicity of actors’ tends to characterize the postmodern European state, which is more complex and less centralized, and which allows more autonomy to the regions. Unlike the modern state, it is not wholly identified with, but moves beyond, ‘territoriality’, and beyond national identity. In the postmodern state, national identity is just one of a multiplicity of identities. Coexistence of multiple identities is expressed in multiple representations: of member states by the European Council, of citizens by the European Parliament, of regions by the Committee of the Regions, of interests by the

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T H E E U R O P E A N PA R A D I G M

3

Economic and Social Committee. Moreover, as territory loses the central position it had in the nation state, the importance of borders and sovereignty is diminished accordingly, with sovereignty acquiring a broader, more complex, meaning.9 In the postmodern state, individual welfare is replacing collective glory as the dominant theme of national life. War is to be avoided; empire is of no interest. Security can be achieved more by cooperation than by competition.10 This reasoning is reflected in the evolution of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1972) into a permanent organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (1990–4). ‘At the end of the process is the freedom of the individual; first protected by the state and later protected from the state.’11 In the postmodern European state, the top-down hierarchical bureaucratic approach to governance (taylorism) is being continuously weakened, as it does not allow the interaction of all actors involved in policy making as well as the affected citizens. This ‘closed hierarchical model’ is gradually being replaced by a new ‘open systems model’ in which ‘effective governance is less a matter of imposing from on high predetermined decisions on passive recipients at the bottom than of engaging all the actors – government, business, and civil society players – in an ongoing process of deliberation, negotiation, compromise, and consensus’.12 Things were decisively steered in this direction as a result of the student revolts of 1968. What the students demanded was ‘an open-ended deliberative process entered into by equal players, each with their interests and aspirations but all independent and ultimately responsible for one another’s shared welfare’.13

1.3. Polycentric governance: synthesis of individuation and integration Through concrete Action Plans14 the EU is moving steadily in the direction of diffusing power towards the regions through a network of interaction and interconnectedness among central, regional and local authority, NGOs, economic enterprises, educational organizations, research institutes and a wide range of citizen groups. In particular as regards research institutes, the creation of transnational networks of cooperation is a prerequisite to qualify for EU funds. Though not without difficulty, the EU is progressing towards what Paul Hirst and Graham Thompson call ‘polycentric governance’: a new political game far more complex and sophisticated than before, in which no one player can dominate the field or determine the outcome, but where everyone has some power to affect the direction and flow of the process.15

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The various disparate players, in finding common ground through continuous dialogue leading to consensus, are moving on as a community, while keeping their individual identities. ‘Unity in diversity’ is the new lever of forward movement in the EU.16 On the basis of the Subsidiarity Principle, according to which ‘governing decisions ought to be made as far down and as close as possible to the community and the constituents most affected by the decisions’, the Committee of the Regions has been practising this dialectic process since its establishment in 1994. Consequently, regions have become a kind of third source of power, quite frequently bypassing community or state agencies, by creating their own networks and transnational governing institutions. Thus the Subsidiarity Principle is used as a synthesis of ongoing contested federal and national visions. This synthesis is at the same time an outlet allowing continuous strengthening of the powers of the regions at the cost of national state agencies. In such a continuous flux of dense overlapping and ever-changing relationships, governance in the EU is rather a polycentric process of negotiation, compromise and consensus, in which a quite large number of actors has become involved at the regional, the national and the transnational level.17 In such a state of affairs, national governments, having realized that they can no longer monopolize power, compromise on common management with economic and social actors as well as civil society organizations. Within the framework of this new political interplay, the traditional zero-sum approach in settling disputes is gradually giving way to a search for solutions on the basis of common interests achieved through compromise and consensus processes and leading to what has been coined ‘win-win politics’.18 These new trends are interconnected in a new bio-evolutionary conception of life, which, going beyond Hobbes (‘war of all against all’) and Darwin (‘the survival of the fittest’), faces the earth as a living self-regulating organism (part of a living self-regulating universe) in which the symbiotic relations of synergy among all living organisms and among living organisms and geochemical processes safeguard the survival of the planetary system as well as of the organisms that live within its biospheric envelope.19 This conception, along with the awareness of the dangers threatening life on earth, as well as the life of the planet itself as a result of human activity, is making more and more people sensitized to what Jeremy Rifkin calls ‘empathy’, a condensed rephrasing of Jesus’ call: ‘Do unto others as we would have others do unto us.’ This new empathy, as Rifkin sees it, transcends the boundaries of human life and embraces life as a whole, thus broadening more than ever human consciousness.20 This blend of contradictory predispositions, the one for individuation, the other for integration, a blend of the feeling of inclusivity and embeddedness found in the societies of south-east Asia with the extreme individualism of

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T H E E U R O P E A N PA R A D I G M

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the American model, is seen by Jeremy Rifkin in the European process of integration, which he considers to be the third stage of human consciousness, a stage that constitutes a substantive move from geopolitics to biosphere politics.21 Within this process of European integration, which instils in human conscience notions of the bio-theory of synergy, human spirituality is moving away from the nation-centred concepts of the First and Second World Wars and American individualism towards a new consciousness in which the citizen, acting as a free individual conscience, reintegrates in the synergistic networks of living organisms while maintaining awareness of his or her individuality. This consciousness, as expressed in the European paradigm, is introducing new values across a universal range leading beyond nation-state and nationcentred concepts, and opening the way to the postmodern era. While modernity performs in the field of ‘either or’ (or ‘either we or the others’), postmodernity, as introduced by the European paradigm, performs in the field of ‘and’ (or ‘the others and us’).22 It moves beyond the field of conflict into the complex multi-level space of empathy and integration.

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Chapter 2

Review of Greek Foreign Policy 2.1. The theoretical background The theoretical background of European integration was the basis on which Premier Simitis and Foreign Minister G. Papandreou built their new approach to Greek–Turkish relations. This new approach involved a systematic effort to deal with foreign-relations issues and to settle disputes, starting with those areas of low-profile policy where there existed obvious common interests. This theoretical background acted as a paradigm in the radical reorientation of Greek foreign policy by George Papandreou, the starting point being what was coined ‘earthquake diplomacy’ (August–September 1999), and the high point being the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions (December 1999). Accordingly, and as a result of these openings, Greece concluded a series of ‘low-policy’ agreements with Turkey in January and February 2000. Yiannos Kranidiotis, then Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece, in an article in the Greek daily To Vima (11 July 1999), noted the following in relation to the prospects of Greek–Turkish dialogue, which was still at an initial stage of deliberation: . . . The aim of the dialogue on ‘low policy’ issues is to ease tension and improve the climate in Greek–Turkish relations, an effort that will be beneficial to both peoples. The consolidation of a climate of dialogue and cooperation in the above fields will contribute to the creation of a new framework of relations which will certainly help, as a positive precedent, in the approach to difficult problems in Greek–Turkish relations. At least as far as Greece is concerned, dialogue is part of a comprehensive strategy; it is not an isolated tactical move in day-to-day politics. As part of a comprehensive strategy, the dialogue expresses a ‘neo-functional approach’, which begins cooperation with a number of issues of mainly economic and functional character. In fact, it is the strategy that has been successfully applied by the EU since its inception in the 1950s.1

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The step-by-step process of Greek–Turkish dialogue had already been proposed and outlined by Premier Simitis during his first official visit to Washington as Prime Minister of Greece, in April 1996. However, the fall of the Yilmaz government in Turkey and the ensuing political instability, as well as the atmosphere of Turkish–Greek tension fed by the ‘Imia’ crisis, did not allow for the realization of that proposal. Nevertheless, the Greek government kept the proposal alive by putting it forward at various forums until the conditions for its acceptance matured in Turkey. This new framework of Greek foreign policy, which aimed at taking the country off the lonely path as a ‘brotherless’ nation and integrating it into the European and international political system, with creative participation in international institutions and organizations, in which a new world order and a new European architecture were being formulated, was outlined by Yiannos Kranidiotis, as Assistant Foreign Minister, in an address at the Economist Conference in Athens, on 9 April 1997. Within this framework he placed the step-by-step normalization of relations with Turkey as part of an overall foreign-policy strategy.2 A month later (16 May 1997), when defending the new foreign policy in the Greek Parliament, Kranidiotis pointed out the following: . . . Inaction and unwillingness to engage in dialogue consolidate undesirable situations and fait accompli. The theory of ‘international conspiracy’ against our country, the petty outdated notion of isolationism, the pursuit of a ‘small but honest Greece’ have cost us a lot in the course of time. [. . .] National strategy does not materialize through exercise on paper but as a result of cautious steps taken on solid ground. Diplomacy is exercised through a nexus of manipulations which is ultimately judged by the results.3

Subsequently, having provided an outline of the ‘low-policy’ agreements, he concluded: ‘The perspective that these agreements will create will determine the next steps.’

2.2. The logic of Helsinki and ‘citizen diplomacy’ Following the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions, Foreign Minister Papandreou identified a second principle in the European paradigm, which was to become a substantive parameter of Greek foreign policy. It was the rejection of zerosum objectives and a decisive turn towards the reasoning of win-win politics. This policy focused on common interest, which it brought to the surface and on which it built the country’s foreign relations.4 Helsinki, he pointedly remarked, ‘is not a victory of the one and a defeat of the other; Helsinki is a victory of mutual interest’.5

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REVIEW OF GREEK FOREIGN POLICY

9

In a document on foreign policy that Papandreou presented to the cabinet (30 June 2000), he noted the following on Greek–Turkish relations: . . . The main issue we have to assess is whether a possibility of change of Turkey’s behaviour really exists. What we can say is that no one can guarantee a definite and substantive change in the way Turkey exercises its foreign policy. On the other hand, it would be an oversimplification for one to think of Turkey’s foreign policy as a simple continuation of the past. Because significant internal changes, particularly the expansion of private economic enterprise along with external pressure connected with globalization, necessitate democratic transformation. Turkey’s European course in the post-Helsinki era causes friction in its political elite. The global environment has changed. In future there will be continuous friction between the country’s past and alternative perspectives. There will be positive steps forward but there will also be dangerous regressions. There will be friction between the forces which seek normalization of relations with our country and the forces which stick to confrontational politics. The main objective of our foreign policy cannot be simply to monitor developments but to find ways for effective positive contribution to the forward move of change in our neighbouring country.6

The main achievement of Helsinki, Costas Simitis points out, was the transfer of Greek–Turkish disputes to the level of the EU. This change acted as ‘a reliable and effective alternative to the policy of repeated vetoes against Turkey, which policy, in any case, had reached its limits’.7 ‘What Greece had not managed to achieve with the use of its veto powers in the EU’, Simitis adds, ‘was achieved with the “Europeanization” of Greek–Turkish relations’.8 Moreover, he further notes, along with the opening of Turkey’s path to EU accession, Cyprus’s accession process was disconnected from the condition of prior solution of its political problem.9 Simitis’s overall assessment of the Helsinki accord concludes with the following highly indicative remark: . . . Our country has been relieved of the embarrassing situation of being the only one to impede Turkey’s candidacy, a policy which undermined its negotiating capabilities. Since the Helsinki accord, it has become the duty of the EU to monitor Turkey’s European course and block it whenever the latter did not comply with its obligations.10

As a consequence of the Helsinki accord and, soon afterwards, of the ‘low policy’ agreements (January–February 2000), Greek–Turkish rapprochement filtered down through the two countries’ respective societies through what was termed ‘citizen diplomacy’, ‘as if the two societies have been ready for

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a long time to grasp the first opportunity to be offered by official policy’.11 Apart from symbolic parallel moves at the official level (abandonment of certain nationalist celebrations, opening of a church in Ismir and a mosque in Mytilini), a dense network of contacts was established covering a wide range of social and professional groups in Greece and Turkey. There were meetings of women, journalists, academics and businessmen. Intellectuals started working together on joint publications that promoted mutual understanding by providing documented informational material characterized by open expression of opinions that sought common ground in an effort to understand each other’s concerns. Businessmen began establishing cooperation in fields of economic activity that covered insurance, construction, banking, energy, transport and the environment. In the field of trade there has been rapid growth and there have been optimistic forecasts for the mutually beneficial development of such exchanges.12 Thanos Veremis, writing on the increased social cohesion engineered by the ‘earthquake diplomacy’, stresses ‘social participation’ in a bilateral relationship (between Greece and Turkey) that had previously been strictly limited to official contacts.13 Kalypso Nicolaidis considers the ‘earthquake diplomacy’ to be the most important catalyst in the reversal of the negative psychological climate between the two countries and goes on to make the following comment: ‘It is to a great extent as a result of this initial surge of sympathy that hundreds of cooperative initiatives have emerged at the level of civil society between the two countries. Citizen diplomacy in Southern Europe is here to stay.’14 Dimitris Keridis, in a perceptive linking of internal developments and foreign policy in Greece, and particularly as regards relations with Turkey, notes that the advent of Simitis to the Greek premiership was more a demand of Greek society than a predetermined reform process in PASOK (the Panhellenic Socialist Movement). It was rather the victory of a social current that spread horizontally throughout the political spectrum, and expressed a new conception of the role of the state, which meant, among other things, transcendence over introversion and the siege syndrome, and the full integration of Greece in international and European institutions, as well as a redefining of Greek identity within the framework of an open, multicultural, European society.15 This regenerative policy development has liberated Greeks from the bonds of the past and the divisive syndromes of 1915 and 1949, refocused their horizons, and added more weight, during election periods, to the need for politicians to be able to produce result-oriented work. This renovating spirit, which, with the advent of Simitis, became the mainstream current within the electoral body of PASOK, created the internal prerequisites for the review and reorientation of Greek foreign policy. This change constitutes a definite break with the past.

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2.3. The Venizelos–Atatürk Pact A brief examination of additional factors relating to the historical roots of this novel approach to Greek–Turkish relations, as well as to their psychological background in the respective societies, may help towards a deeper understanding of these relations; on the one hand, because the first seeds of the 1999 reorientation are to be traced back to the Venizelos–Atatürk Pact of 1930, and more deeply planted in the aftermaths of the 1987 and the 1996 crises; on the other, because the ‘age-old enemies’ do not seem to be as hostile to each other as had been believed. To put the matter in historical context, it seems that the age-long political antagonism that led Greeks and Turks into successive wars was not shared by the grass-roots societies of the two countries in such a way as to lead to permanent hostility. A sense of this reality was personally observed by the author in his grandmother from Asia Minor, for whom the Greek disaster during the Asia Minor campaign had not eroded nostalgic memories of the Turks of Finike,16 memories of whom she had rechannelled into the deep, uninterrupted friendship she cherished for the Turkish Cypriot women of our village, and subsequently for her Turkish Cypriot neighbours in Limassol. This warm human relationship also underpins Asia Minor Greek literature. War may strike at people, it may generate conflict, killing, uprooting, but it seems it cannot poison the feelings of people at the individual, or even at the collective level. A similar alternation of love–hate relations was witnessed in Cyprus in the wake of the opening of checkpoints along the ceasefire line in April 2003, which is elaborated on later in this book. The Greek Cypriot NO to the proposed solution may have resulted in a stalemate in the Greek–Turkish dialogue and even a reverse, in some respects, of Greek–Turkish rapprochement. However, public opinion polls taken since the catastrophic earthquakes of 1999 have shown a surprising consistency in the positive image Greeks and Turks still maintain for each other. An expression of this climate is the genuine solidarity of the Greek people with the people of Turkey in connection with Turkey’s EU accession process,17 despite the clear tendency towards rejection by the populations of the rest of the EU member states.18 Even the most serious upheavals in the relations of the two peoples, the Asia Minor campaign and the ensuing Greek disaster (1920–2), failed to block the rapprochement achieved through the Venizelos–Atatürk Pact of 1930. Nor did it deter Venizelos from contemplating a Greek–Turkish federation and unofficially suggesting the matter to Atatürk during his visit to Ankara to sign the Pact.19 Venizelos’s political genius saw in this pact, in addition to Greece’s recognition that the policy of the Great Idea had been definitely abandoned, ‘a strategic flank support of Greece’s defence policy in a Greek–Turkish axis counterbalancing the pressures from Greece’s northern neighbours and more particularly Bulgaria’.20

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Venizelos’s conceptualization had been commonplace in Greek political thinking at the time. Alexandros Papanastasiou, speaking at the 27th Peace Congress in Athens, on 7 October 1929, suggested the establishment of a United States of Europe, and, if this proved unfeasible, a Union of Balkan States to include Turkey. Two years later, speaking at the 2nd Balkan Conference in Istanbul, he added flesh to the idea of a union of Balkan States with the following penetrating remark: . . . We have all convened here today for the first time. Yet we all have the sense that we have lived here and that we are citizens of this incomparable city. Here, in the Queen of cities which has been the capital of the Balkan peoples for ten ages, our destinies have been shaped. We lived here, the one next to the other, working together, frequently hating and fighting each other, to wake up at last and become aware that we all constitute one and the same broad national family.21

The notion of racial and cultural affinity amongst the peoples of Asia Minor was also put forth by Venizelos himself in the Greek Parliament on 20 December 1930 during the debate on the Greek–Turkish Friendship Pact he had signed in Ankara on 30 October that year. He referred to the historical fact that contemporary Turks were racially a mixture of the Asia Minor peoples who had been Hellenized during the long Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods and who subsequently converted to Islam and became Turks under Ottoman rule.22 Venizelos even referred to the Kemalist theory of Anatolia as the Turks’ ‘mother country’, through which Ataturk tried to shed Persian and Arabic influences connected with Islam, as well as the Altaic23 nomadic past of the first Turks who had conquered Asia Minor.24 The fall of Venizelos (1933) and the period of continued instability that ensued in Greece rendered the Friendship Pact with Turkey inert. Thus, at an official level, Turkey was not called upon to reciprocate Venizelos’s initiatives. To the contrary, during the Second World War, Atatürk’s successors, functioning within a climate of revival of a blend of nationalism and irredentist Pan-Turkist expansionism, made concerted efforts with both Nazi Germany and Britain to place Khios, Lesvos, Samos and the Dodecanese, even Thessaloniki and Cyprus, under their control.25

2.4. Cyprus: a cause of protracted crisis between Greece and Turkey When, in 1944, Turkey began feeling the Soviet threat to its northern borders, it again sought the friendship of Greece, which, pressed by internal condi-

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tions as well as by the Bulgarian threat during the war, bound itself, along with Turkey, to the Western defence system. During these post-war years, Greece and Turkey constituted what Vyron Theodoropoulos calls ‘the Greek– Turkish twins’.26 Within this framework, Turkey accepted Italy’s ceding of the Dodecanese to Greece (1946), and agreed the new Greek–Turkish border in the Aegean. However, the revitalized Greek–Turkish friendship would soon be overshadowed by the internationalization of the Cyprus question, which involved the goal of enosis (union with Greece), which was adopted, albeit unwillingly, by the Papagos government (1954), and which the first Karamanlis government inherited (1955). Karamanlis was fully aware of the complications the Cyprus problem caused to Greek foreign policy and tried hard to keep it low profile. But pressure from Makarios, and the aftermath of the armed struggle of the Greek Cypriots, resulted in the transfer of the enosis movement to Greece, making it a major issue in Greek political life. As a panhellenic movement from then on, the enosis movement surfaced again, thus unleashing in Turkey the ‘Sèvres syndrome’, which, in the minds of the Turkish ruling elite, was identified with the ‘siege syndrome’. The eventuality of Greece incorporating Cyprus was seen by the Turkish Kemalist elite as an encirclement of all Turkey’s Mediterranean coasts, giving Greece the capability of controlling all its outlets to the open sea.27 The sensitivity of the Turkish ruling elite on this issue had been manifest since the Balkan wars (1912–13) when it stubbornly resisted ceding the East Aegean islands, although it appeared willing to cede instead its European territories, including even Adrianople. At Lausanne, Venizelos managed to gain the consent of Inonu for the Greek regime of the East Aegean islands, but only with staunch British support and on condition that they be kept demilitarized.28 The Greek diplomatic service had, since the early years of the Second World War during the Tsouderos government in exile in Britain, known about Turkish claims to the East Aegean islands, as it had also been aware of mounting public opposition by Turkey, as early as 1950, to the enosis of Cyprus with Greece.29 Historic documents in this regard include three consecutive ‘memoranda on Greek-Turkish relations’ (dated 12 February, 24 and 29 March 1954), written by Christoforos Christidis, then Special Councillor at the Ministry to the President, after long unofficial contacts in Istanbul in December 1953. He had been born and had grown up in Istanbul and, as he himself noted, had systematically followed developments connected with the Cyprus question.30 In particular, in his first memorandum, entitled ‘The Cyprus Question and the Turkish Factor’, Christidis warned that ‘the main obstacle (to enosis), which is foreseen to become more obvious with time, is Turkey’.31 He took Turkish interest for granted, predicted the serious repercussions of the attempted internationalization of the Cyprus question, and suggested direct deliberation with

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Turkey before recourse to the UN General Assembly, without, in any case, reflecting on the matter of change to the final objective.32 Christidis’s assessment was also shared by, and conveyed to the Greek government, by a journalist, Vassos Vassiliou, who had private contacts with Turkish officials in Ankara in early 1954. The message was clear. The Turkish government was determined not to let Cyprus be united with Greece.33 Repeated warnings to the Greek government had also been conveyed from London by Greek Ambassador Mostras, who had foreseen Turkish involvement and warned of serious consequences in the whole spectrum of Greek–Turkish relations.34 What Turkish Foreign Minister Zorlu described as ‘pre-emptive defence’ against Greek encirclement of Turkey’s Mediterranean coasts was the focal point of his argument at the London Tripartite Conference (August–September 1955).35 That Turkey took seriously the security aspect of the Cyprus question was corroborated by Nihat Erim in his two classified reports on Cyprus to Prime Minister Menderes (November–December 1956). Turkey’s security is central in these reports, and is linked with the strategic balance created by the Treaty of Lausanne. Erim argues that, in the event of Cyprus being ceded to Greece, this balance would be dramatically changed, and suggests, as a counter reaction, that Turkey question the regime of the Aegean islands, of the Patriarchate, of the Greeks of Istanbul and of Western Thrace.36 In spite of all the above warnings, three whole years elapsed, with repeated failures at the UN, and dramatic deterioration in Greek–Turkish relations permeating all levels of the respective societies,37 until Greek Diplomacy and the Greek Cypriot leadership took the message on board and re-examined the enosis policy in the light of the realistic possibilities that the international balance of power allowed. However, when, faced with imminent partition, they were forced to snatch at the idea of an independent Cyprus, an idea that had been suggested by Crisna Menon at the UN General Assembly in 1955, it was too late to avert international recognition of Turkey as a major, directly interested party involved in determining the future of Cyprus. The recurrence of the Cyprus crisis in 1963 together with the return of the revival of the enosis campaign and, further, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 set in motion, once again, protracted tension in Greek–Turkish relations, which lasted until the end of the twentieth century. During this period, Turkey gradually escalated a series of claims against Greece, accompanied by a tendency to review or even violate internationally binding treaties. Under such conditions, the two countries found themselves on numerous occasions on the brink of war. The Turkish Kemalist state, having already adopted the course of authoritarianism in the interior (consider the military coups of 1971 and 1980), bedevilled Greece, during the 1980s and 1990s particularly, as its main external threat and, at a later stage, as the main instigator of the Kurdish movement.

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As a result, Greece became the evil genius behind all Turkey’s problems and, for decades, was faced with a continuous escalation of Turkish provocative acts.38 In the explosive anti-American atmosphere characterizing the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Greek Premier Karamanlis withdrew from the military wing of NATO only to realize soon after that, though this action might have satisfied popular feeling, it was detrimental to long-term national interests.39 In such critical circumstances, he saw Greece’s only political outlet in its accession to the EEC, and thus launched an official accession application on 12 June 1975. In a message to the people, he focused on three main parameters involved in that historic decision. The first was the strengthening of the country’s security against external threat as well as the consolidation of democratic institutions. The second was Greece’s deliverance from ‘eternal isolation’, and the third was its participation in the European integration process.40 In the meantime, while Karamanlis tried hard to rehabilitate Greece’s relations with the USA, he set out a policy of strengthening the country’s regional position by adopting new initiatives in relations with the Balkan countries (Balkan Conference in Athens, January 1976), with the socialist countries (visit to the Soviet Union, late 1976) and with Arab countries through bilateral contacts and a balanced stand on the Palestinian question. However, such precautionary measures were not enough to contain Turkish aggressiveness.41

2.5. Andreas Papandreou: from ‘no dialogue’ to Davos The rise of Andreas Papandreou to power in 1981, a victory of the demand for ‘national independence’ and ‘popular sovereignty’, signalled the beginning of a long period of complete absence of dialogue with Turkey. Papandreou rejected dialogue with Turkey as long as that country occupied northern Cyprus, and threatened Greek sovereignty in the Aegean. The reorientation of Greek defence strategy towards the eastern threat and the militarization of the Aegean islands created Cold War conditions between Greece and Turkey. And when, in March 1987, the Turkish seismographic ship Piri Reis sailed into the Aegean for the purpose of oil exploration, the two countries came to the brink of war. The crisis was finally defused through mutual compromise involving the termination of the Piri Reis expedition and the commitment of Greece – although this latter was not publicized – to suspend oil drilling or oil search beyond its territorial waters.42 As a result, Andreas Papandreou, who had been in opposition when Premier Karamanlis was faced with a similar situation in 1976 and had called on him publicly to sink the Turkish ship HORA, was now led to dialogue with Turkey at Davos (1988) without having fulfilled any of the preconditions he had previously insisted on.

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The Davos process brought to the surface a new parameter in the foreign policies of Turkey and Greece. Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, the architect of Turkey’s European accession route, having already applied for EU membership (April 1987), knew very well that he could not expect a positive response to his application as long as his country was on the brink of war with Greece, an EU member state. From Davos to his death (April 1993), Ozal gave highest priority to gaining EU accession, thereby subordinating first, the Turkish– Greek relations, and, later, the Cyprus problem, to which he would seek a solution in 1991–2 within the extremely narrow margins left to him by the Kemalist establishment.43 For the Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, Davos signalled awareness that the only end result of the no-dialogue policy was war with Turkey, a war he backed away from at the critical moment. At the same time, Davos signalled awareness on the part of Papandreou that his simplistic emotional approach to a complex, threatening reality had reached its limits. He realized that the Cyprus problem could not bind Greek–Turkish relations in such absolute terms as to force Greek foreign policy into a no-dialogue position until Turkey withdrew its occupation troops from Cyprus. Within the framework of this new awareness, he redefined the objectives of Greek foreign policy. Henceforth, the highest priority was to be the improvement of relations with Turkey through a complex approach in which Cyprus, despite statements to the contrary, constituted just one – an admittedly substantive one – of the many parameters of the new multidimensional foreign policy.44 Quite revealing in relation to this issue was a report by Sami Kohen in Milliyet, on 2 February 1988, the day after Davos: ‘Another important point is the fact that Papandreou agreed to keep the Cyprus problem outside the framework of the relations between the two countries. It is not that he did not bring the matter up during the talks, but he was careful not to include it within the context of their bilateral relations.’45 The change that Davos reasoning signalled was received with indignation in Cyprus by those political forces that, inextricably bound to the logic of the policy of ‘protaxis’ (a policy initiated by Kyprianou demanding the end of Turkish aggression before intercommunal talks could be held) and a onedimensional notion of the Cyprus question, understood neither the new priorities of Greek foreign policy nor the possibility of a positive impact that gradual improvement of Greek–Turkish relations might have had on the prospects of a solution in Cyprus. The paper published by Tassos Papadopoulos, now President of the Republic, saw ‘a serious departure from the policy of “protaxis” that has been until now the foundation and the cornerstone of Greek policy on Cyprus’. The paper also reminded its readership that ‘the officially declared policy of Greece on its relations with Turkey is that “no dialogue can be held with Turkey nor any upgrading of relations can be thought of

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until the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus and the abandonment of Turkey’s expansionist designs against the Aegean”’.46 A banner headline article in the same paper, entitled ‘We are worried’ and signed by ‘Democritos’,47 went as far as accusing Papandreou, as well as Vassiliou, who had given full cover to Papandreou’s handlings, of ‘selling out’ at Davos: . . . Thus when Papandreou at Davos puts forward the concept of ‘demilitarization’ as the only single condition for the improvement of relations with Turkey, this means that he abandons the other two equally important aspects of the ‘protaxis’ policy. In our opinion, he actually abandons the ‘protaxis’ principle itself; he makes a harsh about-turn in policy, and sells Cyprus out. When Vassiliou and Papandreou openly declare ‘identity of views and agreement in handlings’, we say that both of them have sold Cyprus out.48

An initial positive measure involved in Davos policy, the abrogation of the decree confiscating properties of Greeks in Turkey,49 did not have a followup. Internal upheavals in the Papandreou government because of alleged financial scandals, which resulted in its downfall in 1989, and, in Turkey, Ozal’s election to the Presidency during the same year, brought Greek–Turkish relations back to the inertia of 1981–7. Moreover, following the EEC’s rejection of its application for accession (December 1989), Turkey no longer had the same strong incentives to seek a peaceful compromise in its disputes with Greece. At the same time, Greece’s entanglement in the Macedonian question and the resulting heightening of nationalist rhetoric immobilized Greek foreign policy, making it virtually impossible to initiate any move towards compromise either with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) or with Turkey.50

2.6. Pangalos–Kranidiotis: the linkage policy PASOK was returned to power in 1993. With regard to the Macedonian question, it remained captive to the absolute maximalist positions A. Papandreou had adopted while in opposition – ‘no discussion of the name that would include the word Macedonia’ – a policy that cost a lot and still costs Greece. However, in the field of Greek–Turkish relations, Theodoros Pangalos as Deputy Foreign Minister, and, later, Yiannos Kranidiotis as Assistant Foreign Minister, gradually started moving things forward with what was termed ‘linkage policy’. The term had first been coined by Henry Kissinger as ‘linkage doctrine’, according to which seemingly isolated issues or problems are inter-

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linked to such an extent that developments in the area of the one exercise influence, or are influenced by, developments in the area of the other.51 This policy was initiated by Pangalos with the aim of detaching Cyprus’s accession process from the EU condition of prior solution of its political problem. Provided that Cyprus satisfied the Copenhagen accession criteria, the argument was that it should not be held ‘hostage’ to Turkish intransigence in the search for a solution.52 Cyprus’s accession process offered Greek foreign-policy makers a convincing argument and, above all, an opportunity to pull Greece out of the isolation to which it had been led by its policy on the Macedonian question, a policy incompatible with European political culture. It should be said, of course, that the ‘hostage’ argument worked as long as Turkish intransigence and a Greek Cypriot conciliatory attitude were established facts at the negotiating table. If anything had changed in that bi-polar situation, there would have been a domino effect on changes in many other areas. Yiannos Kranidiotis, taking over from Pangalos, further strengthened the ‘hostage’ card with the even stronger card featuring linkage of Cyprus’s EU accession process with that of Turkey. The 6 March 1995 Agreement, masterminded by Kranidiotis, was the first great achievement of Greek foreign policy regarding Cyprus. Having consented to Turkey’s Customs Union with the EU, Greece had secured a commitment by the Union to start accession negotiations with Cyprus six months after the Intergovernmental Conference that was to be held in 1996. However, there was still a long way ahead until accession would be completely detached from the condition of prior solution. In the aftermath of the Ocalan fiasco, Simitis, Papandreou and Kranidiotis gave new direction to Greek foreign policy along the lines of the European paradigm, thus making Greece a reliable and equal interlocutor on the European stage. Pangalos had liberated Greek foreign policy from the siege syndrome of the 1989–93 period and had taken it out of the inertia of the past decade. Now Greece was moving forward beyond personal and impulsive handling of foreign policy. Greek foreign policy became, from that time onward, a matter of collective data processing and deliberation, providing for a substantial role and participation by the diplomatic service and, for the first time, making use of think tanks in strategy formulation and planning. This new approach transcended the zero-sum game reasoning and consequently the oppositional syndrome. In a complex, rapidly changing world, it focused not on differences and disputes, but on the common denominator, on interest in common with any single player on the international chessboard, and, on the basis of this common interest, building Greece’s bilateral and multilateral relations. It was a fundamental change. During the first eight years of the all-powerful Andreas Papandreou, as well as during the Karamanlis premiership, all important foreign-policy decisions were taken almost exclusively by the Prime

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Minister, with only a marginal role left to the Foreign Minister. Within such a centralized system where persons become identified with institutions, leaders usually function with a great degree of autonomy, and quite frequently with marginal, if any, bureaucratic support. This ‘school’ of foreign-policy management usually exhausts itself in public declarations targeted at an internal audience rather than at the real participants. An unavoidable consequence of this kind of approach is, on the one hand, both insufficiently analysed decisions, and, on the other, a failure to implement and, indeed, to follow up such implementation systematically.53 The revisionist, ‘neo-functional’ approach, developing and extending linkage policy to all political levels, proceeds with a methodical negotiation of a whole network of adaptations integrated and harmonized with European as well as global political planning. In particular, with regard to the Greece–Turkey– Cyprus triangle, the new Greek foreign policy manages to set in motion a long-term process that, through the historic Helsinki accord (December 1999), opens the way to Cyprus’s accession, along with the commencement of Turkey’s EU accession bid. Moreover, in conjunction with these two parameters, it creates prerequisites for the solution of the Cyprus problem and the gradual, peaceful settlement of Greek–Turkish disputes. Through a creative involvement in the negotiating process, it promotes regional solidarity and stability as a substantive element of national interest.

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Chapter 3

Review of US Foreign Policy 3.1. Turkey: a pivotal state for the United States The ‘linkage policy’ of Pangalos and Kranidiotis led to the 6 March 1995 Agreement, which opened the way, on the one hand, to the commencement of EU accession negotiations for Cyprus and, on the other, to Turkey’s Customs Union with the EU. However, the success of this policy was closely connected with an external event that Kranidiotis exploited with surprising diplomatic agility to the benefit of Greece’s and Cyprus’s national interests. The aforementioned event was the review of US foreign policy with regard to the East Mediterranean region by Richard Holbrooke, US UnderSecretary of State assigned to European and Middle East affairs. Holbrooke was quick to grasp the new political reality in the region following the end of the bipolar system and the elevation of the United States as the only superpower, and proceeded with new political planning in order that the United States might be enabled to respond to the new regional needs and address emerging problems. One of the most important matters for the United States following the downfall of the Soviet Union was stability and security in regions in which there were major energy sources (Middle East and Transcaucasia), and the ability to act to secure access to these, and, where possible, economic control. Within the framework of this policy, Turkey constituted a ‘pivotal state’ in relation to US interests. The term ‘pivotal state’ was widely used by American policy analysts in their search for those countries the cooperation of which was considered a necessary support for American hegemony. Robert Chase, Emily Hill and Paul Kennedy formulated a theory on this subject in their article entitled ‘pivotal states’ in the journal Foreign Affairs (January 1996). In that article they named nine states as ‘pivotal’ for the USA, Turkey being one of the most important among them. The main factors that, according to the authors, made these states ‘pivotal’ were: a large population, a growing, often substantial middle class, an ‘emerging markets’ potential and prospective integration into the global economy, but also serious structural

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problems such as internal instability and an uncertain future. Basing their argument on the assumption that positive or negative developments in these countries might affect neighbouring states in the same direction through the spillover effect, the authors suggested an American policy aimed at moving things in these countries in a positive direction. As a result of such an American policy, stability in the ‘pivotal states’ would spill over to their neighbouring states and their region at large, thus contributing to international stability (Three years later, the same authors edited a book on “Pivotal States” in which the argument is elaborated in detail).1 Zbigniew Brzezinski describes as ‘geostrategic players’ ‘the states that have the capacity and the national will to exercise power or influence beyond their borders’, and as ‘geopolitical pivots’ ‘the states whose importance is derived not from their power and motivation but rather from their sensitive location and from the consequences of their potentially vulnerable condition for the behavior of geostrategic players’. He further identifies five ‘key geostrategic players’ on Eurasia’s ‘new political map’ (France, Germany, Russia, China and India) and five ‘geopolitical pivots’ (Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Turkey and Iran) with Turkey and Iran ‘perhaps also partially qualifying as players’.2 With regard specifically to Turkey, Brzezinski says the following: ‘Turkey stabilizes the Black Sea region, controls access from it to the Mediterranean Sea, balances Russia in the Caucasus, still offers an antidote to muslim fundamentalism, and serves as the southern anchor of NATO.’3 This same reasoning underpinned Holbrooke’s approach. He saw Turkey as ‘a front-line state’ and one that ‘stands at the crossroads of almost every issue of importance to the United States on the Eurasian continent’. In fact he was one of few American Foreign Ministers who showed deep interest in, and systematically occupied himself with, US–Turkish relations. He considered these relations so important as to state publicly that ‘human rights, however important, would not be allowed to rupture US–Turkish relations’.4 Apart from its pivotal position in the security and control of energy sources, Turkey was also pivotal, in Holbrooke’s thinking, in another respect that caused grave concern to the US government: the escalation of anti-West Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East in the aftermath of the first US war against Iraq (1991). Samuel Huntington had already expressed concern at the possibility of a ‘clash of civilizations’ while lecturing at the American Enterprise Institute in October 1992. Months later, he elaborated on this issue in an article in the journal Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), which took the form of a dramatic warning to the United States of the new form of conflict threatening the stability of the new world order. Future conflicts, according to Huntington, would be on the basis of civilizational criteria, more specifically, between the Christian West and Islam.5

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Turkey, the largest and most powerful country in the Eastern Mediterranean, was the only country that had the potential to become integrated in the Western political system, and consequently to function as a lever for the reversion of the movement towards the conflicts of the type foreseen by Huntington. However, such integration presupposed fundamental restructuring and democratization of the authoritarian Kemalist regime as well as the establishment of peaceful relations with its neighbouring countries, particularly Greece, which was already a major player in the Western political system.

3.2. Johnson’s letter: the syndrome Nevertheless, there were entrenched views at the State Department; the people there regarded themselves as possessing insufficient leverage for direct pressure on the Kemalist regime for structural change to a system in which the regime itself was part of the problem. They also had entrenched views on their ability to exert substantive pressure on the Kemalist regime in order to put an end to its revisionist policy in the Aegean and Western Thrace, as well as to the occupation of northern Cyprus. The syndrome unleashed by Johnson’s letter to Inonu (June 1964) was still obsessed by US foreign policy in the triangle involving Turkey, Greece and Cyprus.6 The view that this letter had inflicted a heavy blow on US–Turkish relations and that no similar action should be effected again became a rule in the US policy on Cyprus. The inability of the embargo imposed by Congress (1975–8) to produce any results, or even to endure in time, and its reversal by a President (Carter) who had been elected on a platform that focused on human rights, simply confirms the rule. From the time Turkey entered NATO (1952) until the end of the cold war (1990), its geostrategic position as well as its military power were considered by the State Department and the Pentagon to be of crucial strategic significance for the containment of the Soviet threat and the security of the energy sources in the Middle East. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, the entry of American oil cartels into the Caspian oilfields, on the one hand, and, on the other, the policy of containment of Iranian Islamic fundamentalism and Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, made Turkey again a ‘pivotal state’ for American interests. Consequently, US policy on Cyprus throughout this period was determined by this general assessment of Turkey’s significance. Following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1974), US foreign policy exerted maximum pressure to prolong a vicious circle of intercommunal talks. Under the pretext of such endless talks, the State Department pressed for, and finally achieved, the withdrawal of the Cyprus question from the UN General Assembly

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after 1979. The Soviet Union worked silently in the same direction during this period, considering it a higher priority to improve relations with Turkey than coming to loggerheads with that country over Cyprus at the UN. Throughout the years of the embargo (1975–8), the Soviet Union strove systematically to improve its relations with Turkey. Turkey, on the other hand, made masterful use of these relations to blackmail the United States. From 1975 until Ecevit’s visit to Moscow (June 1978), when a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed, there had been successive exchanges of visits and economic agreements that provided, among other things, for the installation of large industrial projects in Turkey with Soviet technical and economic assistance. Soviet–Turkish relations were revitalized again during Ozal’s premiership with a historic agreement on gas transfer to Turkey (1984). Without any pressure exercised on Turkey, the intercommunal talks degenerated into a vicious circle, which, through the political role of Denktas, ensured that no agreement would be reached and that therefore Turkey would not be called upon to withdraw its occupation troops from Cyprus. In the meantime, Turkey and Denktas exploited the fruitless lapse of time to consolidate the fait accompli brought about by the invasion, particularly through the colonization and change in the demographic structure, as well as the historical and cultural character, of the occupied area of Cyprus. Nonetheless, Denktas’s absolutely negative attitude at the talks and his repeated reneging on agreements he himself had signed (with Makarios in 1977 and with Kyprianou in 1979) and, in addition, the obviously complete dependence of Denktas’s occupation regime on Turkey, made the vicious cycle of talks more and more difficult to continue without bringing to the surface the Turkish occupation of Cyprus territory. When Ozal shifted his country’s orientation towards Europe, he began gradually to realize that the continued presence of Turkish occupation troops in Cyprus was an insurmountable hurdle blocking his country’s EU accession prospect.

3.3. US opposition to Cyprus’s accession to the EU In the wake of Cyprus’s application for accession to the EEC and the renewal of Turkey’s efforts in the same direction (1990), the UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, with the encouragement and direct involvement of the United States,7 undertook the first serious effort to bring about an overall solution to the Cyprus problem with his ‘Set of Ideas’ (1991), which would be officially submitted to the two sides in Cyprus by the new Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali (August 1992). Along with the ‘Set of Ideas’, Ghali submitted a map (the first map since 1974) that, within the framework of a federal solution, provided for the return of substantial occupied territory and

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the reinstatement of a considerable number of Greek Cypriot refugees. As has transpired from relevant correspondence between the Greek Prime Minister Constantinos Mitsotakis and the US President George H. W. Bush (13–14 September 1991), the Americans, using behind-the-scenes diplomacy, had extracted some kind of commitment on the part of Turkey to accept territorial readjustment on the basis of the Gobbi map8 as a precondition to forward the solution process in Cyprus.9 However, the mobilization of Denktas and the Kemalist power mechanism in Turkey did not allow that initiative to move forward. Whatever the case, a strong wave of rejection met the UN Secretary General’s ‘Set of Ideas’ in the Greek Cypriot community as well. One of the provisions of the UN document that caused outright rejection by the Greek Cypriot political leadership was the condition that ‘matters related to the membership of the federal republic in the EEC will be discussed and agreed to, and will be submitted for the approval of the two communities in separate referenda’.10 This provision clearly presupposed, first, that solution should precede accession and, second, that accession would actually be conditional on Denktas’s acceptance after the – at that time remote – possibility of a solution. The fact that American intervention had been behind this condition was gathered from Bush’s ‘non-paper’ answer to Mitsotakis’s letter in which Mitsotakis had expressed reservations with regard to the above condition. Bush asked Mitsotakis to ensure that the UN draft proposal sufficiently addressed the problem of Cyprus’s accession to the EEC and that no stipulations from the Greek side should be imposed that might block the intercommunal negotiations.11 Kyriakos Pierides seems to be certain that the addition to the ‘Set of Ideas’ of the provision for separate referenda regarding accession ‘was a result of intense diplomatic activity by Nelson Letsky, Special Coordinator on the Cyprus question at the State Department’. Pierides further adds that, ‘in his contacts with President Vassiliou, Letsky conveyed Washington’s strong opposition to Cyprus’ accession process’.12 The UN Secretary General’s Report to the Security Council, dated 19 November 1992, notes, with regard to the ‘Set of Ideas’, that ‘the Greek Cypriot side accepts the related provisions with the proviso that the separate referenda on matters related to EEC membership should be part of and conducted at the same time as the separate referenda on the overall framework agreement’.13 With Greece being cornered owing to the handling of the Macedonian question by its Foreign Minister, Samaras, it was evident that President Vassiliou did not feel that he had the leverage to insist on separating the accession process from the solution. Cyprus’s ‘hostage’ condition was still a grim reality. During his visit to Ankara (July 1991), President Bush made a strong personal effort to extract a commitment by his Turkish counterpart, Turgut

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Ozal, on territorial concessions, and brought back to the table Gobbi’s map. Ozal realized the need for a Cyprus solution as a prerequisite for the improvement of Turkey’s relations with Europe and showed a compromising spirit. He asked for Gobbi’s map to be adjusted so as to exempt the return of Morfou, but on the whole he showed willingness to discuss territorial concessions.14 Although the Americans were fully aware that substantial territorial concessions on the part of Turkey were a precondition for a breakthrough, they never thought of taking practical measures to press Turkey in this direction. They did not do this during the US President’s visit to Ankara and they failed to do so even after Yilmaz’s reneging attitude in Paris. The syndrome unleashed by Johnson’s letter, which followed every step in American–Turkish relations, confined any American action to mere admonition. Thus, when the Yilmaz– Mitsotakis meeting in Paris (11 September 1991) revealed that the Kemalist establishment would not allow any move that might open the way to a Cyprus settlement, US foreign policy focused its effort on suspending Cyprus’s accession process, which, as they correctly predicted, would bring the Turkish occupation back to the agenda of Euro-Turkish relations, thus creating serious problems for Turkey and new tensions in its relations with the West.

3.4. The EU’s negative stance on Cyprus’s accession As if the hostile policy of the United States towards Cyprus’s accession process was not enough, the climate was no better in the EU itself. A general report of the Commission on enlargement (1992), which was meant as a preliminary draft of the still pending Avis, caused serious doubts as to the EU’s real intentions with regard to Cyprus’s accession. The report noted the de facto partition of the island and pointed out that the Community should continue to encourage UN efforts and initiatives towards a solution.15 The Commission’s Avis (30 June 1993), following the Copenhagen Council, noted that ‘Cyprus’s accession presupposes that there will be a peaceful, balanced and viable settlement of the Cyprus question. This will make it possible for the two communities to reconciliate and restore trust and cooperation.’16 However, despite its refusal to accept Cyprus’s accession without a solution, the Commission provided the framework for the solution in two substantial respects: that of the acquis communautaire and that of compromise. Within that framework the Avis suggested that the institutional arrangements of a settlement should safeguard the necessary balance between the two communities in Cyprus and the implementation of the acquis on the whole territory of Cyprus. On the other hand, the Avis suggested that such arrangements should ensure the unimpeded participation of Cyprus in EU decisionmaking processes. Finally, the Commission conveyed a positive message to

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Cyprus by pointing out that the Community regarded it capable of acceding as soon as a solution was found to its political problem.17 Commissioner Hans van den Brook, speaking at a press conference following publication of the Avis, said with regard to Cyprus: ‘It is clear that, as the Cyprus problem has not been solved yet, the de facto partition of Cyprus impedes its accession to the EU.’18 Furthermore, he provided the framework for a solution in the same spirit as that of the Avis, but refrained from expressing any intention on the part of the EU to undertake a solution-oriented initiative. Instead, he referred to the intercommunal negotiations that were continuing under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, confining himself to the ascertainment that ‘the Community fully supports the efforts of the UN Secretary General’.19 In the heavy atmosphere over Cyprus created by the rejection of the Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’, in fact, by both sides, the EU Council of Ministers (4 Oct. 1993), having adopted the Avis, went a step further and opened a window of opportunity to the future. Following a statement reiterating EU support for the UN Secretary General’s good offices mission, the Council agreed to reassess the situation in the light of the positions taken by each side and to decide accordingly in January 1995 on the issue of Cyprus’s accession.20 The commitment to a reassessment of the situation ‘in the light of the positions of each side at the intercommunal dialogue’ introduced a completely new element in the EU stand on the accession of Cyprus. It was both a warning to the two aspiring EU members – mainly Turkey – and an indication that the absolute interconnection of accession and solution might possibly be reviewed. The ‘hostage’ argument. It was exactly on this commitment and corollary warning that Pangalos created the ‘hostage’ policy. His aim was to delink accession and solution by projecting the injustice and irrationality of Cyprus being held ‘hostage’ to the Turkish side’s refusal to allow a solution, thus blocking the accession process. As a result of Pangalos’s moves, the term ‘hostage’ was for the first time inserted in the wording of a statement by Hans van den Brook during his visit to Cyprus (March 1994) in which the EU Commissioner took a step forward beyond the decision of the Council of Ministers. Having pointed out that Cyprus’s de facto partition inevitably complicated its accession process, he acknowledged that Cyprus’s aspiration to enter the EU should not be held captive to a prior solution.21

3.5. Holbrooke’s strategy Despite the progress made, there still remained considerable ground to be covered until the commencement of accession talks between the EU and

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Cyprus, and an even longer distance until consideration of the eventuality of Cyprus’s accession without a solution. Greek diplomacy played a leading role in covering this distance. The presence of Yiannos Kranidiotis as Assistant Foreign Minister with competency on Cyprus signalled a step forward in Greek Diplomacy’s approach to political reality. Kranidiotis transcended the one-dimensional nation-centred concepts of the past and set sail to the complex multidimensional ‘linkage policy’. Nevertheless, the decisive forward push given to Kranidiotis’s initiatives was given by the US foreign policy under Richard Holbrooke. Having been appointed Under-Secretary of State competent on Europe and the Middle East, Holbrooke was quick to realize that a new approach was necessary to safeguard stability in the explosive East Mediterranean region that was now in a state of flux in the post-Cold War period. The most serious problems US foreign policy had to address were: • the escalation of anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism emanating mainly from Iran; • the increasing influence of social and political Islam in Turkey, an Islam with nationalist and anti-Western orientation, an Islam that dynamically questioned the monopoly of power by the Kemalist establishment; • the exacerbated social unrest in Turkey to the extent that it threatened the stability of the Kemalist regime; • the gradual deterioration of Turkish–Greek relations with continuous Turkish provocations and revisionist claims against Greece; • the escalation of the crisis in the Balkans where Turkish–Greek antagonism further complicated the situation. Holbrooke realized that internal stability and the proper functioning of the secular state in Turkey were pivotal in any effort to address the situation. He soon became aware of the ineffectiveness of the traditional American approach, which continued to focus its interest on Turkey’s strategic position and military might, while turning a blind eye to the internal structure of Turkey’s power system. In order that Turkey might fulfil the role its strategic position and the Islamic identity associated with it, it was imperative for it to be fully incorporated into the Western political system. This meant its integration into the EU. However, for such an objective to be realized, Turkey needed, on the one hand, radical democratization of its constitutional and political system and, on the other, normalization of its relations with Greece. In its turn, normalization of relations with Greece would require a solution on Cyprus and a peaceful settlement of the disputes in the Aegean.

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Integration of a democratized Turkey within the EU would have safeguarded democratic institutions in the interior while, at the same time, making it a model state in the region through its rejection of Islamic fundamentalist indoctrination that viewed the West as a hostile anti-Islamist ‘Christian club’. A democratic Turkey fully integrated within the Western political system might have become a substantial element in the stability and security in the region, and consequently a cornerstone of support and further promotion of Western and, specifically, American interests in the Middle East. Additionally, normalization of Turkish–Greek relations would have positively influenced stability and security in the Balkans given that the role of the two countries in the region would have been complementary rather than antagonistic. Within the framework of this overall political vision, Holbrooke approached the problems in the triangle involving Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Meantime, Kranidiotis, having grasped the change in the American approach, developed a rich network of contacts and systematic communication with his American counterpart. As a result of this convergence, Holbrooke fully accepted Kranidiotis’s reasoning for a linkage of Cyprus’s EU accession process with that of Turkey through a step-by-step approach. An initial benchmark would be the granting of a date for the commencement of accession negotiations for Cyprus and a Customs Union for Turkey. Such a gradual process ‘might have led to a settlement of the disputes between Turkey and Greece on the model of the termination of hostility between Germany and France in the aftermath of World War II’.22 Holbrooke also discerned that both the accession process of Cyprus and Turkey and the parallel normalization of Turkish–Greek relations would have acted as a catalyst towards an overall settlement of the Cyprus question. This strategy began to bring to bear a most powerful degree of leverage on Turkey in the direction both of internal democratization and of a solution on Cyprus along with a peaceful settlement of Turkish–Greek disputes. However, the basic pressure lever would not have been the United States, whose traditional policy-making centres still viewed the situation in the area apprehensively as a result of its reaction to the syndrome effect emanating from Johnson’s letter. A substantial as well as most effective pressure lever on Turkey would have been, from that time on, Turkey’s obligation to harmonize its internal constitutional and political institutions with the acquis communautaire so as to fulfil the Copenhagen accession criteria as well as the normalization of its relations with Greece, and a positive contribution towards an overall solution in Cyprus. Such a course of events would have relieved the United States of the dilemma that had obsessed them for decades, and of the problems that chronic hostility between Turkey and Greece had accumulated for them. Thus, as far as Turkey was concerned, the EU would have become the main user of both carrot and whip.

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As a starting point, in the direction of this new strategy, Holbrooke initiated intensive contacts with high-ranking EU officials whom he tried to convince of the new American approach. Later, in early January 1995, he visited Athens, Nicosia and Ankara after the Special Coordinator at the Cyprus desk of the State Department, Jim Williams, had toured the European capitals and had had contacts on the new agenda. In connection with these developments, the CBC correspondent in New York, Apostolis Zoumbaniotis, reported that diplomatic representatives of Cyprus and Greece had observed ‘a substantive differentiation of the American position on the commencement of EU accession negotiations with Cyprus’. He also noted that the Americans, in their contacts with the Europeans, were connecting Cyprus’s accession process with the withdrawal of Greece’s veto to Turkey’s Customs Union.23 In Cyprus Holbrooke held long negotiations with President Clerides and also had contacts with both the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot political leadership. In statements he made on his departure (5 January 1995), he sent out a clear message as to what the new American approach was. He reiterated US support for EU enlargement, in which he included a federal Cyprus to the benefit of its people as a whole. He criticized those who, following the Soviet Union collapse, continued to view the Cyprus problem within the Cold War framework, and warned against the adverse effects for Europe in the event that Turkey and Greece became part of the crisis in the region.24 In Athens, following the talks with his Greek counterpart Kranidiotis, Holbrooke reiterated the new American position in stronger terms than ever before. ‘Cyprus is an integral part of Europe,’ he said, and repeated his concern about Cyprus’s people as a whole. He also reiterated US support for European integration, emphasizing the need for an indivisible Europe following the end of the cold war.25 To set the record straight, in Holbrooke’s thinking, Cyprus’s accession to the EU was irrevocably linked with the solution of the Cyprus problem. However, this was unlike the prohibitive ‘hostage’ approach of Bush and Letsky. In Holbrooke’s view, Cyprus’s accession process itself, along with the parallel European path chosen by Turkey, would be catalytic to both the solution of the Cyprus problem and the normalization of Turkish–Greek relations. Speaking before the Senate on the new American foreign policy (January 1995), he placed Turkey at the crossroads of almost all issues of import to the United States in the Eurasian continent – in particular, NATO, the Aegean, sanctions against Iraq, relations with Russia and the new republics, the transfer of oil and natural gas from central Asia and, finally, peace and stability in the Middle East. With specific reference to the Turkey–Greece–Cyprus package, after having stressed the fact that Greece and Turkey needed a historic breakthrough similar to that between Germany and France following the Second

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World War, he warned that, if Turkey was rejected by Europe, this would constitute a frightening setback on the path to peace and stability in Europe. Such a development, he argued, would play into the hands of Islamic reactionaries who opposed Turkey’s European course and would also undermine the prospects for a solution on Cyprus.26 Speaking before the Senate prior to the 6 March 1995 Agreement, when the deal had already been determined, he elaborated again on the new approach, reiterating Turkey’s pivotal position and insisting particularly on the need for a settlement of Turkish–Greek disputes and, in so doing, recalled the example of De Gaulle and Adenauer. On referring to Cyprus, he reiterated American support for its EU accession and pointed out that Cyprus’s accession might have the same positive effect as had occurred in the case of Ireland.27 Three days after the 6 March 1995 Agreement, in a written report to the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, Holbrooke reiterated once again the ‘linkage’ package in clearer and straightforward terms. He pointed out that Cyprus was the key to any long-term reduction of tension between Turkey and Greece, and expressed hope that the EU decision to start accession negotiations with Cyprus would bring the two communities together to work effectively for a settlement of their disputes. He also described the EU Customs Union with Turkey as a great step forward. Finally, he informed the House that US Diplomacy had been actively involved in preparing the ground for the 6 March Agreement and looked forward to the day when Cyprus, ‘as a bi-communal federation’, would join the EU as a member state.28

3.6. The Imia crisis and the S-300 missiles The storm of upheaval caused by the landslide Islamic victory in local Turkish elections (March 1994) and the further advance of the Refah Partisi (RP) (the Welfare Party) in the national elections of December 1995 brought about chronic instability and acute internal convulsion, which deterred the country’s political leadership from responding to the Greek initiative of 6 March 1995. In such a political climate, which was conducive to the need to divert attention to external affairs, the crisis over the rock islands of Imia (January– February 1996) and, during the next two years, the protracted crisis over the purchase of Russian S-300 missiles by Cyprus (1997–8) brought Greece and Turkey once again to the brink of war and American foreign policy to an embarrassing firefighting mission. The higher echelons of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were continuously processing data from the Turkish–Greek ‘front’. A relevant report from the National Council of Information, the highest analysis bureau of the CIA, foresaw disastrous scenarios in its attempt to answer the ques-

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tion of what would happen in the event of a Greek–Turkish confrontation over Cyprus. According to press reports, the authors of the report believed that, in the event that S-300 missiles were installed in Cyprus, there would be a Turkish strike to which Greece would not be able to avoid responding in one manner or another.29 During the same period, a report issued by the Heritage Foundation considered a Greek–Turkish war as being imminent in the event that the Russian S-300 missiles were installed in Cyprus. As to the possible US reaction to such a conflict, the report noted that, without ignoring US–Greek bonds of friendship, American policy should have to take seriously into account Turkey’s geostrategic position. The report questioned the prudence of the purchase of the S-300 missiles, which could strike Turkish air space, and predicted that their deployment would escalate tension to the point of war. The United States, it concluded, should move in decisively to diffuse the crisis before it was too late.30 The eventuality of a Turkish–Greek war was also foreseen in a report by the RAND Institute. The year 2003 was considered to be a possible starting date for commencement of hostilities. It was the year ahead of the Athens Olympics as well as Cyprus’s EU accession.31 Moreover, a report by the US Ambassador in Ankara, Mark Paris, a few months before the Turkish national elections of April 1999, predicted the victory of Ecevit, whom he described as an unstable personality, anti-Western and non-cooperative, a man one could not talk to on the Cyprus question.32 The above-mentioned reports may possibly have been exaggerated. Moreover, they may have been intentionally spurious. It was not a secret that the Americans, for reasons of their own, were strongly against the deployment of the S-300 missiles in Cyprus. Their concern had to do with the possibility of Moscow using the project, the radar systems in particular, to monitor American and NATO movements in the Mediterranean.33 The Turks were undoubtedly aware of this convergence of interests with the United States as well as with Israel on the missile issue. This awareness made them feel at ease with their threats of war and was certainly an encouragement to them in their planning of war scenarios. Nevertheless, owing to a complete lack of access to Turkish sources, one cannot document a hypothesis in this regard. What mattered more to Cyprus was the fact that the EU itself was clearly opposed to the S-300 deployment. The main EU concern was that such a development would neutralize any prospect of a political solution of the Cyprus question. In a statement interpreted as a clear warning to Cyprus, the Commission asked the parties to avoid actions that might cause increased tension and make a settlement in Cyprus more difficult.34 Under these circumstances, with continuing instability in Turkey increasing the possibility of an armed confrontation with Greece and Cyprus while

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leaving Denktas free to block any effort towards a solution, the architect of Dayton,35 Richard Holbrooke, began to realize that he could not achieve a breakthrough in the Cyprus deadlock. Two Dayton-type meetings between Clerides and Denktas (Troutbeck, July 1997, and Glion, August 1997) had made him see the insurmountable wall that Denktas was. In fact, the Turkish Cypriot leader stubbornly refused any substantive dialogue, demanding as a precondition the suspension of any talk on Cyprus’s accession to the EU. In the aftermath of the failure of Glion, a press statement by the State Department criticized the EU, which, prior to the convening of the Council of Luxembourg, was preparing to reject Turkey as a candidate country for EU membership. If the EU had left open the window of accession to both Turkey and Cyprus, the State Department statement commented, this would have increased the prospects of a settlement in Cyprus.36 An attempt by American diplomacy the previous year (1996) that aimed at a comprehensive negotiation of both the Cyprus and the Aegean questions had already failed.37 The Americans had also attempted to prepare the ground for parallel channels of communication on the model of the Oslo procedure,38 with the participation of businessmen as well in unofficial meetings. They hoped that the creation of a situation of interdependence arising from economic cooperation would work as a deterrent to conflict. However, no tangible results were achieved.39

3.7. Mediation by Holbrooke Richard Holbrooke, having left the State Department, was appointed President Clinton’s Special Envoy to Cyprus in June 1997. He distanced himself from the New York and Montreux meetings, as he foresaw that they would lead nowhere. Instead, he silently initiated two apparently separate efforts, which, however, aimed at one central objective in his overall policy for the area. His first task was directed at convincing EU leaders to give Turkey candidate member status at the Luxembourg Council (November 1997). His second mission, for which he had secured the support of the University of Columbia and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, was directly connected with Cyprus and aimed at creating a second channel of communication through informal meetings of Greek and Turkish Cypriot businessmen. He hoped that their coming-together on issues of mutual interest might create the climate required for a comprehensive solution in Cyprus.40 One such meeting in Brussels (November 1997) proved a failure in practical terms. The same happened with a second similar meeting in Istanbul (December 1998). The main reason behind the latter failure had been the unwillingness of prominent Turkish Cypriot businessmen to pursue a line at variance with that of Denktas.41

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On returning to Cyprus in May 1998, Holbrooke was faced with Denktas’s unbending refusal to come to talks unless his regime was recognized as an independent sovereign state. Holbrooke went as far as asking Clerides for what came to be known as ‘acknowledgement’ of the existence of a separate administrative entity in the northern part of Cyprus without, in any case, giving such ‘acknowledgement’ the meaning of recognition of a separate state. However, his reference to Denktas, in a public statement, as the leader who had been elected through political process in northern Cyprus was interpreted, on the Greek Cypriot side, as a step forward in the direction of recognition. In general, the prevailing view among Greeks and Greek Cypriots was that the main goal of Holbrooke’s mission was not Cyprus but the integration of Turkey within Europe. Furthermore, he was regarded as viewing the restoration of Greek–Turkish relations and a solution in Cyprus merely as a pair of pincers with which American diplomacy might take hold of the inner core of the Greek–Turkish conflict.42 That Holbrooke was obsessed with this approach underlay the private talks he had with David Hannay in London, where he had been at the time of his appointment as Presidential Envoy, in June 1997. The message his interlocutor received was that he considered Turkey’s acceptance as a candidate EU member state a key issue in reaching a settlement on Cyprus. Otherwise, he did not see any prospect of a solution, as the Turks would not have any incentives to move in this direction. David Hannay adds that Turkey’s exclusion from Europe was grist to the mill of Denktas, who ‘was only too well aware that progress on Turkey’s EU candidature represented the greatest threat to his own domination of Turkey’s Cyprus policy and to holding that policy to a hard-line defense of the status quo’.43 On returning to the United States, Holbrooke made it clear in a statement that ‘the main obstacle to his making any progress was Denktas’, who, he said, ‘took a series of positions which amounted to making as preconditions for negotiations things which the negotiation was supposed to be about’. ‘You can’t negotiate’, Holbrooke concluded, ‘if the preconditions for negotiation are the outcome itself’.44 This was the last attempt by Holbrooke to break the deadlock and open the way to a comprehensive solution on Cyprus within the framework of the broader strategy he had launched in 1995. He would be called in again, in late 1998, to avert an armed confrontation stemming from the S-300 crisis, and he would play a substantive role in the preparation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1217 and 1218 (22 December 1998), which provided an outlet for the S-300 crisis. At the business-oriented meeting in Istanbul – he had already been appointed as US Representative at the UN – he would make the following comment on why he had left Cyprus: ‘I’m afraid the Cypriots themselves have abandoned the effort to solve the problem.’45 Ten months later,

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while the Presidential Envoy, Alfred Moses, and the Under-Secretary of State, Marc Grossman, were trying in vain to convince Denktas to come to resultoriented talks, a report in Milliyet had Holbrooke working behind the scenes to sideline Denktas.46

3.8. The United States behind the new mobility Holbrooke’s strategy continued to guide American foreign policy throughout Clinton’s presidency, with two personal initiatives from the President himself. The first was the initiative that led to the G847 decision on Cyprus in Bonn (June 1999). The G8 decision noted that ‘resolution of this problem would not only benefit the whole people of Cyprus but would also have a positive impact on peace and stability in the region’. It pointed out that ‘both parties to the dispute have legitimate concerns that can and must be addressed’. The significance of the decision lay in its call to the two sides to come to talks under the auspices of the UN Secretary General after they had committed themselves to the following four principles: • no preconditions; • all issues on the table; • commitment in good faith to continue to negotiate until a settlement is reached; • full consideration of UN resolutions and treaties.48 The incorporation of this decision in the text of Resolution 1250 of the UN Security Council only a few days later (29 June 1999) was indicative of the determination of the US government to push forward the solution process in Cyprus. It also showed that the American initiative was supported by all the permanent members of the UN Security Council including Russia and China. The G8 decision and Resolution 1250 also removed all obstacles in order to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. With the ‘no preconditions’, it removed the conditions put forward by Denktas. On the other hand, with the ‘all issues on the table’, it allowed Denktas to set out his demand for recognition and accordingly his new thesis on confederation, for which, in any case, there was absolutely no backing by UN resolutions. The second significant initiative by President Clinton was his visit to Istanbul and Athens in November 1999. One of the objectives of that visit was to get proximity talks between Clerides and Denktas started in New York on the basis of the G8 decision and Resolution 1250, during which the United States would work towards a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation.49 First priority, of course, was Turkey, which, Clinton reiterated in Athens, should be integrated in Europe

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in order to remain a secular, democratic state. He added, however, that this could not happen without Turkey having settled its problems with Greece. Speaking at a joint press conference with Premier Simitis following the conclusion of their talks, Clinton suggested that the Aegean dispute should be referred to The Hague, and pointed out that a solution on Cyprus was necessary for further progress in Greek–Turkish relations.50 Clinton had made these positions clear to the Turks in Istanbul before going to Athens, as well as in Washington during Ecevit’s visit there in September. He is said to have told Ecevit that he did not want to be rejected again and that ‘it was surely not in Turkey’s interest that any talks in November should be dominated by unresolved issues on Cyprus’.51 American diplomacy was carefully setting the stage for result-oriented talks on Cyprus while at the same time exerting its influence on the EU for a reversal of the Luxembourg decision on Turkey52 at the forthcoming European Council in Helsinki. It certainly fell to Simitis and Papandreou to safeguard, in Helsinki, alongside the acceptance of Turkey as candidate EU member, the unhindered accession of Cyprus regardless of whether the talks would end up with a solution or not. Clinton’s successor to the US presidency, George W. Bush (January 2001), may have heralded the loss of the cohesiveness and long-term vision of Holbrooke’s strategy. The messianic character that President Bush tried to imbue in American foreign policy, especially in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, gave US hegemony an uncritical, aggressive and arrogant face. Nevertheless, as far as Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus were concerned, the basic parameters of Holbrooke’s policy continued unchanged. Particularly during the critical period of submission and discussion of the Annan Plan, the cool relations between the United States and Turkey, as a result of Turkey’s stand during the war against Iraq, contributed to a relatively balanced stand regarding Cyprus, always within the framework of the policy laid down by Holbrooke. Furthermore, Holbrooke’s conviction that Denktas, as the main obstacle to progress, should be bypassed became the main axis of the UN Secretary General’s approach, particularly after The Hague. It certainly remained a central principle of the American policy of this period to require that Europe give Turkey a date for the commencement of accession talks despite full respect for the Helsinki balances regarding the obligation of Turkey to contribute towards a solution on Cyprus.

3.9. Assessment of US foreign policy An objective assessment of US foreign policy on Cyprus should be, a priori, free of ‘pro-Turkish’ or ‘pro-Greek’ or ‘pro-American’ connotations. It should also be free of ‘anti-imperialist’ syndromes as well as of moralistic criteria

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on what is ‘just’ and what is ‘unjust’. Such an assessment should focus on whether this policy, or certain aspects of this policy, has positively influenced, and, if so, to what extent, the prospects for a solution on Cyprus and Cyprus’s EU accession process. The findings of our research for the period under consideration (i.e. the 1990s) can with fairness warrant the general assessment that, for the first time since 1974, broader American foreign-policy planning served, one might say by default, the cause of Cyprus. As what is measured in politics is not the intention but the end result of political action, it has been considered, for the purpose of this research, to be beyond the present scope to study in depth the real intentions of the protagonists and, generally, the contributors to the formulation of American foreign policy during this period. According to the traditional approach to foreign policy, which is still valid in the State Department as well, foreign-policy objectives should serve only the interests of the country that exercises this policy. However, what should be observed in the case of Holbrooke’s strategy is its wide-range and longterm planning. Therefore, overall judgement of this strategy should wait until it comes full circle. Then it will be assessed as to the extent of its realization and the degree of confirmation of its predictions. A second element of Holbrooke’s strategy, connected with its long-term vision, is the sense that, in order to restore peace and stability for the foreseeable future in the explosive region for which it plans, it is not enough to serve exclusively the narrow interests of the superpower and, more significantly, in opposition to the interests of the countries affected. This long-term strategy takes into account the interests of all the parties involved and builds on common interests, blunting differences through compromise. Peace and stability, to be enduring, in the spirit of this strategy, have to go along with, or at least satisfy, to some degree, the sense of justice among the peoples involved. An elemental satisfaction of this sense of justice brings about a sense of balance, which, in the final analysis, is nothing else than a compromise between the absolute concept of justice and the size and might of the parties involved. In the light of the above analysis, and with the awareness that the pivotal role of Turkey has been one of the constants of US post-war foreign policy, we have arrived at the following general assessment. First, the aim of full and substantive integration of Turkey within the Western political system through its accession to the EU is inseparably linked to the normalization of its relations with Greece and a comprehensive solution of the Cyprus problem. Second, Cyprus’s solution parameters are filtered through realpolitik calculations – that is, an effort to balance the sense of justice with the political and strategic muscle of the parties involved as well as the multiple interests involved. The ability to put all the above together so as to avoid having final ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ will determine the measure of endurance of any solution.

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At first glance, it would be ominously depressing for Cyprus if one viewed its problem within the regional balance as an isolated dispute between Cyprus and Turkey. The interpolation of Greece and the EU in Holbrooke’s strategy substantially readjusts the balance without, however, reversing it; Simply because Turkey’s pivotal position for peace and stability and the safeguarding of energy routes is of the utmost concern and interest to the EU as well, not to mention the fact that it conducts large scale economic exchanges with Turkey. Consequently, the EU also approaches the Cyprus problem within the framework of its broader political planning, in which Turkey has always weighed much more than Cyprus, regardless of the status of Cyprus as an EU member state.

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Chapter 4

Changes in Turkey 4.1. The static conception of Turkey and the to the Referendum

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The reasoning behind the rejection of the Secretary General’s plan by President Papadopoulos and the parties and people that rallied around him was, in many respects, connected with a static conception of Turkey. According to this conception, the exercise of power in Turkey is absolutely and irrevocably controlled by an authoritarian military establishment, the ‘deep state’, which, functioning as the guarantor of unchangeable Kemalist principles and the security of the nation against external as well as internal enemies, had continued, since the annexation of Alexandretta, to behave in a piratical and expansionist manner against neighbouring countries whenever conditions allowed it. It was this conception, of which the people of Cyprus had a traumatic experience in 1974, that Tassos Papadopoulos used to sow the feeling of fear and insecurity among the people to effect the belief that Turkey, by behaving in an unchangeable piratical manner, would never stand by its commitments – that, in particular, Turkey would not allow the implementation of those stipulations of the Annan Plan that provided for phased withdrawal from readjusted territory and for the phased return of refugees to lands that would be allocated to the Turkish Cypriot constituent state. This was the meaning of the reference in the President’s televised message of 7 April 2004 to the effect that ‘we just buy hope in return for the Turkish side’s goodwill to stand by the agreement [. . .]with no guarantee that this will be implemented’. However, it should first be pointed out that the most secure guarantee of the implementation of the plan would be the incomparably greater interests Turkey would risk in the event that it did not stand by its obligations in Cyprus. A second point is the fact that the Turkey of 2004 was not the Turkey of the 1970s or the 1980s. Not only is the military-controlled Kemalist establishment no longer unanimous; it is no longer the only centre of power in the country. New centres of power have grown up, from among the Turkish

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people, that question the authority of the ‘deep state’ and create new balances in the country’s social and political structure. These changes, in their turn, lead irrevocably to a readjustment of the country’s foreign policy so as to address the new problems arising both from within and from the outside environment. The landslide victory of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) (the Justice and Development Party) at the elections of 3 November 2002 and, a few months later, the rise to the premiership of the Party’s leader, Recep Dayyip Erdogan, did not come out of the blue for those who studied internal developments in Turkey. It was the result of an autonomous social transformation that developed in many respects outside the value system of Kemalism and in opposition to the Kemalist power mechanism. The social transformation process in Turkey covers a field much broader and much more complex than that of an Islamic movement. It has significant economic parameters relating to bourgeois features and bourgeois reactions in the Turkish society. It has ideological and cultural parameters relating to the spread of education. Furthermore, certain aspects of it relate to globalization and to the information society. The understanding of this internal transformation of Turkish society is a prerequisite for an understanding of present-day Turkey. The study of the internal processes as well as of the driving forces of this transformation is necessary both for a reliable assessment of the present situation and for equally reliable predictions and realistic scenarios as to future developments in the country.

4.2. From the Ottoman Empire to the Kemalist state: nationalism, Pan-Turkism, expansionism The establishment of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal in 1923 was the culminating point of an internal process within the Ottoman state condensed in this penetrating remark of Ziya Gokalp1: ‘What this state needs is a nation.’2 The principle underlying this remark was the issue at stake at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Ottoman state. It was one of the fundamentals of European nationalism that, in its German version as regards the method of implementation, was transplanted to the urban intelligentsia and to a considerable number of young army officers stationed in the European territories of the Ottoman Empire.3 The abolition of the Sultanate and Caliphate by Mustafa Kemal constituted a profound break with the Ottoman past. However, at the same time it represented a continuity of that past, in the sense that in the place of the ‘holy Muslim community’ the Kemalist state put the ‘national Turkish community’. The relation of the latter to the state is in many respects akin to the relation

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of the ‘holy Muslim community’ to the Caliph. Apart from this, the army, whose prestige had been severely damaged as a result of the defeats during the Balkan wars and the First World War, was re-established to the central role it had had in the heyday of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, the army became the sole and undisputed guarantor of the security and continuity of the national and, henceforth, secular Turkish state. In the same way, the Yeniceri tradition wanted the army to be the main driving force in the creation of the Empire and its main pole of support, above the people, even above the government bureaucracy.4 Nationalism and Westernization, through a rationalist process completely separate from religion, constituted the mainstream ideology of the Kemalist state. This ideology, to be known as Kemalism after its founder, became the ‘holy national canon’ of the Turkish state.5 Kemalist nationalism, at least as long as Atatürk lived, broke away from, and discarded, all irredentist Pan-Turkist elements. Pan-Turkism had emerged among the Turkic populations of Russia around the Crimea as a reaction to Pan-Slavism, during the last years of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth centuries. It was a strongly irredentist ideology functioning under the banner of the union of all Turkic peoples with the Ottoman Empire. It was an elite movement of intellectuals who saw in the Turkish language, literature and those cultural elements that ‘documented’ the existence of a ‘Turkish nation’ the means of promoting Pan-Turkist ideology.6 Under the repressive measures of the Tsar, Pan-Turkist activists and writers found refuge in Istanbul, where the atmosphere of the Young Turk Revolution (1908) was receptive of their ideas. They rallied themselves round the Young Turk Movement, engrafted Young Turk nationalism with their ideas and set the theoretical background of the extreme forms that Turkish nationalism assumed in the hands of the Young Turks. During the First World War, Pan-Turkism became the official policy of the Young Turk regime, which aimed, first and foremost, to turkify the Ottoman Empire7 and, second, to achieve ‘the destruction of our Muscovite enemy in order to obtain thereby a natural frontier to our Empire which should include and unite all branches of our race’.8 The instability created by the Second World War revitalized Pan-Turkist irredentism in the ranks of the Kemalist ruling elite. Though officially rejected, it had never been eradicated. ‘Regardless of whether, owing to political considerations, Pan-Turkism had been rejected by Kemalist nationalism,’ Niyazi Kizilyurek notes, ‘it had always been underlying Kemalist propositions relating to history and culture’. ‘And whenever conditions allowed it,’ Kizilyurek adds, ‘Pan-Turkism managed to re-emerge with either the official or the unofficial support of the state’.9 Consequently, in the wake of the attack of Germany on the Soviet Union, intense Pan-Turkist propaganda appeared in Turkish papers and magazines, while the Turkish government entered into secret contacts

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with Germany with the aim of incorporating the Turkic populations of the Soviet Union into the Turkish Republic. During the same period, in parallel secret contacts with Britain, the Turks went beyond the limits of irredentism by demanding territorial expansion in the Aegean and Western Thrace to the west and in Iraq, Syria and Cyprus to the east.10 With the end of the war and the stabilization of the status quo with regard to the Turkic populations of the Soviet Union, Pan-Turkist ambitions in this direction gradually faded away. However, the internationalization of the Cyprus question in the 1950s, which aimed at union with Greece, sparked new life in Pan-Turkist ideology in Turkey, which, intermingled with expansionist nationalism, aimed first at Cyprus and Western Thrace and later at southern Bulgarian territory, where there was a populous Turkish minority. The establishment of the Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (MHP) (Nationalist Action Party) by Alparslan Turkes (1969) was an expression of an extreme form of this movement. With the presence of the MHP, Pan-Turkism became integrated with the extreme rightist nationalist rhetoric. It lost its irredentist aspirations in Asia and, at the same time, the dominant position it had assumed in Turkish politics during periods of international or regional instability and flux.11 Pan-Turkist indifference to Turkey’s internal social and economic problems, on the one hand, and, on the other, the obvious failure of Kemalist nationalism to solve chronic problems in this connection, have been decisive factors in the decline first of Pan-Turkism and recently of Kemalism itself as expressed by the military–bureaucratic establishment. Furthermore, the orientation of the country towards Europe and the internal social change, which make more and more people focus on problems that influence their individual daily life, have left only marginal political space for Pan-Turkism. For objective reasons as well, the establishment of independent states in the place of the once Turkic Soviet Republics deprived Pan-Turkism of its irredentist objectives, leaving it only one choice – that of inter-state cooperation on equal terms. In this perspective, Ozal invested substantial effort, which, however, did not give the expected returns.12 As the solutions to the problems of presentday Turkey are beyond and outside the capabilities of state and militarycentred nationalism, new outlets are being sought at the level of both the people and the emerging entrepreneurs and intellectuals. The establishment is certainly resisting, and there will certainly be intense resistance by the military establishment in particular, as the army, being in control of substantial economic resources,14 constitutes a major part of the problem. Nonetheless, the direction in which things have been moving since the mid-1990s points to a new state of affairs, a new synthesis, which is still in the process of being formulated.

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4.3. Islam: in search of identity The extreme form of positivism and rationalism in the Kemalist programme of Westernization and its undisguised anti-Islamic, anti-religious vision might be regarded as a hybrid loan, in some respect, of the European materialist spirit of the early twentieth century (Marxism, Darwinism, Freudism and Behaviourism). However, such a programme, as well as its theoretical background, were completely alien to the idiosyncratic Islamic–Ottoman cultural tradition of the Turkish society. Consequently, ‘the secularist, state-centered elite failed to penetrate the traditional society and it also failed to develop an alternative value system and create a new social web in the rural population of the country’.14 The abolition of the caliphate and the positivist handling of religion through the Directorate of Religious Affairs, the closing of the traditional religious seminaries in favour of a unified educational system, the banning of Sufi orders and the prohibition of the fez and the veil (1923–5), the adoption of European criminal, civil and commercial codes (1926), the replacement of Arabic script with Latin, and the removal of Islam from its status as state religion (1928), the emancipation of women (1926, 1930, 1934), the introduction of secularism as a constitutional principle (1937) and the prohibition of all religious societies or parties or sects (1938) were positively targeted at modernization. However, they had a parallel, negative goal of neutralizing the influence of Islamic culture and weakening tradition.15 Since its inception, the Kemalist state has perceived the grass roots of the Turkish society as the main threat to its security, as it has seen in them the main obstacle to the implementation of its reform programme. The fact that it defines politics merely as a means of implementing a ‘common good’ decided from above in a disciplined, homogeneous, secular, national state is in itself an intrinsically undemocratic feature. This vision has had far-reaching consequences in the development of the Kemalist state into an authoritarian power mechanism that: • impedes public debate for the formulation of a social contract by insisting on imposing, by all means, its own concept of the ‘ideal society’; • does not tolerate the expression of deviant identities or ways of life in the public sphere; • uses politics merely as a matter of management for imposing predetermined Kemalist objectives; • limits the possibility of participation solely to those who share Kemalist objectives; it proscribes those who do not keep in line with Kemalist ideals as reactionaries and enemies of rationalism, and excludes them from the public sphere;

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The Cyprus Referendum • and finally, by placing the army at the top of the pyramid, gives it carte blanche to oversee and supervise the public sphere and punish those who deviate from the Kemalist precepts.16

As the Kemalist state ‘moved to penetrate every aspect of social life [. . .] it helped to turn peripheral groupings [. . .] into centers of resistance and alternative sources of meaning’. The militant nation-building secularism led to new social cleavages such as Turkish vs Kurdish, State vs Society, Sunni vs Alevi. The ethnoreligious rebellions of the Kurds against the secularist nationalist reforms led them gradually to national self-consciousness, resulting in a lasting hostility between the state, on the one hand, and the Kurds and the religious Islamic movements, on the other.17 To the extent that the Republican elite considered participatory political activity as a potential threat to the state, society viewed politics as an arena of the ruling elite and sought apolitical cultural outlets to challenge radical Kemalist secularism. As long as the state intensified its hostility towards religion and the effort to impose the Kemalist value system on every aspect of social and political life, ‘societal groups that did not share in the political and economic benefits reaped by the new elite saw Islam as an ideology they could use to challenge the Kemalist state’. And, as Islam was deeply rooted in all layers of social life, ‘it was more conducive to mass mobilization than either a constructed ethnic nationalism or socialism’.18 The removal of Islam from the public domain turned segments of society to an inward religious spirituality through which they sought a renewed concept of identity, at the individual, the communal and the national levels, in such a way as to integrate the new concept of the national state with the cultural and religious tradition as well as with the deeper spiritual life of the Turkish people. Therefore, the intellectual origins of what is, in many respects, the unique phenomenon of the Turkish Islamic Movement should be sought in the need to fill the psychological vacuum created by Kemalism and to construct a new identity of which Islam would be the ‘cement’ that would hold the various new elements together in a solid comprehensive whole.19 At the time of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Sufi and Naksibendi orders were the main schools of Islamic thought in Turkey. The Naksibendi tradition, placed within the Sufi tradition, goes back to the fifteenth century in central Asia and India. The inner core of its ideas related to internal purification through self-control and a reformist trend of reading the Qur’an ‘with the eyes of the heart’. As a crystallized value system ‘inwardly focused on God whilst outwardly taking an active part in the life of the community’, the Naksibendi movement spread throughout the territories of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century.20 The ban on the Sufi orders by the Turkish Republic led the Naksibendi to

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repeated rebellions, many of which assumed the character of Kurdish national rebellions, and all of which were ruthlessly suppressed by the Kemalist army. Under circumstances of persecution, the Sufi movement turned to an esoteric religious life while restructuring spirituality within the confines of the family and the neighbourhood.21 With the preaching of two successive charismatic Naksibendi leaders, Mehmet Zahid Kotku (1897–1980) and Esat Cosan (1938–2001), particularly after 1950 when the grip on Islam was eased, believers were encouraged towards enterprising activity that would liberate them from being dependent on state authorities.22 Further encouragement in the direction of technology, education and the media created an Islamic model that could peacefully coexist with Western culture.23 Around such charismatic intellectuals, there have developed autonomous Islamic and professional networks that function rather as currents within civil society than centralized disciplined organizations.24 In general, Islamic movements in Turkey, given their loose decentralized structure, are open to dialogue with secular ideas while they do not endorse the notions of ‘Islamic revolution’ or of ‘Islamic state’. Furthermore, there is only marginal appeal of notions or tendencies towards the implementation of Islamic Law, in the Turkish Islamic movement as a whole.25 From within the Naksibendi movement there emerged a separate Islamic current, the Nur movement, named after its founder, Said Nursi (1876–1960). Nursi focused his teaching on rejuvenating Islam through reconciling faith with reason. Disappointed with Young Turk absolutism and with Kemalist hostility towards Islam (he had successively supported both the Young Turks and Mustafa Kemal), he withdrew into contemplation while living the rest of his life either in prison or in exile or isolation in remote Anatolian areas. An ardent student of the Naksibendi tradition, he was quick to realize that Kemalist reforms meant divorce from the Islamic tradition. Personal conditions as well as inclination and personal choice led him to a form of written essay-type teachings, which, including in particular the Epistles of Light, were copied and distributed by his disciples. The ‘textual communities’ that were formed to study and discuss Nursi’s writings spread throughout the country after his death when the Kemalist grip was loosened.26 The textual dissemination of Islamic ideas, which soon recruited magazines, newspapers and electronic media, constitutes a profound turning-away from the narrow mimicking of the ulema to a more complex, critical notion of Islam. Both the Naksibendi and the Nurcu communities (communities of Nursi adherents) exerted systematic effort to rejuvenate Islam by reconciling it with science. The dialectic that has developed in both written and electronic media as well as in the debating circles appeals to the individual, the personality of which it tries to protect from the disastrous influence of state materialist positivism, by sharpening religious consciousness and creating an inner

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space of self-development through faith.27 The Turkish Islamic movement, which consists of largely autonomous, loosely connected groupings rather than being a centrally organized body, has never had a centralized hierarchical structure, in spite of the fact that members of the various Islamic orders always maintain strong bonds of solidarity among themselves. This peculiarity has protected the movement from dogmatic stereotypes while allowing horizontal circulation and rejuvenation of ideas. The bonds of trust and solidarity among the members, the ideal of work and entrepreneurial activity outside the etatism of the ruling elite, generated a phenomenon in many respects parallel to Max Weber’s ‘Protestant ethic’.28 The dense network of small and medium-size enterprises known as the ‘Anatolian Tigers’ are, in most cases, controlled by Islamist entrepreneurs who, in order to protect their interests, have set up MUSIAD (Mustakil Sanayici ve Isadamlari Dernegi [Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association]) as opposed to the establishment of the big capitalists of TUSIAD (Turk Isadamlari ve Sanayiciler Dernegi [Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association]), who have always been favoured by state protectionism.29 The vitality of these businessmen, whose engagement ranges from productive industrial units, to education, publishing and mass media, is further indicated by the fact that they have, since the early 1990s, been playing an active role, along with Islamic movements, in financing hundreds of religious schools (imam hatip), even colleges and universities, students’ dormitories, preparatory schools for entrance to university, children’s holiday camps and a whole network of social solidarity institutions aimed at strengthening social cohesiveness.30

4.4. Turgut Ozal: liberalization of the economy, Turkish–Islamic synthesis In 1914, business capital constituted only 10 per cent of the GNP of the Ottoman Empire, of which the minorities had the biggest share, half of it being in the hands of the Greeks. At the Economic Congress in Ismir (1923), the Turkish businessmen of Istanbul and the big landowners of Anatolia allied themselves to take over Greek and Armenian businesses and lands respectively, blocking any attempt at raising the agrarian question.31 The 1930 crisis in the economic centres of the West and the fact that this crisis did not touch the Soviet Union, with which Turkey had close relations, made the Kemalist regime move along the path of the Soviet model. By undertaking central economic planning, and establishing the direction and finance in most economic fields with Soviet help, the Republican elite, already familiar with the Kemalist notion of etatism, set up a peculiar system of state economy

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that came to be known as ‘state capitalism’.32 State capitalism has been the official policy of the governments of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP)). This situation remained unchanged even when, during the last tenure of Bulent Ecevit (1978–9) as leader of that party, state enterprises constituted the greatest liability in the Turkish economy and one of the most important causes of Turkey’s endemic economic crisis.33 Another survey carried out by The Economist in 1991, when Ozal’s liberalization policy had already changed the balance of industrial production, showed state enterprises as controlling 40 per cent of Turkey’s GNP, absorbing 75 per cent of the state budget deficit, while only 30 per cent of these were profitable, these being mainly monopolies.34 An additional cause of economic crisis was the failure of the Kemalist elite to transform the semi-feudal social and economic structure of the Ottoman Empire, which still today remains almost intact in rural Turkey and particularly in the Eastern provinces.35 The mechanization of agriculture, while benefiting the big landowners, further aggravated the conditions of smallholders, whom it pushed to migrate to the shanty towns (gecekondu) of the big cities to live in utter poverty, without even basic state care.36 The indifference or inability of the Republican bureaucratic elite to cope with the extreme poverty of the lower social strata, along with the democratic reformations of the 1961 constitution, led to the rise of a militant left-wing movement in the urban centres. However, it was drastically suppressed by the second military coup of 1971, which was staged supposedly to protect the state from the ‘threat’ of the labour-movement-led mass strikes and mobilizations.37 Nevertheless, the deepening social crisis intensified the struggle of left-wing labour and radical political movements. As a counter reaction, there emerged violent ultra-right organizations, which, led mainly by the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (MHP)) of Alparslan Turkes, launched a violent campaign against the left under the cover of the ‘deep state’. The escalation of political violence, which created conditions of civil war in 1979 and 1980, led to the third military coup of 1980.38 Turgut Ozal now came to the fore as Finance Minister of the military government. From this position until 1983, and subsequently as Prime Minister (1983–9), and as President (1989–93), Ozal would exercise a catalytic influence in the process of a slow but stable internal transformation of Turkey. The contribution of Ozal, who might be considered to be the first politician who attempted to revise Kemalism,39 is focused on two main fields: the liberalization of the economy and the ‘Turkish–Islamic synthesis’. The rise of Turgut Ozal to power, not as a ‘vassal king’ of the Kemalist power structure but as the leader of the largely autonomous Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi (ANAP)),40 constitutes, at the symbolic level, the first substantive break with Kemalist tradition. The commencement of Ozal’s premiership

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coincided with the first serious symptoms of the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe (Poland) and the domination of Thatcherism–Reaganism in the West. At the same time, the Turkish economy started to feel the consequences of globalization on bureaucratic state enterprises unreceptive to adaptation and change. Through a series of measures within the framework of a comprehensive strategy that linked foreign policy and exports, Ozal encouraged the creation of private, adaptive, small and medium-size, productive, export-oriented enterprises.41 The first to take the message on board and dynamically grasp the new opportunities were Islamist entrepreneurs, who, mobilized by the spirit of the ‘Protestant ethic’, would soon emerge as the ‘Anatolian tigers’.42 As a result, the growth of the private sector of the economy, helped by political coincidence (the Persian–Iraqi war, the gas treaty with the Soviet Union), reversed the balance by establishing market economy as a dynamic factor of Turkey’s economic growth. The rapid development of a bourgeois class of entrepreneurs, outside the guardianship of or dependence on the Kemalist ruling establishment, would be instrumental for a change in the balance of power and would be a decisive factor generated from within the country in pushing the Turkish political system towards modernization and democratization.43 Ozal held close personal and family relations with the Naksibendis44 and, as Prime Minister, developed close cooperation with the rejuvenator of the Nur movement, Fethullah Gulen.45 The opening towards Islam – albeit not to the Islamic movement – had been initiated by the junta of Evren for different reasons. First, following the example of the Generals in the 1971 coup, they calculated that they might use Islam as a counter ideology to the left-wing movement, which they similarly marked out as the major threat against the security of the state. Their move in this direction was also determined by the observation that most activists among the Kurds and the Alevis had been in close contact with Marxist organizations and movements in carrying out leftist political violence. Secondly, they believed that they might use Islam to broaden the social basis of the military government (Evren himself, being the son of an imam, showed personal interest). Thirdly, they realized that Kemalist positivism could not, as a state ideology, legitimize the state in the eyes of the people. Through such a state-centred vision and with the contribution of conservative scholars who were members of the ‘Intellectual’s Hearth Association’, they constructed the ‘Turkish–Islamic synthesis’46 as a new ideology that considered Islam to be compatible with Kemalism. As a source of a Turkish national culture differentiated from other Islamic cultures, a domesticated and state-directed faith in Islam would have acted, on the one hand, as a counterweight to Marxist positivist ideas, and, on the other, as the ‘cement’ of national unity, the three main pillars of which would have been from then onwards the army, the family and Islam.

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However, in spite of incorporating this strategy into the 1982 constitution and assigning to the state responsibility for national and religious education, they did not manage to achieve one particular additional objective, which they had long had in mind – the subjugation of the anti-Kemalist Islamic movement and particularly political Islam. As the Generals’ Turkish–Islamic synthesis did not take into account the multicultural character of Turkish society, it caused reaction among both the Kurds and the Alevis in addition to that of the anti-Kemalist Islamists, and even of orthodox Kemalists, who saw the secular character of the state being undermined.47 En route, the Turkish–Islamic synthesis found its real exponent in Ozal. Making use of his close family connections with the Naksibendis, Ozal managed to win over the massive support of the Islamic movement to the party he had established, which the Generals had the imprudence to show that they did not favour.48 As a result, Ozal managed, for the first time after long years in Turkish politics, to set up a majority government. The close personal relationship he established with Fethullah Gulen, a leading figure in the Nur movement, brought almost the whole spectrum of the Islamic movement, for the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic, into a relation of trust in the government. ‘The ideology of the Turkish–Islamic synthesis’, Sia Anagnostopoulou notes, ‘is the basis in some respect for the consolidation of peace between the nation and the state’.49 The sense of national unity achieved by Ozal and the reconnection with the Ottoman past gave a new impetus to Turkish nationalism, vaccinating it with a grand neo-Ottoman vision that carried along the Islamic movement as well.50 However, the mobility brought about in Turkish society by the emergence of private enterprise in industrial production and trade, as well as in the fields of education and the media, promoted in the upward moving strata of the Islamic movement those urban characteristics that further increased the need for democratization of the political system. It is from this point of view that one should see the fundamental conflict between urbanized social and political Islam and the military–bureaucratic Kemalist establishment, which would take an extreme form during the 1990s, only four years after the death of Ozal. Particularly, as the rise of Mesut Yilmaz to the leadership of ANAP in opposition to the ‘Holy Alliance’ (1991)51 alienated the Party from Islamic support, politically organized Islam in the ranks of Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party (Refah Partisi (RP)) managed to incorporate urbanized Islam, whereupon it dramatically overturned the balance of power in Turkish society.52 This overturning, along with the precipitation of changes engineered by Turkey’s European bid, turned ‘the institutional escape from Kemalism’ into a realistic perspective and opens debate on a ‘second Republic’.53

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4.5. Political Islam: the Islamic Party Against the background of an expanded political field in the 1960s, Islamic currents sought their own political expression. They found it, in 1970, in the National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi (MNP)) of Necmettin Erbakan. In its inaugurating declaration, the new party considered imitative Westernization and the severance from the Ottoman Islamic tradition as the basic cause of Turkey’s inability to form a new national identity. The new party was banned by the military leadership of the 1971 coup on the grounds that ‘it was after overturning the state secular principles and establishing an Islamic order in place of the Kemalist system’,54 and Erbakan escaped to Switzerland to avoid arrest. However, soon after, the Generals had second thoughts – first, because the persecution of Erbakan made him a hero in the eyes of large segments of the population, and second, because they calculated that they might use Islam as a counterweight to leftist activism. In the light of this reasoning, they privately encouraged friends of Erbakan to establish a party. As a result, the National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi (MSP)) was established in October 1972, its first President being Suleyman Arif Emre, a member of the Naksibendi orders. As for Erbakan, having returned to Turkey, he became President of the MSP following the 1973 elections, at which the Party polled 11.8 per cent and won forty-eight seats in the Grand National Assembly. The rural areas of southern and eastern Turkey and the gecekondus of the big cities emerged as the main strongholds of the Party. The political agenda of Erbakan, an exponent of a conservative mainly nationalist section of the Islamic movement, converged, in the field of nationalism, with the agenda of the CHP. On the basis of this common agenda, the two parties set up a coalition government in January 1974 with Bulent Ecevit as Prime Minister and Erbakan as Vice Chairman of the government. In the aftermath of the invasion of Cyprus (July–August 1974), antagonism over the spoils of the victory led the coalition to an end. Erbakan participated as Vice Chairman in the new coalition government with Suleyman Demirel, leader of the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi (AP)). To demonstrate the emphasis he gave to industry and technology, Erbakan held, for his party, ministries relating to this field of development, as he had done in the previous coalition. The participation of the party in two successive governments and its failure to fulfil promises it had made cost it a decline in its electoral power to 8.6 per cent in the elections of 1977. An additional factor was the transfer of nationalist popular support to Turkes’s MHP for its radical strategies against Kurdish insurgents and Alevi leftist activists.55 Erbakan returned to the political arena in 1987, after the ban imposed by the 1980 regime had been lifted, but the contest of the elections with his new Welfare Party (Refah Partisi

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(RP), gave him poor results because substantial segments of the Islamic movement continued their support of Premier Ozal’s ANAP Party. The march to power started with the elections of 1991, when Ozal’s succession by Yilmaz had alienated the ANAP from Islamic support. The emergence of a new generation of Party cadres, most prominent among them being Abdullah Gul and Tayyip Erdogan, created the core of a new modernizing trend, which expanded the political horizons of the Party. The RP, unlike its predecessors, the MNP and MSP, was no longer restricted to being the party of ‘the needy and the little man’. As Gul put it in 1994, when he was Vice Chairman of the Party, the RP was the only representative of the ‘deeper Turkey’, which he defined as ‘a dynamic idea of creating an honorable and powerful Turkey by linking the Anatolian bourgeoisie, Sufi orders, neighborhood associations, and foundations’.56 A wide range of media controlled by Islamist entrepreneurs, ranging from periodicals and national newspapers to radio and television stations, participated in disseminating the RP’s political and ideological messages. However, what distinguished it from the parties of the Kemalist establishment was the crowd of organized activists who went round the houses in their neighbourhood, got to know the voters personally, and looked into their problems through an extensive network of social care and protection, controlled either directly by the Party or by collective bodies of the Islamic movement. An additional element, which particularly characterized the RP, was the hundreds of thousands of dedicated women activists, who took its message to all corners of the country. The landslide victory of the RP in the 1994 local elections, in which it elected mayors in twenty-nine large cities, among them Ankara and Istanbul with Tayyip Erdogan, was the prelude to the surprise of the 1995 general elections, from which it emerged as the largest party with 21.45 per cent and 158 seats in the National Assembly. It was a turning point in the history of Republican Turkey as regards the search for a new framework of relations between state and society as well as the formulation of a new national identity. Newspaper headlines, such as ‘The other Turkey wins the election’ or ‘The Black Turks vs the White Turks’,57 were indicative of the deep division among Turkish society as well as of the image of political Islam rallying round the RP. The factors that contributed to the change in the political landscape might be summarized as follows. First was the atmosphere of free expression of Islamic currents generated by the ‘Turkish-Islamic synthesis’. Though the aim of its architects was the integration of a ‘domesticated’ and controlled ‘soft Islam’58 with the state, following the demise of Ozal the situation escaped state control, and the Islamic movement as a whole rallied round the RP. Second came the growth of ‘personal Islam’, an ‘inner Islam’, which ‘filled the spiritual void in the lives of many relatively educated and well-to-do Turks,

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who sought something beyond the verities of Kemalist positivism’.59 Third were Ozal’s measures of political and economic liberalization, one result of which was the emergence of the bourgeois class of Anatolian entrepreneurs. The vast majority of these businessmen, being members of the Islamic movement, rallied round the new Independent Chamber of Commerce and Industry, MUSIAD, which saw its interests being identified with the shrinking of statecontrolled economy and the growth of a liberal market economy. A fourth factor in the RP’s success should be seen in the vitality and flexibility of its organizational structure, which allowed it direct contact with the electoral body and direct transmission of its political and ideological message of ‘identity’ and ‘justice’.60 The corruption of the traditional parties of the ruling establishment and their petty quarrels contrasted sharply with the comparatively honest and efficient management of RP mayors along with the substantial improvement of the social services in their municipalities. Alkis Kourkoulas, writing about the situation in Turkey in the aftermath of the Imia crisis, described the RP as ‘a dynamic political movement which endeavours to think about and cope with Turkey’s problems outside the framework of the orthodoxy of the military controlled establishment’, as ‘the only party that questions the authority and the precedence of the state and gives priority to the society’, as ‘a channel of expression of civil society’.61 The state’s complete indifference to the plight of the people in relation to human rights, as well as to social care and opportunities for social mobility, gradually oriented the aspirations of large segments of Turkish society to the only party that was positioned at the opposite side of the oppressive ruling establishment and the Kemalist materialist positivism. An opinion poll carried out by ARAS on what mobilized people on behalf of the RP gives the following revealing answers: (1) The Party is open to every citizen; (2) It sincerely wants to solve problems if it comes to power; (3) Its local party leaderships are accessible to the citizen whom they treat responsibly regardless of his/her social status; (4) The Party respects local conventional values and the Turkish-Islamic tradition; (5) On being questioned, 73 per cent of men and 61 per cent of women replied that the RP’s platform had nothing to do with implementing Islamic Law. Only 15 per cent said that, if it came to power, it would implement an Islamic criminal code.62 On the basis of the above assumptions, RP’s victories might be attributed to its ability to articulate a communicative speech on the social and economic problems and exercise political practices compatible with the citizens’ sense of justice. The emphasis of its political message on the notion of justice, the ‘Just Order’, which meant pluralism, democracy, free market and individual responsibility, satisfied the people’s sense of justice. M. Hakan Yavuz groups the RP’s supporters into four categories: Islamist intellectuals, who demanded freedom of expression; Sunni Kurds, who sought

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either autonomy or recognition of their ethnic entity; the gecekondu dwellers, who demanded social justice; and the new bourgeoisie, who wanted a liberal market economy.63 Yavuz also points out that the upgrading of women’s role and their emergence in the public sphere as Party cadres exercised profound influence in increasing the Party’s power as well as in broadening democracy within the Party.64 The victories of the RP signalled the end of the monopoly of power by the Kemalist state-centred elite, which could no longer express a national consensus as to the orientation of the country – and which was not willing to accept alternation of power or at least the participation of ‘the other Turkey’ in the country’s management. The coalition government of Yilmaz and Ciller, which was enforced by the Generals, would survive only a few months and would be unable to erase the memory of Ciller’s corruption scandals or her irresponsible warmonger handling of the Imia crisis. Having no other option, the Kemalist establishment would be forced, for the first time since the establishment of the Republic, to accept as Prime Minister the leader of a party that was openly after a new synthesis of Turkish identity, outside the framework defined by the Kemalist state ideology. Erbakan’s premiership lasted only one year (28 June 1996–17 June 1997), to be toppled by the National Security Council in what came to be known as the ‘soft coup’ of 28 February 1997. Having realized the impossibility of an open coup along the lines of previous ones, the Generals found a ‘constitutional’ outlet in an indirect coup by forcing Erbakan to resign. On 28 February 1997 they declared the Islamic movement to be the number one threat against the security of the state and drew up a list of eighteen ‘directives’ to the Erbakan government with an order for immediate implementation. This time the threat was not only the ‘reactionary’ Islam. It now arose from the existence of the civil society itself, members of which were engaged in a wide range of activities in the economic field, in education and culture, in the media and in politics relating to the Islamic movement. Through horizontal communication and opportunities for employment and entrepreneurial activity, these social groupings developed, breaking the monopoly of the Kemalist establishment in the control of economic resources as well as in the field of ideas. Furthermore, pluralism in electronic media and electronic communication, in printed media and publishing activity, was putting an end to state monopoly in the production and diffusion of culture. With the aim of dissolving this network, the Generals on the National Security Council identified ‘19 newspapers, 20 television stations, 51 radio stations, 110 magazines, 800 schools, 1,200 student hostels, and 2,500 associations’ as being ‘part of reactionary political Islam’.65 In a climax of threats and direct interventions in government, they finally forced Erbakan to resign on 17 June 1997. In January 1998 the Constitutional

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Court, under Ahmet Necet Sezer, who was later to become President, outlawed the RP and banned Erbakan from political activity for five years on the charge of anti-secularism.

4.6. The politics of fear and the revolution of the AKP Following the 28 February 1997 coup, the National Security Council employed a political practice that was pointedly called ‘the politics of fear’.66 This practice constituted a relentless persecution and penalization of every action or opinion that could be interpreted as undermining the Kemalist principles and consequently threatening the security of the state. It was a policy emanating from an autocratic, state-centred notion according to which society exists to serve the state, and not vice versa. This notion, deeply rooted in the theocratic Ottoman past, constituted a fundamental principle of the Kemalist value system as this was built by Atatürk’s successors. With this notion in mind, one might explain the inherent inability of the Kemalist establishment to internalize two basic aspects of modernity: democracy and – a precondition for the proper functioning of democracy – an autonomous civil society.67 Acting within the confines of the ‘politics of fear’, the Fazilet Partisi (FP) (Virtue Party), which succeeded the RP, tried its utmost to avoid provoking the wrath of the Generals, thus losing its vitality and energy. The consistent persecution of any presence of Islam in the public sphere and the politicization of the Kurdish question, which deepened the division in the eastern provinces, created a vacuum in the political space of the social moderate centre. The corruption and consequent decline of the right-of-centre parties (ANAP and Dogru Yol Partisi (DYP) (True Path Party)) further deepened the identity crisis of Turkish society, leaving the stage free to the return of nationalism. The elections of April 1999 institutionalized the ‘politics of fear’ by bringing to power, in a coalition government, the nationalist parties of the Demokratik Sol Partisi (DSP) (Democratic Left Party) of Bulent Ecevit and the MHP of Devlet Bahceli. Meantime, the continuing persecution of Islam made the intellectuals and the reformist wing of political Islam reconsider the role of these social forces within the given power system as well as their attitude towards Turkey’s European perspective. On the one hand, the judgement that religious freedom might be better protected with Turkey in the European Union than by the country’s constitution and, on the other, the increased influence of the emerging bourgeois social strata led to the acceptance of the European perspective as the only option if there were to be a curtailment of the Generals’ power and a proper functioning of democracy.68 This was the direction to be taken by the new Justice and Development Party (AKP), which was established by

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reformist elements of the Islamic movement under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in 2001, after the FP had been banned by the Constitutional Court. The European perspective caused inversely proportional reactions in the Kemalist camp, which, further to the war against ‘reactionary Islam’, intensified repressive measures against the Kurds, ignoring warnings by European centres about the dead-end policy of war against the Islamists and obsession with the assimilation of the Kurds by reppression.69 The nation-centred Kemalists in the military–bureaucratic establishment took up a position that was distinct from that of the Europe-oriented Kemalists, who linked Kemalism with Turkey’s European perspective.70 Furthermore, the Ecevit–Bahceli nationalist rhetoric strengthened the unrealistic opinion, even among the Europeoriented army officers, that Europe needed Turkey more than Turkey needed Europe, and that Turkey, as a regional power, might enter the EU on its own terms, without changing its power structure in the radical way demanded by European institutions.71 The landslide victory of the AKP in the elections of 3 November 2002 turned the political landscape upside down. Having got over the shock of the ‘politics of fear’, Turkish society sought a new social contract based on the fundamental values of justice, democracy and human rights. The charismatic leadership of Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the example of honest and efficient management he had given as Mayor of Istanbul, made it possible for him and his party to express social aspirations. The victory of the AKP, with 34.26 per cent and 363 seats in the National Assembly, addressed an additional social demand; the rehabilitation of the social centre, which the ‘politics of fear’ had dismantled. The victory of the AKP was not the result of a top-down organization of an electoral mechanism, nor of any support from the traditional centres of power. It was a grass-roots initiated change whereby civil society sought the expansion of the boundaries of the public domain and the transformation of political institutions into genuine representative instruments. Nor did the victory of the AKP constitute a turn towards any kind of Islamic fundamentalist notions. Extensive research carried out by public-opinion polls, in February 1999, and a comparison of its findings with those of similar previous polls showed a consistent orientation of the vast majority of the Turkish electoral body towards a secular form of government and clear rejection of an Islamic state.72 The victory of the AKP created a new centre of power invested with the mission of redrawing the boundaries between state and society and setting up a state as servant of the people rather than an autocratic master acting as a guardian of the people. The new social middle ground that the AKP constitutes fulfils most of the prerequisites for a new Turkish–Islamic synthesis in harmony with European notions of democracy and human rights. It is in many

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respects qualified to construct a new vision of a moderate nationalism, compatible with the European spirit. As nationalism in the AKP emanates from the people and not from the state, the Party leadership has all the capabilities, within the framework of a continuously expanding democracy, to direct this nationalism towards creating a strong society rather than a strong nationally cleansed, linguistically defined, mono-cultural state. The pluralism and the multi-centred structure of the Islamic movement, coupled with its connection with economic and political liberalism, may exert decisive influence in the direction of democratization and modernization of the Turkish political system. But this is only provided that there is a convergence of other developments, mainly a stable European passage for Turkey, which will set in motion the gradual settlement of Turkish–Greek disputes and the Cyprus problem, and also a dialectic approach to the Kurdish question. A move in this direction would have profound effects in drastically confining the role of the military, thus setting the foundations of a working democracy. At a time when foreign policy, having lost its autonomy, has become irrevocably linked with internal and economic developments, a step forward in one of the above parameters – that is, internal reform, European perspective, Turkish–Greek relations, Cyprus and Kurdish questions – would have a ‘spillover effect’ of positive developments in other areas. ‘Islam claims today to be an agent in the modernization of society; it also claims to politically express civil society. This adaptation of Islam to the exigencies of modern life in Turkey constitutes one of the most important parameters in the arduous course of Turkish society towards modernity.’73

4.7. The Cyprus question: how it has affected Turkish foreign policy and internal affairs There have already been references to Turkey’s attempts to regain Cyprus within the framework of its Pan-Turkist designs during the Second World War.74 There has also been an analysis of the ‘pre-emptive defence’ that Turkey applied during the 1950s in order to prevent union of Cyprus with Greece, thus forestalling the danger of a Greek grip, as it saw it, on its Mediterranean coasts.75 The resurgence of Pan-Turkism during the Second World War and the reappearance, during the 1940s and 1950s, of tens of Pan-Turkist periodicals and organizations,76 with Cyprus as one of their ‘pet issues’,77 had created, in the first place, a popular feeling that was ready to accept and internalize irredentist messages and, in the second place, a wide network for the diffusion of the message throughout the country and the climaxing of an emotionally

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charged atmosphere. As a result, the internationalization of the Cyprus problem in the 1950s with the demand for union with Greece found fertile ground in Turkey for nationalist popular reaction. Further encouraged by the Menderes government after the armed struggle had started in Cyprus in 1955, and in order to bring home to Greece Turkey’s determination to prevent enosis, this reaction culminated, during the Tripartite Conference in London, in the organized pogrom against the Greeks of Istanbul on 6 and 7 September 1955,78 which was the first act in the Cyprus drama.79 Particularly after 1974, says Sia Anagnostopoulou, ‘Cyprus becomes the main ground for the homogenization of ideologically divergent political claims of both the ultra-right or nationalist Islamist and the leftist anti-imperialist political forces in Turkey’. Anagnostopoulou further adds that the most profound element of these developments is the rise of Denktas to the status of a hero, or, otherwise, the ‘denktasization’ not only of the ultra-right and the Islamist anti-West forces but also of a substantial part of the Turkish leftist movement.80 Consequently, in a country where ‘the people exist to serve the state’ and where foreign policy is an exclusive field of a bureaucratic elite, the Cyprus question constitutes a ‘major exception’, being a foreign-policy issue capable of affecting domestic politics, an issue ‘on which there is a consensus that permeates the whole Turkish society’.81 The above comments, made by Philip Robins, were issued to explain the ‘war of the columnists’ against the first attempt by Ozal, in 1991–2, to reach a settlement.82 ‘If Turkey gave in on Cyprus,’ Soysal wrote, ‘other demands, the West’s “bagful of Orient problems”, such as the Aegean, the Armenian issue, and the Kurdish issue, would follow: the “spirit of Sèvres” can come back to haunt us and the turning point is the Cyprus issue’.83 Soysal was expressing unvarying political stands taken by the militarybureaucratic establishment, basic agents of which, like communicating vessels, were the Generals and the Foreign Ministry. However, Soysal was also expressing the conventional Turkish nationalism, which, particularly with regard to the Cyprus problem, had permeated Turkish society as a whole since the 1950s. So, when Cengiz Candar, known to be close to Ozal, defended the need for a successful outcome of the UN Secretary General’s initiative and attacked those who ‘were trying to move the goalposts just when the UN were close to a workable accord on the basis of a bi-zonal bi-communal federal settlement’,84 he was counting, on behalf of Ozal, on the reactions of the Generals and on public opinion as well. A profound factor in that ‘war of columnists’, in relation to Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, was the open criticism that Cengiz Candar directed against Denktas in replying to the latter’s accusations against the Turkish government for territorial concessions.85 It was the first time that Denktas’s ethnarchic role was

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questioned in Turkey. It was also the first time that a substantive difference on Cyprus manifested itself between the highest official of the Turkish state, President Ozal, and the traditional foreign-policy power centres, the Foreign Ministry and the Generals. Furthermore, it was the first time since 1974 that the highest Turkish echelons sent out to the public a message of compromise on Cyprus rather than the opposite, as had happened before, and as would continue to happen after 1992 until the AKP’s advent to power. Considering the fact that, with a compromise on Cyprus capable of being accepted by both the establishment and public opinion in Turkey, he might have reversed the negative attitude of the EU towards Turkey’s application for accession, Ozal, under strong encouragement from President George H. W. Bush, attempted in 1991–2 to become involved, for the first time on the part of Turkey, in a Cyprus solution-oriented initiative.86 Denktas and the ‘deep state’, having recruited columnists loyal to them, foiled the attempt. The interests of the emerging entrepreneurs required more political and economic liberalization in the domestic field and, in relation to foreign policy, peaceful relations with the neighbouring countries so that there would not be foreign-policy obstacles to the growth of entrepreneurial activity. Set against the background of this reasoning, the entrepreneurial class demanded, apart from a role in domestic policy, a role in foreign policy as well, particularly as regards EU accession. This internal social transformation, along with the new nexus of interests and balances created, generated, in 1991–2, for the first time, the search for a new approach to the Cyprus question, which, however, was not yet powerful enough to be able to affect the policy-making centres in Turkey. Nevertheless, a first breach was achieved. As it was not a parochial incident but an initial response to a new reality still taking shape, it would recur in parallel with the degree to which the new centres of power in Turkey became stronger. As a result, the Kemalist centres of power would not enjoy, after the mid-1990s, the same expedient as before of merely sidelining the search for a Cyprus solution to the vicious circle of never-ending intercommunal talks, while consolidating the fait accompli of the invasion in the occupied territory of Cyprus. The 6 March 1995 Agreement would constitute a second breach of the invariable coordinates decided by the Kemalist ‘deep state’. Holbrooke’s strategy, strengthened within the triangle of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus by the ‘linkage’ strategy of Pangalos and Kranidiotis, and further intensified through the ‘earthquake diplomacy’ and the Helsinki strategy of Simitis and Papandreou, would exert a catalytic influence on the slow but unavoidable internal process that would lead to the first substantial challenge to the Turkish conservative establishment by the still growing, new internal and global reality.

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4.8. Turkish revisionism in Turkish–Greek relations The Venizelos–Atatürk Pact (1930) put an end to the age-long war (1821– 1922) between Greeks and Turks and ushered in an interlude of peace, during which Greece and Turkey might have founded a lasting peaceful relationship had internal and external factors converged in this direction. But no such event occurred. In the aftermath of the Asia Minor Disaster, Greece, apart from the fouryear span of Venizelos’s premiership (1928–1932), experienced perennial crises with dictatorial or weak governments. Completely ravaged, following the Nazi Occupation and the Civil War, it experienced a humiliating dependence on Western Powers, along with continuous instability caused by popular unrest, a situation that came full circle with the seven-year dictatorship (1967–74). Under such political conditions, with a slender middle class incapable of supporting permanent democratic institutions, there were inadequate preconditions in place for a consistent planning and implementation of long-term foreign policy. Consequently, there had been no effort to capitalize on the Venizelos–Atatürk Pact. Secondly, the throne-subservient post-war governments exercised a ‘patriotic’ foreign policy that appealed to a domestic audience instead of addressing the real problems the country was facing. The attempt by Karamanlis to rationalize foreign policy stumbled, in the first place, on the throne-controlled ultra-right power mechanism and, in the second place, on the populism of an opposition that confused patriotic rhetoric with national sovereignty. After Karamanlis, George Papandreou’s attempt to ascertain popular sovereignty led to undisguised intervention by the royal establishment, as a result of which Papandreou’s government was toppled and Greece sank into the seven-year dictatorship. In Turkey, in contrast to what was happening in Greece, the liberator and founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, established a stable, outwardly democratic but inwardly authoritarian state, which, under the guardianship of the Army and the Foreign Ministry, could draw up long-term foreign-policy planning and monitor follow-up on its implementation. However, two inherent characteristics of Kemalism, extreme nationalism and elitism, directed foreign policy more towards the ‘grandeur of the nation’ than towards serving the interests of the Turkish people as a whole. In the era of Atatürk’s successors, this basically nationalist ideal converged, and at times went handin-hand, with irredentist Pan-Turkism and a neo-Ottoman perception of power politics that characterized Turkish foreign policy during the Cold War period and even after the collapse of the bi-polar system. Particularly with regard to relations with Greece, although after the war the ‘threat from the North’ brought the two countries together within NATO, revitalizing the spirit of the Friendship Pact of 1930 within the framework of

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which Turkey accepted the acquisition of the Dodecanese by Greece and recognized Greece’s sovereignty on the Aegean islands (1946), a mere spark from the enosis movement in Cyprus (1955) proved enough for the unfolding of the flags of irredentist Pan-Turkism and power politics. A dormant memory of the spirit of Sèvres also seems to underlie Turkish attitudes during this period at the level both of the ruling elite and the people. Vyron Theodoropoulos nostalgically remembers his arrival at the Greek Consulate in Istanbul, in January 1954, and his experiences of his first year, the vitality of the Greek community, the community schools, associations and institutions, the open-hearted attitude shown towards him by the Vali of Istanbul as well as by other Turkish officials. He notes ‘a silent apprehension’ caused by the mobilizations of student organizations against Greece’s recourse to the UN with its demand for enosis (late 1954). But the nostalgia turns into deep pain as Theodoropoulos recalls, one by one, the events from 21 April to 6 September 1955: . . . The few clouds that were barely visible on the horizon at the beginning of 1954 had grown, by the summer of 1955, into dark threatening clouds forecasting the storm of 6–7 September. This is how, seen from the viewpoint of Polis, I lived through the beginning of this new era in Greek– Turkish relations, never being able to imagine that it would last more than a third of a century [he was writing in 1988] and that it would still be continuing with unforeseen consequences and repercussions.87

Later in his narrative, Theodoropoulos wonders whether Greek–Turkish relations might have taken a different course if the Cyprus problem had assumed a different direction (that is, that of independence), whether the Cyprus question was just the pretext, whether the Greek government was to blame for its involvement in Cyprus, or, finally, whether the outbreak of this crisis was the product of a British conspiracy.88 There is certainly no way of verifying hypothetical scenarios in history, which are drawn up either before or after events, because materialization of one scenario a priori excludes the possibility of trying alternative scenarios under the same circumstances. In spite of this difficulty, a quite probable direction could be inferred if one took into account the fact that Turkey had not questioned • the expansion by Greece of its air space to 10 nautical miles in 1931; • nor the expansion of its territorial waters to six nautical miles in 1936; • nor the cession of the Dodecanese by Italy to Greece in 1946 or the new borderline relating to this agreement; • nor the assignment of the whole of the FIR of the Aegean up to the Turkish territorial waters by ICAO to Greece in 1952;

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• nor the assignment of the whole of the Athens FIR to the NATO flight control centre in Larissa in 1953; • nor the jurisdiction of the Greek NATO Commander in the whole of the Aegean except for Turkey’s territorial waters in 1957.89 If one takes into account the fact that all these developments took place during periods of friendly relations between Greece and Turkey (1930–9 and 1945–55), one might justifiably posit, if not document, the hypothesis that the enosis struggle of the Greek Cypriots and the adoption of the latter’s ultimate objective by Greek foreign policy –contrary to what had happened under Venizelos in 1931– contributed to a great extent – admittedly along with other internal factors – to the new protracted crisis in Greek–Turkish relations that has led the two countries more than once to the brink of war. Constantinos Svolopoulos, who sees in the Treaty of Lausanne the burial of both Greek and Turkish irredentism and in the 1930 Pact the foundation of friendship between the two countries, takes note of the fact that these relations were upset in the mid-1950s as a result of the Cyprus problem as well as of ‘inherent pressures and tendencies within post-War Turkey’.90 Under pressure resulting from such inherent tendencies, and while military–bureaucratic policy-makers estimated that the balance of power was in their favour, particularly after 1974, they escalated provocation against Greece along with revisionist claims that contravene international treaties. Below are listed, in chronological order, the most important events in the sequel of the Turkish–Greek crisis: • 1955: The pogrom of Istanbul. • 1964: The expulsion of the Greek nationals of Istanbul and the confiscation of their properties; the closure of the Greek schools of Imvros and Tenedos and the beginning of a campaign of expropriation of the lands held by the islands’ Greek inhabitants;91 refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the Greek naval commander in the Aegean.92 • 1973: Claims over the Eastern Aegean continental shelf.93 • 1974: The invasion and occupation of 37 per cent of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus in violation of the Zurich–London Agreements; claims over the Eastern Aegean FIR. • 1976: Seismic search for oil by the Turkish ship Sismik in areas of the Aegean that, according to international treaties, belong to Greece. • 1987: Deployment of the Piri Reis to the Aegean escorted by warships. Threat of war, mutual compromise. • 1995: Decision on Casus Belli in the event that Greece extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles.

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Before the reverberations from the Turkish threats in relation to the S-300 missiles could die down, the entanglement of Greece in the Ocalan case (February 1999) again brought back a war atmosphere ‘Kurdifying’ Greek– Turkish relations95 or, as Vyron Theodoropoulos put it, making Greece part of the Kurdish question.96 The Ocalan incident suddenly brought to the surface all the old reactions pushing domestic political affairs further into the clutches of nationalism as the Turkish people were led, through the ‘politics of fear’, to the elections of April 1999. The nationalist hysteria with which Ecevit and Bahceli handled that incident provided the final thrust in their electoral victory. Beyond these connections, the whole Ocalan adventure (incessant hunt from Syria to Russia, Italy, Greece and Kenya) made it a common place in all diplomatic analyses in Ankara that Turkey was, and behaved as, a regional power that could not easily be ignored.97 One factor in this long crisis, which is worth noting, is the fact that, when the two countries were faced with imminent war (1987, 1996, 1998–9), with Turkey apparently seeking it, they both showed self-restraint at the very last moment, and the following day both sought ways of averting the crisis. Evidently, the Piri Reis crisis of 1987 led to Davos in 1988, while the crises of Imia (1996), of the S-300 missiles (1997–8) and of Ocalan (1999) led to the Helsinki peace process (December 1999), to be initiated by Greece with Turkey following suit. The protracted political instability in Turkey following the demise of Ozal, along with the volatile situation created by the advance of the Islamists and the multiple fragmentation of the Kemalist political front, introduced a second element in the Turkish–Greek conflict – that of the unpredictable. This element became manifest for the first time, as a morbid symptom of Turkish foreign policy, in the Imia crisis (January–February 1996), which was eventually created by the interaction of corrupt politicians with viewer-thirsty TV channels.98 The attempt of leading politicians to force political action that served personal calculations, through interconnections with powerful bureaucrats in the Foreign Ministry or through army ‘hawks’ in para-military circles,99 constituted a ‘novelty’ that ‘overturns the constants of older times in formulating foreign policy’.100 By creating multiple decision-making centres, this development increased the risks of war to the extent that it reduced the predictability existing when all moved within a framework formed by a unified and fully concerted Kemalist establishment.

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In commenting on the presence of the Chief of Staff, General Ismail Karadayi, at the reception of the Greek Embassy in Ankara on the occasion of the anniversary of 25 March, Greece’s national day, Alkis Kourkoulas interpreted the General’s gesture as an effort to defuse tension and as reciprocation to Pangalos’s support of Turkey’s European perspective.101 Kourkoulas went on to note Karadayi’s dissociation from Ciller and the ‘hawks’ in the Imia crisis, and concluded that ‘the multiple centres competing in formulating a policy towards Greece and their complex interrelationships clearly show that General Karadayi is not the only exponent of Turkish policy, that there is not one Turkish policy at this critical juncture’.102 This new factor is also noted by Costas Iordanidis, who writes that ‘polycentrism is a new element in Turkish political life after seventy-five years of unified and monolithic central power’.103 A third element of Turkish reality, which unfolds within the framework of the ‘earthquake diplomacy’ and culminates in the wake of Helsinki, is the emergence of civil society at the forefront, and increasing pressure on the part of the rising bourgeois middle class, which demands, first, democratization and modernization of the political system and, second, the search for political solutions to the Kurdish question and mainly to the disputes with Greece. Such trends can be traced back even to the period of widespread upheavals in 1997. A report by the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TUSIAD), departing from its traditional confinement to its own field of competence, included proposals for the democratization of the country and a political response to the Kurdish question. It further expressed concern at the danger of ‘degeneration’ of Turkish–Greek relations into ‘dangerous ploys’. Following the report, business members of the Chamber took the initiative of creating warmer ties with Greece.104 In pursuance of this initiative, on the eve of the Simitis–Yilmaz meeting and while the Balkan Conference was being held in Crete, the well-known businessman Rahmi Koc said, in an interview with Kathimerini: ‘We can’t solve our differences with weapons’ and suggested a wide range of economic cooperation activities involving the two countries through which there would be an improvement of relations in the political field.105 However, the turning point in the liberation of the Turkish people from the iron grip of the state power mechanism and the stereotypes of the past was the immediate response of the Greek government, which sent rescue teams and aid, and the spontaneous solidarity of the Greek people over the ordeal of the Turkish people, in the aftermath of the disastrous earthquake of August 1999. Reports from Turkey spoke of moving expressions of gratitude to the Greek people by Turkish columnists and the Turkish people at large, as well as expressions of indignation at the inefficiency of the state and at its hatred towards the Greeks, a hatred that it had sown for years among the Turkish people. Indicative of the atmosphere is the following quotation from an article

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by Semih Indiz in the Turkish paper Star: ‘We are waiting to see how the brainless guys in our leadership will now be able to convince us that a nation which rallied to our support at the hour of pain has been the age-long enemy of the Turks.’106 Gunduz Aktan, former Ambassador in Athens, was quoted as saying: ‘The problems we have been faced with till now may have not been as significant as we tended to think.’107 Mehmet Ali Birand, a commanding personality among the Turkish community of journalists, in a self-confessing, intensely emotional article, which penetrates deep into reality, gives a picture of the love relationship at the personal level, and the hate relationship at the political level between Turks and Greeks: . . . In the neighborhood I made my first steps, our neighbors were Greeks. Playing with Costas in Ehtem Efendi street, in Erenkoy, I learned the first Greek words. Soon after, I lived through the Cyprus crisis, the events of 6–7 September, and the expulsion of our Greek neighbors. I entered journalism and came to maturity along with perennial crises over Cyprus. Whichever international meeting I went to, whatever the subject was, I came face to face with Greece. A Greece that did its utmost everywhere to move the world against us. Every Greek was a devil to us. Greece was a satanic empire. As years went by, these notions began to change. This happened when I started listening to them as well beyond what we had to say. When I visited their country, after work we used to chat a lot. Particularly in third countries, it was more with them that I had an understanding. We usually started with a fighting spirit against each other but soon after we united and made fun of the others. Years went by and my opinion about the Greek people changed completely. There, of course, exist among them, as it happens with us, people who hate the Turks. We still have divergent approaches on political issues. Nevertheless, in daily life, there is an extremely interesting affinity between Turk and Greek. Some kind of lack of seriousness and hyperbole, a tendency towards believing in conspiracy theories, and above all, good food and the love of merry-making, all these as a result of habitation in the same area. In lots of articles of mine, I have written that the Greeks are not devils. I have observed that politicians have led the two peoples apart. All that survived the earthquake started thinking as I do. [. . .] Our political differences continue and will continue to exist. But from now on, we’ll approach each other in a completely different way. At least, we have to try to do it. We are not led anywhere by conflict. We just wound each other. How beautiful is friendship! [. . .] the two peoples have seen, for the first time, that there is no mutual hatred. They have tasted friendship. The old hatred will no longer exist, it shouldn’t exist.108

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It was the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic that the state was demystified to such an extent in the eyes of the Turkish society. This was further evident in the reception given to the Greek Foreign Minister, George Papandreou, by the whole range of media in Istanbul, in spite of the fact that his speeches and statements ‘did not satisfy the conservative core of the Turkish elite’. This latter comment belongs to Alkis Kourkoulas, who adds a comment in Sabah to the effect that ‘their excellencies in Ankara continue to live in the world of fantasy they have created’. Kourkoulas concludes his report with a semantic finding from among the comments of political circles: ‘The chasm between the state-oriented elites and the social feeling is characteristic of the transitory period Turkey is living through. [. . .] Papandreou’s visit has shown that the chasm between state and society has always been active.’109 A special contributor of To Vima takes note of two significant factors in the critical attitude of the Turkish press towards government authority: the first, unprecedented in Turkish reality, was the direct criticism of the Turkish armed forces. The second was the moving response to the solidarity of the Greek people and the volleys of indignant reactions to the MHP Health Minister’s statement that ‘Turkey has no need of Greek solidarity’. The commentator concludes with the following penetrating remark: . . . Turkey [. . .] will not change its strategic planning in relation to our country because of an earthquake and a friendly gesture on our part. A change of attitude of Turkish officials should not be taken as a change in Turkish national policy. History has shown that Turkey changes its policy only when it has no other choice, nor any time to wait for its implementation. Our own national policy should be planned in such a way as to continuously limit the options of Turkish policy towards our country, finally leaving Turkey only those options that serve our national objectives.110

George Papandreou’s ‘earthquake diplomacy’ and the ‘citizen diplomacy’ launched by the Turkish society constituted the first political challenge to the Kemalist establishment’s revisionist policy towards Greece. The Helsinki strategy further curtailed Turkish options for a return to the revisionist claims of the last three decades of the twentieth century. Turkey’s European bid, inaugurated by the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions, restricted even further Turkish revisionist options, offering, at the same time, the framework within which a settlement of Turkish–Greek disputes might be sought.

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4.9. Turkey’s European orientation and the demand for democratization Turkey’s European orientation deprived the Generals of the Kemalist establishment of an additional option – the option they had used to legitimize the coup of 28 February 1997 and the ‘politics of fear’ they had applied in the aftermath. Now that democracy and human rights were coming to the forefront and states that violated these values were isolated, Mehmet Ali Birand noted, it would be unthinkable to install an Islamic state in a Turkey that was a member of the EU. He further suggested to the supporters of the secular state that the Generals’ bayonet could not offer long-term protection of the system. EU accession, Birand concluded, offered the safest guarantee.111 On a quite different level of Birand’s reasoning were the state-centred nationalist elites that, in the euphoria they felt for the Helsinki deal, were unable or unwilling to appreciate that ‘Turkey was only at the beginning of a process that would require the uphill slog of considerable political changes at home, rather than the beginning of a downhill descent towards membership’.112 These leading circles, with the MHP at the extreme end, in considering the European perspective through the Cold War logic of power politics, tended to think that Turkey’s strategic position offered it multiple options, thus allowing it to enter the EU on its own terms.113 Powerful military circles have gone as far as reacting to the European perspective on the ground that any democratization on the basis of the acquis communautaire will lead to fragmentation and final partition of Turkey.114 The obvious fear is the emergence of a multicultural character of Turkish society and, consequently, the recognition of the cultural rights of the minorities, particularly of the Kurds. The failure to implement already institutionalized reforms in this direction and the dark forces of the ‘deep state’ that have been revealed behind the bomb attacks at Semdinli (2 and 9 November 2005)115 are indicative of the difficulties reform is facing, and the obstacles it will have to remove. Attached to the Kemalist notion of a national centralized state, based exclusively on one national and cultural identity, these circles are suspicious of ceding sovereignty to supranational organs, of devolving a considerable part of central power to the regions and the civil society, of recognizing multiple identities and all relevant conceptions presupposed by the postmodern governing institutions of the EU.116 This suspicion is evident in the first National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis drawn up by the Ecevit government (March 2001). This Programme ‘represented an attempt on the part of the political authorities in Turkey to strike a balance between the need to meet the Copenhagen criteria and the unwillingness to implement reforms on the most sensitive issues’.117

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An extract from O. Lesser quoted by Vassilis Fouskas is amply revealing of the negative reaction of the ruling elite even to economic reforms. The reason is clear. These reforms mainly in the nature of privatizations, decentralization and the spread of opportunity, deprive them of the ability to exercise one more lever of power: . . . The Turkish military and the bureaucracy have been more resistant to reforms, which they view as threatening to the security, integrity, and welfare of the state. Ironically, these two institutions have been pillars of the modern Republic and staunch supporters of an Ataturkist vision of modernity. As many Turks will now admit, the economic dimension of this vision, with its emphasis on statism and centralization, no longer looks very modern in light of liberalization and decentralization elsewhere. The evolution of the Turkish debate on these issues will shape the outlook of Turkey in the 21st century.118

The resistance of the ‘deep-state’ establishment and its unwillingness to implement the reforms is noted in a series of EU decisions and documents until even after 3 October 2005, the date of commencement of accession negotiations.119 It is admitted, in such decisions and documents, that a large volume of work has been carried out on passing reform laws. However, serious delays are noted in the implementation of the reforms as well as in institutionalizing new measures in the direction of democratization. The most important element in these documents, which emerges from the wording of detections and suggestions, is the EU’s firm insistence on full and substantive harmonization of Turkey with the acquis, not only in the field of individual, political, cultural and minority rights and the economy, but even further in the full political control of the state and the normalization of relations with neighbouring countries, particularly with member states, such as Greece and Cyprus. To the extent that the one-track path towards internal democratization along with the democratization of Turkey’s foreign relations contradicts the nationalist approach of multiple options, to the same extent it ascertains the strategy of Holbrooke and Kranidiotis, as this was incorporated in the 6 March 1995 Agreement, as well as the strategy of Simitis and Papandreou as this was codified in the historic Helsinki deal. These strategies, first, drastically curtailed the Kemalist establishment’s options and, second, contributed to the liberation and, hopefully, firm orientation of the Turkish society, including political Islam, towards democratization and modernization of the country, as such a process is safeguarded from the European perspective. Regardless of differing predictions as to the final form accession will take or the time required for the accession process, opinion polls show a substan-

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tial convergence in support of accession; with fewer but clearly more than 50 per cent among the political elites and an overwhelmingly high percentage in non-political elites; with the scales of support rising according to educational level, with an overwhelmingly high percentage among the Kurds of all educational or social standards or political affiliations. A profound finding of these polls is that the vast majority of the participants consider as main accession obstacles democratic and social shortfalls, while they are strongly in favour of the reforms.120 This stable trend results from the internal social transformation described above, which is an autonomous driving force towards democratization and modernization of the Turkish political system. The linking of this internal demand with the EU accession process has simply accelerated, broadened and deepened the reform process. Certainly, no one could have envisaged the width and depth of the changes that have been brought about since Helsinki within the framework of the accession process. Nevertheless, neither the social and economic, nor the political preconditions would have existed to put Turkey in the accession process, if it was not for the activation, by Ozal’s liberalizing policies, of those social forces that, being receptive of the European reform process, would have been mobilized for its implementation. Nor is it accidental that the social forces behind the transformation process have been those that have burgeoned outside the Kemalist state-centred elite. Kemalism was, at the time of its founder, a modernizing ideology that, breaking with the Ottoman past, built a national state on the ruins of the theocratic Ottoman Empire. An expression of the Kemalist modernist drive was also the consistent policy of Westernizing Turkey through institutional and practical measures that aimed at detaching Turkey from the Arabic and Persian cultural environment and bringing it closer to Europe. Notwithstanding Atatürk’s vision, the heirs of Kemalist ideology, being a close military–bureaucratic elite completely identified with the state and alienated from social strata as well as from social currents, have gradually been transformed, particularly since the 1971 coup, into a conservative authoritarian regime. It is intrinsically conservative in the sense that its main objective is to keep the privileged position it has occupied by being the self-declared guarantor of the continuity of Kemalism and the security of the state against external or internal threats. The transcendence over the Kemalist doctrine of a single exclusive national identity and the adoption of the multicultural model, a necessary prerequisite for the solution of the Kurdish problem and all other minority problems in Turkey, opens up another final chapter, the successful handling of which will determine the fulfilment of Turkey’s democratization. This last chapter relates to a self-critical attitude towards history and, through it, to a free, unprejudiced approach of the Armenian genocide.121 As the philosopher Bernard-

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Henri Levy pointedly remarks: ‘European integration has not been, and could not be possible unless – bear in mind post-Nazi Germany – it keeps in step with a conscious painful policy of memory, which we are expecting Turkey to exhibit on the gap of its Armenian memory.’122 A substantial step in this direction was the holding of a conference on the Armenian question – though not without resistance from the establishment – at the Bilgi University of Istanbul, in September 2005. The firm support of the conference by almost the entire Turkish press and the AKP, even by Premier Erdogan himself, was another defeat of the ‘deep state’ and its tentacles. The remark by a Turkish columnist that ‘through the conference Europe brings the Turks face to face with their dark past’ and Gul’s message: ‘I wish the conference helped us understand our history; Turkey needs today, more than ever, to come to terms with its past’, constitute a first attempt at a positive response to Bernard-Henri Levy’s challenge.123 Notwithstanding the progress being made, Orhan Pamuk’s trial and the incidents that accompanied it, irrespective of his final acquittal, indicate the long distance Turkey has still to cover in order to be integrated within the European political and value system.

4.10. Turkey’s European bid and the Cyprus Problem It has already been shown that the linkage of Cyprus’s EU accession process with that of Turkey (the 6 March 1995 Agreement and the Helsinki deal of 10 December 1999) have exercised a catalytic role in Cyprus’s success in finally entering the European Club. However, the protagonists of that linkage, in the United States, the EU and Greece, envisioned it – among other considerations – as a catalyst towards a change in Turkey’s absolutely negative attitude in relation to a settlement of the Cyprus dispute. Beyond a considerable number of relevant statements, there were particular references in the 6 March 1995 Agreement124 and a stronger wording in the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions, which also included a warning to both sides, the double-edged ‘tail’ of paragraph 9b.125 Turkish society at large took on board the message of Helsinki. While the Helsinki process was still in initial phase, articles appeared in the Turkish press, apparently produced by the ‘citizen diplomacy’, which, for the first time since 1974, called on Turkey to take steps towards a settlement in Cyprus so that this problem would not impede the country’s accession process.126 TUSIAD, which had already intervened in internal political affairs in 1997, suggesting the need for democratization, after the Helsinki deal openly called for broadening of cultural rights as well as for a solution on Cyprus.127 Opinion polls, carried out during the same period, revealed a majority current in

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Turkish society that realized that, along with democratization reforms, there should be a solution in Cyprus to facilitate the country’s accession process.128 It also followed as a result of these polls that the supporters of Turkey’s European perspective expected, among other things, a catalytic role of the EU in solving the problems in the Aegean and Cyprus.129 However, despite the change observed in the attitude of Turkish society in relation to Cyprus, the Kemalist establishment still clung to Cold War stereotypical perceptions on the issue of Cyprus. While the April 1999 elections were ahead, Bulent Ecevit stated that ‘Cyprus is so indispensable for the strategic interests of Turkey that Ankara would not withdraw its troops even if there were not one single Turkish Cypriot living on the island’.130 In facing the West one-dimensionally as a system of alliances and power balances and ignoring the value system of the EU, these circles tended to think that ‘Turkey’s accession to the EU does not presuppose any kind of internalization of the European values as, to them, it is just a matter of power considerations’.131 Through such an approach, Ecevit demanded from the EU that it understand that the Cyprus question was connected exclusively with the security of Turkey, and rejected any connection whatsoever between Cyprus and Turkey’s accession process.132 Before Cyprus’s accession negotiations had started, the Turkish government hired the services of European experts on International Law (1997) in order to document a demarche to the EU, to the effect that the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus did not allow the accession of Cyprus to the EU as long as Turkey was not a member of it.133 However, legal arguments did not convince. For the EU, Semin Suvarierol observes, ‘the accession of Cyprus is a political issue and Law may adapt to any political solution’.134 The bureaucracy of the Turkish Foreign Ministry projected this legal argument once again following the Copenhagen Conclusions (13 December 2002) in a statement according to which ‘the EU has no right to take unilateral decisions relating to the future of Cyprus and create international obligations in violation of international agreements’. In Brussels, the Greek Foreign Minister, George Papandreou, replied: ‘This issue had been raised before and had been rejected by reputable legal experts. I would further say that the crux of the matter has been adequately dealt with by the Copenhagen Summit. There will be no more discussion of this issue.’136 Totally at variance with the policy of Semitis and Papandreou was the agreement of Cyprus with Russia (January 1997) for the purchase and deployment of Russian S-300 missiles. That agreement, in conjunction with the upgrading of the ‘Joint Defence Dogma’ and common military manoeuvres by Greece and Cyprus (Nikiforos–Toxotis), stirred enosis reactions in Turkey, strengthening the ‘hawks’ among the Generals and bringing extreme nationalism to the centre of political life. Along with other factors (the 28 February 1997 coup, the ‘politics of fear’, the rejection of Turkey as a candidate EU

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member state at Luxembourg), the S-300 issue sparked off a new nationalist row over Cyprus throughout the country. As a result, Ecevit’s position that Cyprus was ‘a basic component in Turkey’s security’ became a commanding element in Turkey’s foreign policy on Cyprus.136 Consequently, immediately after the missiles agreement of Cyprus with Russia had been publicized, Turkey announced, jointly with the ‘TRNC’ (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) (January 1997), a counter Defence Dogma that stipulated, first, that ‘any attack on the TRNC would be considered an attack on Turkey’ and, second, that ‘all steps taken by the Greek Cypriot administration towards accession to the EU will accelerate the integration of the TRNC with Turkey’.137 On the way to Helsinki and as a reaction to US attempts to bend Ecevit’s absolute rejectionism, Turkish Foreign Minister Ismael Cem retorted on all occasions, and in all directions, with the Ecevit–Denktas thesis that the Cyprus problem had been solved with the 1974 intervention.138 Premier Ecevit himself, in a memorandum to US President Clinton prior to his visit to Washington (October 1999), rejected any connection of Cyprus with Turkey’s EU accession process and insisted on the recognition of the ‘TRNC’ prior to any settlement.139 Nor did Clinton’s visit to Istanbul (November 1999) bring about any change in Ecevit’s dogmatic position on Cyprus. Even after the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions, in a statement answering to Liponen’s letter, he left no margin of optimism on Cyprus: . . . The impression that the Republic of Southern Cyprus may enter the EU without a solution being reached is a matter of grave concern to Turkey. Our views on this issue are known to all. Our position will not change. It is an indisputable fact that there are two states in Cyprus. The special relationship between Turkey and the ‘TRNC’ and their bonds will become closer in parallel with EU policy developments on Cyprus.140

When, during his visit to Cyprus (October 2001), the President of the EU Commission, Romano Prodi, stated that ‘Cyprus would be among the first wave of EU members irrespective of a political settlement’, Turkey’s reply was Cem’s threat of ‘drastic measures’ and Ecevit’s warning that ‘Turkey could annex the TRNC if the EU admitted Cyprus before a settlement’.141 Such statements carried particular weight as they were made in the wake of the European Parliament Report (July 2001) to the effect that, ‘if Turkey were to carry out its threat of annexing the north of Cyprus in response to Cypriot accession to the EU and to proclaim the northern part as its 82nd province in clear breach of international law, it would put an end to its own ambitions of EU membership’.142 Nor did the Ecevit government take into consideration relevant EU and Greek reassurances, nor even arguments of

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Greek and Turkish Cypriots, demonstrating that ‘Cyprus, as an EU member, would not threaten the strategic interests of Turkey in any way’.143 The political and military establishment remained entrenched in the logic of power politics, adding to its argument the increased significance of Cyprus as a result of the construction of the Baku–Ceyhan pipeline.144 The ‘impasse’ of this ‘dogmatic’ approach of Kemalist Turkey is highlighted in a penetrating analysis by the Cyprus University teacher Niyazi Kizilyurek. Particularly with regard to developments following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kizilyurek sees Turkey’s Cyprus policy within the framework of the resurgence of Pan-Turkist aspirations for the transformation of Turkey into a great regional power by taking a leading role in relation to the former Soviet Turkic republics. Through such an approach, Kizilyurek continues, Cyprus ‘is enclaved in the grand visions of Turkey’, or, rather, it becomes ‘the expression of Turkey’s complex to become a great power’. Being thus kept captive to the logic of power politics, Cyprus becomes ‘lebensraum’ for Turkey, Kizilyurek adds, to conclude that the bankruptcy of the autocratic Kemalist regime and its inability to exercise the role of a great power turns Cyprus into the object of nationalist rhetoric, which, ‘as a common narrative of all political constituencies’, enclaves Turkish foreign policy by leading it towards an impasse.145 The landslide victory of the AKP (3 November 2002) and, later, Erdogan’s ascent to the premiership signalled a substantial break with the fossilized policy of inertia characteristic of the Kemalist regime, particularly in relation to Cyprus. Erdogan’s repeated declaration that ‘non-solution is no solution’ and his positive, albeit occasionally backtracking, approach to the UN Secretary General’s initiative constituted a clear transcendence over past stereotypes and a search for a compromise that would, on the one hand, open the way to Turkey’s EU accession and, on the other, avert an outright confrontation with the still mighty National Security Council and the ‘deep state’. Erdogan recognized the connection of a Cyprus settlement with Turkey’s accession process and tried to convey to the EU policy-makers the message that giving Turkey a date for the commencement of accession negotiations would open the way to a settlement in Cyprus.147 This approach by Erdogan made confrontation with Denktas inevitable. Sometimes direct and public, sometimes covert, this conflict would finally lead to the marginalization of Denktas either through direct initiatives by the Erdogan government or through internal electoral procedures within the Turkish Cypriot community, which procedures would be decisively influenced by the changes in Turkey. At exactly this juncture, as though an ex machina ally of Erdogan, Holbrooke reappeared to describe Denktas as an embittered old man who had adopted and still stuck to a position that he was fully aware was rejected by the whole world. Holbrooke further points out that Denktas’s positions, far from serving

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the interests of the Turkish Cypriots, were in conflict with the interests of the seventy million people of Turkey.147 When Holbrooke planned the new American strategy for the Middle East, he might not have foreseen the political reversal that the tectonic changes in Turkey would bring about, leading an Islamic party to power through a triumphant electoral victory. However, the modernizing policies of Erdogan in his firm support of the EU accession reform process and his compromising approach to the Cyprus problem and TurkishGreek relations created, for the first time, the necessary preconditions for the materialization of Holbrooke’s strategy.

4.11. The European Union and Turkey It has already been shown that, despite differing and sometimes conflicting approaches, the major Turkish political forces and centres of power, and more specifically Turkish society, have been giving majority support to the country’s European orientation. This is one strand in the issue. The other is the attitude of European peoples and governments towards Turkey’s EU accession. Publicopinion polls in the EU member states, the most significant of which were those carried out during the spring and autumn of 2005 in view of the commencement of Turley’s EU accession negotiations, show strong reservation about the full integration of Turkey.148 The rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty by the peoples of France (29 May 2005) and the Netherlands (1 June 2005) was also linked to a negative attitude towards further enlargement in general, and specifically towards the accession of Turkey. Underlying this connection the polls find citizen dissatisfaction with the decline in economic growth rate and with unemployment, their deep concern about the capability of incorporating new waves of immigrants, as well as about the future of the welfare state.149 Such concerns strengthen ‘Turkoscepticism’150 which was initially confined mainly to ultra-right groups in the form of nationalism and xenophobia151 and within conservative Christian Democrats in reference to religion and culture.152 Kalypso Nicolaidis153 points out that ‘the battles within the Convention on the Future of Europe to include a reference to Europe’s Christian heritage in the constitutional preamble testify to the strength of this constituency and the identification for many of the EU with a Christian club where non Christians may only form non-threatening minorities’.154 She classifies the arguments against Turkey’s ‘Europeanness’ into three categories: geographic, historical and religious. To the argument that Turkey does not geographically belong to Europe she answers that no precise European borders exist to the east, and she introduces the notion of Eurasia. As to history, she points to the fact that the Turks, especially in coastal areas, have more in common with Greeks and Italians than with Arabs. ‘Turks are sociologically

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European,’ she says, ‘poorer, less urbanized and more religious, but European’. She also points to the significant resemblance of Atatürk’s modernist nationalist project to European nationalist projects and ideologies of the period of foundation of the Turkish Republic. Finally, in relation to religion, she points to the stability of political secularism, which is affirmed even by the presence of an Islamic party in power in Turkey. Nevertheless, she stresses that the presence of religion in public, such as the wearing of the headscarf by Turkish women and the public debate on this issue, sends negative messages to Europe. However, sociological studies, she adds, ‘show that signs of religious belonging such as the scarf are linked with transitional phases of urban migration or can be transitional instruments of emancipation rather than necessarily subjugation’. Turkey, she adds, is undergoing a ‘last stage of domestication of political Islam’ in which ‘development and modernization are the key factors that will bring Turkey closer to the EU “home base” and the Turkish women closer, in their life style, to their counterparts in the rest of Europe’. She also takes up European concerns about the influence that, owing to its size, Turkey will have in the European institutions. She convincingly argues that decisions in such bodies are more and more taken on the basis of ideological rather than national differences. She finally dispels the fear of massive immigration by pointing out that economic modernization along with relative decline in demographic growth, which will be set in motion by the accession process, will be the most effective counter motives to that kind of immigration. Nonetheless, even if Turkey’s Europeanness was not disputed, Kalypso Nicolaidis further comments, there still remain substantial obstacles to Turkey’s accession, which relate to consolidation of democracy and the exclusion of the military from political life, elements pinpointed by successive EU Progress Reports on Turkey. Rounding up, she argues that a Europe that would be capable of including Turkey would prove capable of playing a role in international developments proportionate to its economic power. Such a Europe would not only send the message of compatibility with Islam, thus strengthening its integration project, but would contribute to the creation of a Europe able to stand out as an alternative rather than as an opponent or a vassal of the United States. In an ‘open letter on the future of Europe’ published in newspapers of all twenty-five EU member states,155 Ulrich Beck156 and Anthony Giddens157 support EU enlargement with the inclusion of Turkey. They consider enlargement a most powerful EU foreign-policy instrument, a means to promote and consolidate peace, democracy and open markets. With specific regard to Turkey’s accession, they express the view that, ‘had the EU decided to leave Turkey out, it would lose immense potential of geopolitical influence’. Strategic analysts who view Euro-Turkish relations through the prism of the Cold War era see Turkey, on becoming an EU member, as acting as a bridgehead of American hegemony in Europe.158 However, such analysts ignore or

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underestimate the history of Turkish–American relations, and the endemic antiAmericanism within Turkish society that was reactivated and intensified during the US war against Iraq as well as after the war. Mehnet Ali Birand sees a conflict in the interests of Turkey and the United States in relation to that war, and pointedly remarks that Turkey’s interest lies more in its integration with Europe than in a strategic alliance with the USA. Birand finally concludes that EU accession is the only way for Turkey to get rid of US pressure and avoid separatist movements.159 The possibility of Turkey being used as a US ‘card’ against the French–German axis is countered by another possible scenario of a weakening Turkish–Israeli axis and a closer cooperation of Turkey with France and Germany,160 with both of which Turkey is bound by strong economic interests. By contrast, US policy in the Middle East has caused tremendous economic losses to Turkey since the first US war against Iraq.161 The EU has a complex approach to Turkey’s accession process. Along with strategic considerations and economic interests, the EU also counts, as a substantive parameter, the cause of peace and stability in the region. In contrast to that, Washington sees its relations with Turkey exclusively through its strategic considerations, parameters of which greatly damage Turkish interests. It might be said that the basic starting points of US strategic calculations nowadays were also valid in Holbrooke’s strategy of the 1990s, but with the following significant difference: while President George W. Bush’s strategy, particularly following 11 September 2001, is imbued with symptoms of a messianic hegemony and an autocratic management of power, the reaction to which leads to a vicious circle of violence and ‘terrorism’, Holbrooke’s longterm strategic considerations aimed at forestalling conflicts through diplomacy and thus finally achieving stability and peace. Specifically as regards the triangle involving Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, this parameter of Holbrooke’s strategy, which continues ti be a substantive element of US policy, because the same interests make it imperative, converges with the European approach in its effort to achieve a settlement in Cyprus and the Aegean. Therefore, the Cyprus solution process inaugurated as a result of the Helsinki accord, under the aegis of the UN, the United States and the EU, cannot be fully grasped as long as it remains inextricably linked to the reasoning of the ‘zones of conflict’.162 Such an approach fails to assess fully the complex role of the EU as well as the multiple messages sent by the ‘European paradigm’ mainly through the initiatives of Simitis and Papandreou and the rapprochement of Greek and Turkish Cypriots following the breach in the dividing wall. It is impossible to forecast the final destination of the long process of Turkey’s accession negotiations. If the process is reversed as a result of the Turkish state’s failure to fulfil the conditions of democratization and modernization assigned by the Partnership Agreement of 6 December 2005, Turkey will enter a period of tumultuous turbulence with unpredictable repercussions.

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However, such a course should be considered an extremely remote scenario. The internal social transformation, which has been, and still is, a substantive indigenous driving force towards democratization and modernization, along with the large volume of reforms that have already been set in motion, make rather for the creation of a single-track modern Europeanizing course for Turkey. Such a journey may possibly slow down, as a result of internal regression to authoritarianism and nationalism. But it definitely cannot be reversed. If, despite Turkey’s will, its accession course is blocked owing to the failure of the EU to proceed to further enlargement, or to the unwillingness of the European peoples to accept Turkey for the reasons elaborated on above, there will again be dramatic internal upheavals in Turkey, which will have long-term consequences for its external orientation. However, the EU itself will most probably suffer the consequences. Its failure to restructure its political project and undertake the balancing role between the United States and Islam that history bestows on it will leave the way open to Huntington’s ‘prophecy’ while Europe, confining itself to the margins of international developments, will suffer the consequences of such a catastrophic course. The direct consequences of a possible exclusion of Turkey from Europe will certainly fall, after the Turkish people, on Cyprus and Greece. In particular, with the Cyprus problem unsolved, and Aegean disputes still pending, the dangers will be even greater. The eventuality of a ‘special relationship’ between Turkey and the EU, should full accession be definitely excluded, has not been examined. If this emerges as an outlet, this will occur at a very late stage, when the accession negotiations come to the point of final decision. Such an eventuality, if mutually agreed upon, will certainly constitute some form of integration of Turkey within the Western political system. Nevertheless, to the extent that such a loose integration will deprive Turkey of full and equal participation, it will leave it room for deviation from the fundamental principles that give direction to its European path, and that have been elaborated on in the ‘European Paradigm’. Under such circumstances, a regression to authoritarianism will be a possible scenario, given the strong centres of resistance still in the hands of the ‘deep state’ in Turkey. One consequence of such a development will probably be the revival of extreme nationalist policies and, if conditions allow, a return to the aggressive attitudes of the second half of the twentieth century against both Greece and Cyprus.

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Chapter 5

The Perception of the Solution by the Greek Cypriot Community 5.1. The enosis movement and Greek Cypriot nationalism The establishment of the independent Greek state (1828) inspired, in the ‘unredeemed’ Greeks of the periphery, union movements in which the idea of freedom was identified with that of union (enosis) with Greece. The union of the Ionian Islands (1864) and Thessaly (1881) with Greece acted as a paradigm and a powerful stimulus in the spread of union movements throughout the territory of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in those areas where there existed relatively concentrated Greek populations. As such areas one might single out Macedonia, Smyrna-Kydoniae, Kappadokia, Pontos and Cyprus.1 The existence in itself of Greek populations in those areas constituted the prime mover and first legitimizing factor in the emergence of irredentism. However, the development and the form that irredentist nationalism took greatly depended on encouragement and practical support by the Greek state, which had assumed the role of the new ‘national centre’ of Hellenism.2 Irredentism, as the Greek state’s mainstream ideology, took shape in the 1840s as part of the programme underpinning the Great Idea, which aimed at identifying state and nation by incorporating the unredeemed parts of the Greek nation into the Greek state. The role as main torch-carrier of these ideas to the unredeemed Greeks was undertaken by the University of Athens through sending out teachers as well as through students from the periphery who, on returning to their homelands following completion of their studies, became the preachers of the Great Idea.3 The Church played a leading role in diffusing the values of the Great Idea in Cyprus, mainly through the development of education. Despite the curtailment of its fiscal and political power owing to measures taken by the British administration,4 the Church continued to possess a vast amount of wealth and enjoy its age-long ethnarchic role.5 During the first years of British rule, Archbishop Sophronios (1865–1900) used the Church’s dominant position

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with utmost caution and restraint.6 However, his successors moved openly in the direction of promoting the enosis cause. Research into primary sources questions the direct appeal for enosis following the Ionian example,7 attributed to Archbishop Sophronios in his welcoming address to the first British High Commissioner in Nicosia (30 July 1878)8 and, in another version, the Bishop of Kition, Kyprianos, in his welcoming address to the High Commissioner in Larnaca (22 July 1878).9 This, however, does not disprove the existence of irredentist nationalism in Cyprus by that time. Its inception actually dates back to the Greek Revolution of 1821, and more specifically to 1828, when Archbishop Panaretos appealed to Kapodistrias to include Cyprus in the Greek state-to-be.10 In contrast with the meticulous care taken by Archbishop Sophronios and the Nicosia leading elite to maintain its traditional cooperation with the ruling power, the emerging middle class of Limassol and Larnaca showed vocal receptiveness of Greek ideals. Appeal to patriotism was used by members of this newly emerging class as a means to distinguish themselves and assert equal status with the Nicosia establishment. Patriotic activism became the ideal vehicle for self-promotion and attainment of a leading social role.11 During the last decade of the nineteenth century, nationalist policy acquired a new dynamic and spread to the wider social strata. It linked, on the one hand, with the current social problems, thus assuming a progressive character,12 and, on the other, with the Cretan question, bringing to the fore the irredentist anti-Turkish element.13 Nevertheless, when the Church and leading elites, old and new, placed themselves at the vanguard of the enosis movement, nationalism lost its 1900s progressive dynamic and became an instrument of conservatism. Paschalis Kitromilides illuminates substantive aspects of irredentist nationalism within the Greek Cypriot community during British rule. He particularly marks out its regressive role against social modernization in the following critical assessment: . . . Nationalism, as an ideological orthodoxy [. . .] was used to uphold the legitimacy of the authority of its exponents (the Church and a segment of the commercial and professional bourgeoisie), who monopolized the leadership of the Greek Cypriots throughout the British period. Challenges to this monopoly of power and ideological orthodoxy, coming from modernizing elements in the community and more specifically from the organized left, invariably precipitated the articulation of the non-liberal temper and intolerance that were ingrained in the irredentist ideology of enosis. From this point of view, the impact of enosis on the workings of Greek Cypriot domestic politics was the same as that of the Great Idea within Greece: it precluded the emergence of a liberal political culture. British colonial practice, which tended to preserve and politicize traditional corporate structures

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as the agents of representation [. . .] further undermined the prospects of liberalism while, at the same time, planting the seeds of future ethnic conflict.14

British colonial rule preserved the traditional Ottoman system of religious communities as the basis for separate election of elective members to the Legislative Council. Apart from the encouragement of nationalist tendencies in the way of election, the composition of the Legislative Council promoted ethnic conflict, as it was calculated in such a way as to lead the elective members of the Turkish community into alliance with British official members against elective members of the Greek community. With the Governor always retaining the casting vote in the event of a drawn ballot, the 18-member Legislative Council (1882–1925) consisted of: 9 Greek Cypriots, 3 Turkish Cypriots and 6 official members (British administrative officials). In 1925 the members of the Council were increased to 24: 12 Greek Cypriots, 3 Turkish Cypriots and 9 official members). Furthermore, the denial of substantive powers to the Council pushed the Greek Cypriot representatives into continuous opposition by encouraging irresponsible demagogic attitudes both within and outside the body. The perennial concern of the British to contain the enosis movement (see composition and powers of the Council) caused further reaction among Greek Cypriots and further escalation of the enosis movement, leading the whole situation to a vicious circle.15 All these factors, given the freedom of political expression, ‘contributed to the growth of nationalism in ways unthinkable during the Ottoman domination giving to the national aspirations of the Greek Cypriots a rigidity that was unknown in the traditional policy of survival in the Ottoman state’.16 In the aftermath of the Asia Minor Disaster, the awareness of the Greek Cypriot leadership that enosis had become a remote possibility made it turn, for the first time, towards an intermediary solution. Convened in the form of ‘National Council’ under Archbishop Cyrillos III, they drew up a memorandum providing for extensive self-government with proportional representation for the two communities in government institutions and services, and submitted it to the High Commissioner on 19 December 1922.17 However, references to enosis in the preamble of the memorandum as being the ultimate objective led to its outright rejection by the British.18 The outcome was a dangerous deadlock in the existing crisis, in which acute economic and social problems were left to assume explosive dimensions. The elections of 1925 brought to the fore within the Legislative Council moderate leaders, among them Nicodemos Mylonas, Bishop of Kition, who saw the need for a realistic approach that would enable them, in cooperation with their Turkish Cypriot colleagues in the Council, to deal with economic problems such as usury and intolerable levels of taxation, which hit both Greek and Turkish Cypriots equally hard. They also struggled for constitu-

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tional reforms, which, first, would give the Council substantive powers for internal administration, thus creating the prerequisites for responsible attitudes by its members, and, second, would lead, through an ‘evolutionary process’, when the conditions were propitious, to ‘national independence’ in the form of union with Greece.19 This line was consistently sustained by Eleftherios Venizelos after his return to power as Prime Minister in 1928.20 In Venizelos’s clear political vision, the role of Greece at that particular period was to improve, through diplomacy, its relations with those powers that controlled cradles of surviving Hellenism. With this in mind, following the securing of a Friendship Pact with Turkey, Venizelos turned to normalizing relations with Italy, which still controlled the Dodecanese. In relation to Cyprus, Venizelos judged that ‘the best way of promoting gradual materialization of Greek Cypriot aspirations was through Greek–British understanding’.21 However, in opposition to the ‘reformists’22 or ‘constitutionalists’23 there stood the ‘radical nationalists’, or ‘unionists’, whose main exponents were the Bishop of Kyrenia, Makarios, and, since 1930, Greece’s General Consul, Alexis Kyrou. The radical nationalists, precluding any contact with the colonial government, rejected any constitutional reform that might lead to an ‘evolutionary process’. Moreover, they rejected and considered as ‘diversion from the genuine enosis struggle any demands or even acceptance of any British offer, regarding political or constitutional liberties’.24 They even rejected any struggle on social issues. They said it was in vain because ‘the social problems of the people will automatically be solved the day after their liberation, as in the mother’s bosom each child is warmly caressed, in the maternal state each social class finds support and protection’.25 The appearance of the Left as the vanguard of working-class demands (1926), and government measures aimed at protecting rural population from the rapacity of the usurer commercial intermediary class,26 made this class rally round the Church and use nationalism as a defence mechanism against both ‘threats’. They reached such extremes that ‘the complete separation of demands for social reform and national liberation’ became ‘an extraordinary characteristic for an anti-colonial movement’.27 Thus, while the delegation to London under Archbishop Sophronios (1888) had confined its petition to the British government on economic, social and constitutional issues, forty years later these conservative circles considered as anathema even mere discussion of such issues.28 The British colonial government, on the other hand, apart from abolishing the ‘tithe’ (1926) and the ‘tribute’ (1927), as well as introducing measures to combat usury, confronted constitutional demands with suspicion, fearing that Greek Cypriot representatives in the Council would use constitutional powers to promote enosis. The whole situation resembled a vicious circle in which the ‘reformists’, under pressure from continuous accusations by the ‘unionists’ for selling out over enosis, never failed to remind, when demanding

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constitutional freedoms, that their final objective was enosis.29 In order that the situation came full circle, the refusal of the colonial government to broaden constitutional freedoms fed accusations by the radical nationalists against their opponents that their policy of ‘evolutionary process’ was, to say the least, naive, that it actually undermined and, ultimately thwarted, enosis. Tension between the Greek Cypriot leadership and the Governor as well as among Greek Cypriots themselves hardened nationalist positions and strengthened the current towards expansion of intransigent unionists, thus setting a course towards the October 1931 uprising. The dramatic escalation of the crisis with the Educational Law (December 1929), which detached primary education from the control of the Church and politicians, as well as the introduction of laws (1930) that were justifiably perceived as illiberal, brought enosis back to the fore, thus overshadowing the complex of real causes behind the uprising. The establishment of the ‘National Organization’ (January 1930) aimed to promote the enosis struggle and the first plebiscite for enosis (25 March 1930) are indicative of the climate in which the October 1930 elections to the Legislative Council were held.30 In his assessment of the electoral results, Alexis Kyrou notes with satisfaction that ‘the people of Cyprus voted for enosis’, that, ‘contrary to the previous elections of 1925, the nationalist movement proves more conspicuous’ owing to the fact that ‘all candidates were forced to antagonize each other in showing off nationalistic fervor’ and that ‘all twelve elected representatives are nationalists’.31 The way in which enosis overshadowed the underlying causes of the crisis and became the dominant popular demand of the October 1931 uprising created a defensive stereotype that, drawn on again in 1948 and reinforced with additional features, would become a decisive factor in the future course of the Cyprus problem. With the October uprising, the enosis demand escaped the boundaries of critical political thought. It transferred to the emotional imaginative domain and took on the form of an absolute, non-negotiable enosis, with no intermediary stages, with no constitutional in betweens, with total indifference to the expressed concern and mounting reaction of the Turkish Cypriots to the vocal enosis rhetoric.32 Though, after the elections of 1925, Bishop Nicodemos and the rest of the Greek representatives realized the need not to raise the enosis issue in the Legislative Council in order to ensure Turkish Cypriot cooperation, they failed to resist demagogy.33 During the hard years of Palmer’s governorship the enosis movement would be placed on the backburner and then start simmering during the war owing to Churchill’s ‘philhellenism’. On the first British rejection during the post-war resurgence of the enosis movement and Britain’s attempt to bring back the idea of the ‘evolutionary process’ through a constitutional procedure, the enosis demand would be rekindled and capture the imagination with the

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same intensity as in October 1931. There would now be the same hard, uncompromising attitude of the type ‘enosis and only enosis’, ‘down with conditions and pseudo-constitutions’. The notion of an ‘absolute solution’34 would take, from now on, the form of a stereotyped notion in the minds of the nationalist circles of the Right and the Church that did not allow any kind of negotiation for the gradual improvement of the existing situation nor any form of ‘evolutionary process’, regardless of whether such a process might leave open a window for enosis in the future. The triumphant victory of the Coalition of the Left that emerged as a powerful majority trend in the 1946 municipal elections,35 as well as the dynamic labour mobilizations, forced both the Right and the Church allied to it to the sidelines. However, when the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) adopted the ‘evolutionary process’ through its participation in the Consultative Assembly (September 1947), making it clear that ‘such participation in no way means abandonment of the demand for enosis with Greece’,36 the Right, strengthened by the election of the Bishop of Kyrenia as new Archbishop, Makarios II, became entrenched in the logic of the ‘absolute solution’, as in 1930–1. Commencing with inflammatory nationalist rhetoric, it launched an all-out struggle against the Left, introducing the civil-war climate of Greek anti-communism as henceforth a constant characteristic of the internal strife.37 The indecisive attitude of Britain at the Consultative Assembly, which recalled the reservations of 1930 regarding the extent of constitutional freedoms, played into the hands of the Ethnarchy. An unexpected gift was also offered to the nationalist Right by AKEL itself when, following the confusion that ensued in its higher ranks as to the ‘evolutionary’ line, which was due to the intervention of Zachariades, it aligned with the Ethnarchy on nonintermediary, non-negotiable enosis. The account by the then General Secretary of AKEL, Fifis Ioannou, of the ‘mission to the mountain’, the discussion with the General Secretary of the Greek Communist Party, Nikos Zachariades, and the adventure with Kominform reveals, in a climate that recalls a Sophoclean tragedy, how, with an aphoristic denunciation of ‘liberalism’ and the certainty that ‘in two months we’ll be in Athens’, a dialectic political course was overturned, thus bringing to an inglorious close the most enlightened period of the Left in Cyprus.38 Judging from the spirited popular mobilizations for self-government peaking at the unprecedented ‘Rally for Self-Government’ (31 October 1948),39 one could plausibly infer that there was substantial popular support for this political approach. On such grounds, one could also reasonably infer that the course of the Cyprus problem might have run differently had AKEL remained firmly oriented towards the rational course of ‘evolutionary process’,40 as Harry Pollitt, Secretary of the British Communist Party, had counselled, albeit without result.41 AKEL had already rejected out of hand the final British proposals for limited self-

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government, and had withdrawn from the Consultative Assembly (21 May 1948), despite private reassurances to the British by high-ranking party cadres concerning a readiness to accept the proposed constitution. Besides the continuous attacks form the Ethnarchy and the Right, the AKEL leaders seem to have feared that, had they accepted the British proposals, they might have run the risk of losing to the Right, which was lying in wait, the elections for the constitutional organs provided by the constitution, as well as the municipal elections scheduled for 1949.42 It is worth noting that, for similar party considerations, the Right under Dervis had refused to participate in the Consultative Assembly, even though Dervis privately expressed willingness to accept its results.43 On the other hand, the Right seems not to have been annoyed at the continuation of the authoritarian appointment system through which it safeguarded all government positions, excluding the Left completely.44 Andreas Fantis, then high-ranking AKEL cadre, ascribes the failure of the Consultative Assembly to the attitude of the British government, the attitude of the Right and the Ethnarchy, the complete alignment of the Turkish Cypriot leadership with the British colonial government and, finally, the hasty and untimely withdrawal of AKEL.45 Research into British archives shows that Britain’s refusal to satisfy the demand of the Coalition Left for full self-government at this juncture was partly connected with the fear that a possible control of the government by communist AKEL might endanger its strategic interests in the region.46 The members of the British government also feared that, ‘no matter how advanced and democratic a constitution they granted, the Greek Cypriot preoccupation with enosis would sooner or later render it unworkable’.47 The question as to how differently events in Cyprus would have evolved if AKEL’s management of the situation had led to the acceptance and implementation of the constitution proposed by Jackson at the Consultative Assembly in 1948 still lingers unanswered. However, such a development would certainly have legitimized and consolidated the idea of the ‘evolutionary process’.48 Rolandos Katsiaounis, despite leaving open the question of the possible consequences of choosing alternative options, ends up with an assessment, unsupported by the facts, that the internal contradictions of Cypriot society as well as the increasing strategic importance of Cyprus for Britain would not have allowed for the normal functioning and evolution of the constitutional reforms.49 He fails to explore the prospect of the ‘evolutionary process’ in the event that AKEL adopted the reasoning of acceptance of the constitution, as expounded by Ploutis Servas at the Party Central Committee.50 Given that the Right would have followed AKEL and would have participated in the process, as Katsiaounis himself adequately documents,51 one cannot easily dismiss the possibility of a successful alternative course. Furthermore, a normal constitutional development, which would have gained the consent of the people, would have safeguarded British interests in Cyprus rather than endangering them.

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Also outstanding is the question as to whether, on a joint evolutionary course, the two communities’ aspirations might have converged at an earlier stage with the notion of independence, thus escaping the misfortunes that befell Cyprus. Nevertheless, it is an indisputable fact that AKEL, having turned, under Papaioannou, to the intransigent line of non-negotiable immediate enosis (March 1949),52 lost the initiative to the Ethnarchy, becoming a mere follower in the logic of the ‘absolute solution’, leaving the people of the ‘Rally for Self-Government’ rudderless, prey to the fancies of a Cypriot Great Idea. AKEL tried in vain to regain its leading role by sending a memorandum to the UN and a letter to the Greek Prime Minister (November 1949) in which it voiced the demand that ‘Greek should be the first voice on the UN stage in support of the panhellenic aspiration for union of Cyprus with Greece’.53 It did not convince, simply because this was not its genuine policy. By contrast, the Ethnarchy, henceforth the indisputable exponent of both the ‘absolute solution’ and popular feeling, managed to mobilize the whole of the people in the enosis plebiscite of 15 January 1950, leaving AKEL no other option but to follow unwillingly.54 The plebiscite was merely the last nail in the coffin in the search for an approach through political dialogue to the Cyprus problem. From that point onwards, the internationalization of the problem as well as the armed struggle – no matter how heroic it was – were both acts of the same unresolved drama, in which those in control both in Cyprus and in Greece proved incapable of understanding the regional and international environment in which they unfolded the enosis struggle. One needs do no more than read the text of the first appeal to the UN (1954) written by Alexis Kyrou55 to grasp the blatant political naivety and the ignorance of fundamental rules of international politics. Paschalis Kitromilides notes that the exportation of irredentist nationalism from the independent Greek state to the Greek East resulted in impeding, in Pontos, ‘serious examination of alternative political options when international circumstances seemed for a fleeting moment to favor the creation of an independent republic in which Greeks, Turks, and Armenians’ might coexist at the end of the First World War’. The result in Cyprus was ‘outright rejection, as heresy or treason, of mere consideration of any other form of collective existence that was short of enosis with Greece, thus undermining the independent Republic that was established in 1960’.56

5.2. Makarios and the enosis movement Makarios was the guiding spirit and the driving force behind the plebiscite of 15 January 1950. He was still Bishop of Kition and chairman of the newly established Office of the Ethnarchy, which functioned as the executive instru-

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ment of the Ethnarchic Council. Having been elected Archbishop as Makarios III (October 1950) at the age of 37, he embarked on an all-out struggle for union of Cyprus with Greece. His only weapons were unshakeable faith in the justice of the struggle, and unyielding insistence on objectives preset on the basis of predetermined ethical criteria; albeit with complete ignorance of the regional and international environment in which the struggle would be waged. Following Britain’s refusal to discuss on the basis of the plebiscite verdict, Makarios turned to Greece, and pressed hard for an appeal to the UN General Assembly. He achieved this after only four years with the government of Papagos – without taking into account the already vocal reaction of the Turkish Cypriot community, and without deliberating on the possibility of it being used as a counterweight by the colonial power, something that had been the practice since the establishment of the Legislative Council in 1882.57 Even more importantly, without examining the possibility of Turkey’s involvement, in spite of strong indications in this direction since the early years of the Second World War,58 as well as unambiguous political interventions by Turkish government officials since the commencement of the internationalization campaign following the plebiscite of 1950. In this regard, fault lies mainly with successive Greek governments, the diplomatic services of which should certainly have had knowledge of the existence in Turkey of a whole network of Pan-Turkist organizations that pinpointed Cyprus at the centre of their irredentist orientations. Greek diplomacy should also have been following the escalation of irredentist writings in the Turkish press following the plebiscite. Furthermore, they should have noted the immediate reaction of both the Turkish Foreign Minister and, the opposition party, the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) or Republican People’s Party59 to a mere statement of fact by the Greek Prime Minister, Sophoclis Venizelos, in the Greek Parliament (February 1951) to the effect that ‘there existed a demand for union of Cyprus with Greece’.60 Indicative of the inefficiency of Greek diplomacy and the political acumen of the Greek leaders of the time is the fact that, although they were aware of Greece’s extremely limited capabilities,61 they did not seem to have realized the dramatic upgrading of Turkey’s position as a NATO member and its leverage possibilities. They even considered the Turkish interest in Cyprus as ‘technical’, and that it ‘would never have been a substantial obstacle to Greek designs’. Pantazis Terlexis brings forth all these factors and conclusively remarks: . . . Such an attitude ignored all teachings of history. It led to a misunderstanding of the Turkish position. It ignored elemental facts of the Turkish policy, and continuously underestimated Turkish reactions and initiatives. Greek Diplomacy failed to perceive in time the consequences of positioning

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Given the inability of Greek diplomacy to analyse the regional and international data surrounding the Cyprus question and draw up a long-term realistic strategy on the future of Cyprus, one wonders how Makarios failed to assess in its real dimensions the extremely limited capabilities of a post-war Greece further ravaged by civil war, a country that lay in ruins, completely dependent on Western aid, a country that, in Papandreous’s words, ‘breathes today with two lungs the one being British and the other American and for this reason incapable of running the risk of dying of suffocation’.63 However, Makarios’s unyielding insistence was not quenched even when he himself was given a similar answer by the Prime Minister, General Plastiras.64 He persistently pressed Plastiras’s successor, S. Venizelos, and even came to the point of threatening publicly to denounce him to the Greek people, only to get the response: ‘You can do whatever you want, you may denounce wherever you want, but you will not direct the foreign policy of Greece.’65 Nothing had changed in the balance of power in the region nor in the political weight of Greece when, in 1954, Marshal Papagos, moved by rightist sensitivity to ‘national claims’ and the absolute conviction that, ‘after so many sacrifices in the War [. . .] Greece had the moral right to ask for Cyprus’,66 decided on recourse to the UN, demanding union of Cyprus with Greece. Given the control of the UN General Assembly by the United States and other Western powers at that time; given, further, the increase in Cyprus’s strategic importance to British interests – given all such negative factors, where did Makarios place his hope of vindication of the enosis line? And how could he fail to think of re-examining the line of immediate enosis following the crushing defeat at the UN, where even Krisna Menon of India denied support, describing the whole issue as a Greek demand for the annexation of Cyprus? Finally, with what hope of change in the regional and international balance of power did he proceed with the armed struggle in 1955 with the same unyielding persistence in non-negotiable enosis? Nikos Kranidiotis, the man who, more than anyone else, lived close to Makarios throughout the 1950s, recognizes that ‘Makarios had unquestionable leadership qualities’, that ‘he was endowed with quick perception, clear and broad thought’ and ‘a surprising self-control’. He also acknowledges in Makarios the existence of ‘immovable faith in his vision’ and ‘persistent pursuance of his objectives’, ‘deep faith in the rights of his people’, ‘dedication to the national ideal’, ‘unyielding perseverance’, ‘courageous and fearless encounter of obstacles’.67 Kranidiotis also notes that Makarios, as ‘the heir of the ideals of the Byzantine Empire and carrier of imperial privileges’,

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‘expressed in his unredeemed people the ideals and the symbols of the “Greek– Christian civilization” as understood by conservative elements of the Right’, that ‘he attributed particular importance to the splendour of performances and the brightness of his liturgical appearances’. He further points out that ‘the ecclesiastical heritage of Makarios added the monastic and Episcopal experience, empowered his authoritarian character and strengthened a centralized way of management’. Kranidiotis closes this psychographic description of Makarios with the double-edged remark that ‘his ambitions recalled analogous ambitions of middle aged potentates, but nonetheless, they had deeper and more substantial grounds: the exceptional spiritual and moral qualities of the man’.68 A comprehensive interpretation not only of the leading role Makarios played in the enosis movement until the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, but of his whole turbulent course of action, is offered by Max Weber’s model of categories of domination,69 where a legitimized authority in the conscience of a community or a society is classified into three ideal types: (a) the ‘traditional’, where the dominating power is supported by traditional institutions, and which is dominant in patriarchic, mainly rural societies; (b) the ‘legal–rational’, where the validity of authority is founded on an impersonal legal order, which is the representative type of authority in Western bourgeois democracies; (c) the ‘charismatic’, where the dominating power, usually revolutionary by not being confined by the existing order, emerges at times of great upheavals and crises, in a feverish atmosphere of confusion, tension and passion, irrespective of the stage of development of a particular society. According to Max Weber, the charismatic authority is legitimized by ‘certain qualities of a particular personality which make him/her distinct from common people, thus encountered as if endowed by supernatural, superhuman, or at least, exceptional powers and qualities’.70 In troubled times, the collective unconscious intuitively seeks the ‘Messiah’ who will save the particular society or social group by means of his or her charismatic qualities by bringing back the lost feeling of security. In Cyprus, massive popular mobilizations and the emotionally charged controversies surrounding the question of enosis, when the enosis agitation was rekindled after the Second World War, created favourable conditions for the emergence of the charismatic leader. The election of Makarios to the Bishopric of Kition in 1948, at a time the Church was undergoing a protracted crisis, offered him a field of action in which direct contact with the people brought forth the charismatic personality sketched by Kranidiotis. The crisis of political line in AKEL (1948–9), with its fatal turn to the ethnarchic logic of the ‘absolute solution’ in the form of immediate enosis, opened the way to the complete domination of Makarios through his elevation to the Archbishop’s throne in October 1950. Kyriakos Markides quotes the Weberian model to show that

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‘Makarios’s strength was based on a rare combination of traditional and charismatic authority reinforced and expanded through legal-rational legitimations’71 when he was elected with vast majorities first as Ethnarch (1950) and later as President of the Republic of Cyprus (1959, 1968, and 1973).72 The dramatic crises his turbulent career underwent worked as catalysts in the continual reinforcement and renewal of his charismatic authority.74 Makarios’s elevation to the archbishopric constituted a historic meeting of his charismatic personality with the ethnarchic enosis tradition in the absolute form it had taken through the 1931 uprising and the resurgence of 1948. This ethnarchic tradition of non-negotiable enosis formed the core of a value system in which he functioned, the guiding compass of his thought, the holy mission that the nation had assigned him to fulfil. His enthronement speech was a fiery invocation to enosis: ‘I will not rest unless I see enosis with Greece becoming a reality.’74 The Oath of Faneromeni (22 August 1954), the day after the recourse to the UN and in response to Hopkinson’s ‘never’ and the ‘anti-sedition’ laws,75 constituted a high point in the meeting, like that of the biblical David,76 of the charismatic leader with his people: . . . Under these holy domes, let us make the oath in faith: We shall stand faithful unto death to the national will; With no concessions; With no compromise; We shall despise violence and tyranny; With courage we shall raise statures seeking only one thing, aspiring only to one thing: enosis and only enosis. 77

This absolute identification of Makarios with the ethnarchic enosis tradition – a typical element of traditional authority where the ‘Ethnarch’ embodies national tradition, through which he rules – constituted a strong conservative vein in his otherwise revolutionary career, as one who was guided by charisma. While his charismatic idiosyncrasy inspired in him revolutionary methods, he remained completely dedicated to the national objective, which he elevated to a metaphysical, sacred and inviolable, steadfast and non-negotiable concept. This factor, which transcended the field of politics and merged with the metaphysical world, would accompany the deeply religious Makarios throughout his life. Even when, under the immediate threat of partition (1958), he would turn to independence, or when, in the face of impending Turkish invasion, he would opt for the ‘feasible’ as against the ‘desirable’ (1968), the ‘absolute solution’ remained the unshakeable ultimate objective to be achieved in ‘the fullness of time’.78 Enosis remained ‘his holy treasure and his holy yearning’.79 Even when he genuinely tried to sustain Cyprus’s independence, this metaphysical approach was the reason behind Makarios’s failure to create institutions that might have sustained the concept of an independent Cyprus state distinct from that of the nation. It was mainly because of this metaphysical

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approach by Makarios that the anniversary of independence had not been celebrated until the invasion, and that there had been a struggle, following the invasion, to establish respect for the symbols of the Republic of Cyprus. Finally, it was because of this same approach, which made him so sensitive to accusations of ‘oath violation’, that, while as President of the Republic of Cyprus he supported independence, he publicly spoke of, or hinted at the steadfast ultimate objective of, enosis.80

5.3. Makarios and the 1960 Constitution Nikos Kranidiotis illuminates Makarios’s stand during the first years of independence with the following psychographic comment: . . . After 1960, Makarios was a dual personality. On the one hand, he was the carrier of Byzantine tradition, the heir to and guardian of the national imperatives of the race, the Ethnarch of the unredeemed island whose exclusive ideal was enosis. On the other hand, he was the political leader who had signed the London Agreements and, having been elected President of the Republic, had sworn faith in the Constitution and maintenance of the independence of Cyprus. These two imperatives were in continuous conflict within himself, the first prevailing on occasion over the second and vice versa.81

Makarios exhibited a political acumen vindicated by future events when, alone among Greek leaders, he saw the risk, entailed in the Tripartite Conference (August 1955), of Turkey becoming a determining factor in the Cyprus problem. And when the pogrom of Polis showed the course developments were taking, Makarios took the initiative by entering into historic negotiations with the Governor, Marshal Harding, and accepting from the very start the intermediary stage of self-government. In these talks he exhibited such a flexibility that even AKEL proved unable to follow. In fact, when, on 6 December 1955, Reuter spoke of a pending agreement between Harding and Makarios on the basis of self-government, AKEL launched an unprecedented war against any agreement short of ‘immediate and unconditional self-determination’.82 At the same time, AKEL accused Makarios and the Ethnarchy as ‘deserters of the national cause’,83 and organized massive labour demonstrations chanting against the Constitution and in favour of immediate enosis.84 Further, AKEL’s General Secretary, Ezekias Papaioannou, warned that ‘the people of Cyprus accept only one solution to their problem and this is the immediate exercise of selfdetermination with absolutely no conditions’.85 The strong opposition to any compromise by Grivas and the Bishop of Kyrenia,86 as well as the failure of

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Karamanlis to take responsibility,87 added to Harding’s persistent refusal to commit himself to the implementation of the majority principle in representation, brought back, following a brief interval, the demand for an ‘absolute solution’, making this the sole focus of the struggle. However, when the Macmillan Plan (August 1958) made partition imminent, Makarios and Karamanlis accepted independence with the exclusion of enosis.88 The talks that ensued in Zurich between Greece and Turkey would lead to the Zurich– London Agreements (January–February 1959). In London Makarios attempted to renegotiate the Zurich Agreements. He applied the ‘tightrope tactics’ that he had unsuccessfully tried in his negotiations with Harding.89 However, the traumatic experience of 29 February 1956,90 added to Karamanlis’s unfaltering determination this time, prevented Makarios from pushing things to the edge of the abyss. His joke with Karamanlis at a reception the day after the Agreements had been signed: ‘Did you ever imagine, Mr President, that I wouldn’t have signed?’, and his cryptic reply to Karamanlis’s retort: ‘Then why all that fuss?’, ‘I had my reasons’, indicate that his reasons must have been rather communicative, if they did not hide thoughts at the back of his mind that would partly explain his future stand.91 The source of the above exchange, George Seferis (then ambassador to London), who had clashed with Averof on the contents of the Agreements, adds a derogatory hint on Makarios to the effect that it was not the first time that a political leader had not come up to his expectations.92 No matter what the real reasons were behind that ‘performance’ at Lancaster House, it is there that one should search for the very first traces of Makarios’s ‘dual personality’, of which Kranidiotis speaks. It is there that one should search for the very first causes of the crisis that would come to the fore in 1961, and would ultimately lead to the breakdown of the ‘common’ state in December 1963. When the Republic of Cyprus was established (16 August 1960), there were still three pending issues: the implementation of the 70:30 ratio in the Public Service, the creation of the Cyprus Army and the establishment of separate municipalities in five towns – that is, Nicosia, Famagusta, Larnaca, Limassol and Paphos. With regard to the first issue, without dismissing it, Vice President Kuchuk showed an understanding of Makarios’s reasoning for gradual implementation according to the needs of the Service. On the second issue, disagreement remained in view of the fact that the Turkish side insisted on a separate structure at all levels; but that disagreement did not become a major issue. However, the establishment of separate municipalities constituted the central theme of a gathering continuous crisis, which, with intermittent incidents after 1961, revealing both the intentions and the objectives of the two sides, led ultimately to the eruption in December 1963. Since June 1957 the Turkish Cypriot municipal councillors, acting according to the Turkish policy of promoting partition, had withdrawn from the joint

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municipal councils in protest against the political activity of their Greek Cypriot colleagues, which, in their view, promoted national objectives shared by only one section of the population.93 In April 1958, the Turkish Cypriot municipal councillors, acting in coordination with Kuchuk’s party, decided on the establishment of separate municipalities. Through violent demonstrations and vandalism against Greek Cypriot properties in June the same year in Nicosia, the capture of municipal installations in the Turkish sectors of towns and the enforced withdrawal of the Turkish Cypriot municipal employees, the Turkish Cypriot leadership created de facto separate municipalities, thus enforcing the first form of administrative partition in Cyprus.94 In August the same year, the Turkish argument for separate municipalities was incorporated in the Macmillan Plan. And when, a little later, exploratory talks started between Averof and Zorlu aiming at an overall solution, Zorlu placed that argument at the top of the agenda as a condition subsequently to be rejected by Averof and referred for further deliberation.95 Before those talks had reached final decisions, Makarios and Anthimos, Bishop of Kition, were briefed on the issues under discussion at a meeting in Athens headed by Karamanlis and Averof on 29 January 1959. In relation to the Turkish demand for separate municipalities, following Averof’s explanation of his rejection on the grounds that ‘it somehow constituted a dividing element’, the two Prelates disagreed with him and expressed their preference for separate municipalities. Their reasoning was as follows: ‘The Turkish sectors are in deplorable conditions and lots of money coming from Greek Cypriot tax payers should be spent to ameliorate the situation there. No matter how much is spent, the Turkish Cypriots will never be satisfied, this becoming a source of continuous friction inhibiting future peaceful coexistence. On the contrary, if there were separate municipalities, the Turkish Cypriots would blame no other but themselves for the misfunctioning of their municipalities.’96 The protracted tug of war in relation to this issue, from the establishment of the Republic until the eruption of 1963, shaped the core of the internal aspect of the Cyprus problem as it unfolded until 1974, and further, until 2003. Mutual suspicion and consequent conflicting alternative planning by the two leaderships, both of which received the new state as a ‘bastard child’, created a vicious circle. Any proposal or act of Makarios in the direction of unifying the municipalities was taken as concealing the aim of establishing a state of majority rule, which was regarded as the first step in the gradual overturning of the Agreements and the implementation of enosis. Such suspicions were, in fact, not too far from real intentions. On the other hand, the insistence of the Turkish Cypriot leadership in full implementation of the constitutional provision for separate municipalities (article 173) was interpreted as concealing the aim of partition. Such an interpretation was again not too far from reality.97

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There certainly existed serious practical problems, chief among them the delineation of municipal boundaries so that citizens and properties were included in their respective communities. This was not easy, as there were no clear dividing lines between the Greek and Turkish neighbourhoods of towns, and far less so in relation to properties. Nevertheless, the main obstacle to reaching an agreement was the confrontation of two incompatible principles: that of federalization for the Turkish Cypriots, which presupposed some form of control of territory at the local administration level, and that of a unitary state for the Greek Cypriots, on the basis of which separate municipalities were considered as undermining the unity of the state.98 Through such incompatible approaches, the municipality issue became a miniature of the Cyprus problem, with far-reaching repercussions that relate even to current approaches by the two communities. The author of the unique treatise on the municipality issue, Diana Markides, pointedly remarks: . . . If the Greek Cypriots had understood, at an earlier stage, that by tolerating the impracticabilities and allowing a larger element of autonomy in local government, they would have secured the key to Turkish toleration of the new Republic, a foundation might possibly have been laid on which to make the constitution viable. [. . .] At the end of three years of failure to solve the municipal issue, unified municipalities had become equated by the Greek Cypriots with the unity and sovereignty of the state. However, ‘unity of the state’ was an alias for uncurbed majority rule. For the Turks, unified municipalities were a first step in that direction and, therefore, unacceptable.99

Makarios’s persistent refusal to accept the implementation of the Constitution relating to separate municipalities caused chain reactions, with unconstitutional acts by both sides that intensified and deepened the crisis. As for the situation on the ground, the municipalities, having been de facto separated since 1958, maintained the separate status after August 1960 on the basis of temporary laws, renewed every four months until December 1962. The main acts in the dramatic escalation of the crisis might be outlined as follows: the Turkish Cypriot MPs voted against taxation laws (March and December 1961) as a reaction to Makarios’s refusal to proceed with the separation of the municipalities;100 Makarios unilaterally abolished all municipalities (December 1962) on the grounds that, as long as the Turkish Cypriots denied the notion of unified municipalities, he did not see any other outlet than the termination of their existence;101 the Turkish Cypriot Communal Chamber passed a law on separate Turkish municipalities (December 1962);102 both sides launched separate appeals to the Constitutional Court, each against the other side’s unconstitutional acts (January 1963); both sides refused to accept the decision of

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the Court (April 1963); efforts to reach a mutually acceptable settlement on the municipality issue foundered in May 1963.103 The last failure of compromise led the crisis to explosive dimensions. Diana Markides notes that ‘after May 1963 the Greek Cypriot emphasis shifted from attempts to modify problematic provisions of the Constitution to seeking ways to modify the Zurich and London Agreements’.104 This in spite of Averof’s warning about ‘dangers threatening Cyprus and other precious parts of Hellenism as well as broader interests of the country’; and despite the Greek Government’s decision, conveyed by Averof to Makarios, ‘to help you as we have done so far but to make public our disagreement if you attempt unilaterally to abolish the Agreements or part of them’; and despite Averof’s prediction, conveyed to Makarios, that Cyprus was entering ‘a dangerous adventure’, carrying Greece along in the same path.105 After 1960, while the Turk Mukavemet Teskilati (TMT) (Turkish Resistance Movement) was secretly preparing to encounter a possible Greek attempt to overthrow the Constitution, the preparation of the Greek Cypriot community in case of conflict was undertaken by the ‘Organosis’, with Interior Minister, Polykarpos Yiorgadjis, as the leader (‘Akritas’), with Tassos Papadopoulos as Deputy Leader, and Nikos Kosis as Chief of Staff.106 The plan of the ‘Organosis’, signed by its leader ‘Akritas’, known as the ‘Akritas’ Plan, as to the organization of the struggle until the fulfilment of ‘the ultimate immovable national objective’, was worked out in September 1963.107 By that time Makarios had taken the decision to proceed to unilateral amendment of the Constitution if there was no agreement – which would actually be the case – and started briefing foreign embassies.108 As to the US Ambassador in particular, further to oral briefing on 6 June, Makarios sent him a written classified memorandum in which ‘he conveyed his final decision to amend the Constitution and denounce the Guarantee and Alliance Agreements’.109 Until the achievement of the ultimate objective, the ‘Akritas’ Plan provided for four stages, each of which would be publicized only after full implementation of the previous one: first, amendment of the negative elements in the Constitution and the ‘redundancy in practice of the Guarantee and Alliance Agreements’, given that ‘outside intervention to prevent the amendment is unjustified and inapplicable’; second, denunciation of the Guarantee and Alliance Agreements as legally invalid and in practice inapplicable; third, holding of a referendum in which ‘the people will freely express and implement its will’; fourth, countermeasures by state forces against ‘any intervention from within or from without’. As for the tactics, the Plan noted that, in the event of generalized conflict, ‘we have to be ready to proceed immediately to actions one to four including immediate declaration of enosis since there will not then be any need for waiting or for any diplomatic actions’.110 Makarios made clear his final decision to proceed, if necessary, to unilat-

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eral amendment of the Constitution, in a letter to Nikos Kranidiotis (17 October 1963) in which, after expressing the view that the amendment of the Constitution was ‘a national imperative’, concluded with the decision that, in the event that the Turkish side rejected negotiations or in case negotiations failed, ‘the government would proceed in taking other measures in the direction of amending the Constitution’.111 Foreign Minister, Spyros Kyprianou, also sent a letter to Kranidiotis (25 October 1963) in which he expressed views in the same frame of mind as those of Makarios, while he further expressed positions on tactics in line with those of the ‘Akritas’ Plan.112 However, Makarios made his intentions crystal clear in his letter to G. Papandreou (1 March 1964) only two months after the intecommunal clashes had started: . . . Our intention, Mr President, is the abolition of the Zurich and London Agreements, so that Greek Hellenism is able, in coordination with the Motherland, to freely decide its future. I am the one who signed the Agreements on behalf of the Greeks of Cyprus. In my personal opinion, there was no other choice under the circumstances of the time. But I never believed that the Agreements would be a permanent regime. [. . .] Since then things have changed both outside and inside Cyprus. Therefore, I think time has come for us to try to get rid of the enforced agreements. I fully realize that it is not an easy project. There need be a long and difficult struggle. However I believe in the vindication of justice. Our struggle is now being waged on both the political and the military front. As for the first front, this has been our own choice;113 as for the second, it has been forced on us.114

This nexus of decisions and activities by Makarios explains his then inexplicable statements, which either hinted at or directly referred to enosis, the start having been made with his speech at OHEN (Young Women’s Christian Association) on 4 January 1962, after the Turkish Cypriots had vetoed taxation laws in the House of Representatives.115 This configuration of Makarios’s thoughts and actions also explains his insistent refusal, during his visit to Turkey (22 November 1962), to reaffirm commitment to the Agreements and his further refusal to accept inclusion of such a reaffirmation in the joint communiqué.116 Makarios found refuge again in the ‘tightrope diplomacy tactics’ when the course things had taken, owing to his own miscalculations, left him no other option. In the first place, he acted under pressure from the ‘hawks’ within his own circle.117 In the second place, he acted under the weight of increasing malicious attacks by unionists arguing that he had violated his oaths. This last accusation, which was of a personal and moral character, deepened the internal

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crisis that afflicted his soul, since he had signed the Agreements in London,118 and made him ponder this criticism more than Clerides’s and AKEL’s reservations with regard both to the timing and the extent of the amendments.119 The close links Makarios had achieved with the Non-Aligned Movement, which had greatly increased its leverage in the UN General Assembly by that time, gave him reasonable hope that he might use the UN General Assembly as a defence weapon against a possible Turkish intervention.120 However, Karamanlis’s resignation (11 June 1963) and his withdrawal to Paris must have been the decisive factor that precipitated developments. The strong indications that G. Papandreou and S. Venizelos, both outspoken critics of the Agreements, would soon come to power created high expectations for the promotion of the enosis argument. While such a development would remove the possible reservations that the presence of Karamanlis imposed on Makarios, it deprived him of the support he had had from Karamanlis concerning the policy of maintaining the Agreements.121 In fact, after Papandreou and Venizelos had been returned to power as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister respectively (3 November 1963), the ‘Akritas’ Plan was adopted and elaborated on by the Greek General Staff, which referred to the document as ‘Makarios’s Plan’. It was subsequently also adopted by the Greek Defence and Foreign Ministries (6–7 December 1963). The report prepared by the General Staff established that ‘as a matter of fact, there is a strong will of the vast majority of the Greeks of Cyprus and the Greeks of free Greece for the union of Cyprus’. ‘Therefore’, the document concluded, ‘in the minds of all mentioned above this matter has been imposed as the “National Objective”’.122 Detailed elaboration of Makarios’s intentions and plans in relation to the 1960 Constitution, on the one hand, illuminates and explains how the notion of ‘absolute solution’ surfaced again. On the other hand, it will contribute to a critical approach towards the conspiracy theory, which exercised a catalytic role in the re-emergence of the culture of ‘absolute solution’ in the course of events leading to the referendum of 2004, and one that still at the time of writing captures popular imagination. It was for years embedded in our minds that Makarios’s attempt to amend the Constitution had been the result of his having been trapped by Britain through encouragement, and that the ultimate calamity was the outcome of foreign conspiracy masterminded by the United States, Britain and Turkey, in order to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus.123 The openly hostile presence of the United States at the forefront of the Cyprus crisis in 1964 and subsequently, particularly through the dramatic blackmailing threats of Ball (February 1964)124 and the Acheson Plan (August 1964),125 the undisguised attempt to abolish the Republic and force partition through double enosis, all these developments legitimized in our minds the notion of foreign conspiracy, which we

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projected back to the events of 1960–3. Within such a mindset we all bypassed the revelation of the ‘Akritas’ Plan (April 1966)126 as another facet of the foreign-led conspiracy that was conspicuous to anyone who lived through developments at that time. In an atmosphere of deepening crisis, with conspiracy acting from within the walls through EOKA-B, we accepted without second thought the analysis of Hadjiargyris on the ‘double crime’ against Cyprus, which, according to the author, consisted of the British ‘trap’ and the US-inspired and US-led ‘conspiracy’.127 After having mapped out the British ‘trap’128 and then the tentacles of US ‘conspiracy’, which he traced in two articles of American papers forecasting developments in Cyprus on the model of those in Cuba,129 Hadjiargyris rounded up with the following assessment: ‘The December crisis was manufactured by outside powers and factors. As for the timing, the crisis was programmed in such a way as to work against the Greeks at a time when Greece was without a democratic government.’130 As for the British ‘trap’, Hadjiargyris’s oversimplifying version collapsed as soon as classified documents from the British Archives came to light. First, Kyprianou’s mission to London and the talks he had there with the Commonwealth Secretary, Duncan Sandys (the key event in the ‘trap’), took place in mid-May 1963, when the course towards the clash had already been determined through the final deadlock on the municipality issue, the failure of the two sides to rescind unconstitutional acts (abolition of the municipalities and enactment of legislation on separate municipalities) and the definite decision on the part of Makarios to proceed with the amendment of the Constitution. Second, and more importantly, the documents in no way show Sandys as having ‘encouraged’ the changes Kyprianou had proposed.131 It is one thing if Kyprianou had interpreted Sandys’s cautious attitude as encouragement.132 It is yet another thing if the different tactical approaches by the Foreign and the Commonwealth Offices, during the critical period of September–October 1963, had not made possible the immediate communication of the Foreign Office’s adamant rejection of any unilateral action in Cyprus,133 leaving some room to the personal sympathy of the British High Commissioner, Arthur Clark (November 1963),134 when the only thing remaining, in the countdown to the violent eruption, was a spark. Nevertheless, beyond the personal stand taken by the High Commissioner, there had been numerous other signals to the opposite effect, such as Home’s adamantly negative attitude to Makarios’s intentions at a meeting with Averof,135 the clear communication in this regard by the Foreign Office to the Greek Embassy in London,136 the communication by Athens to Nicosia on the Foreign Office attitude137 and, further, the Foreign Office memorandum to its diplomatic missions on what stand to take on the matter of Cyprus.138 Furthermore, before the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus

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in Paris (19 December 1963), when there was still time for Makarios to withdraw his amendment proposals, there had been the reassurance by the British Foreign Secretary to his Greek counterpart, Sophoclis Venizelos, to the effect that the Foreign Office ‘had never endorsed Makarios’s course of actions’.139 This was so, as Venizelos had expressed anger to Kyprianou during that meeting, because, in Venizelos’s view, ‘without inevitable necessity, we are heading towards a new crisis which will entangle Greece regardless of its will’.140 In addition, there had been the adamant opposition of the United States to any attempt to change the Agreements. Makarios had been fully aware of that opposition about which he had expressed his annoyance in his interview with Hadjiargyris.141 Finally, a rudimentary analysis of power balances, interests and influences in the region did not legitimize any hopes held by Makarios that, in the event of a Turkish intervention, Greece and Britain would intervene to protect Cyprus142 and that ‘Washington would ultimately accept the fait accompli “so as not to lose Greek friendship”’.143 Neither did the new Greek government under G. Papandreou give Makarios the green light to go ahead with the intention of overthrowing the Agreements. Ambassador Nikos Kranidiotis, having visited Premier Papandreou and Foreign Minister Venizelos only ‘a few days after the swearing in of the new government’, draws on the following evidence, which he could not but have communicated to Makarios: . . . From the talks I had both with the Premier and the Foreign Minister, I got the impression that, despite its emotional expressions and enthusiasms, the Greek government did not desire a resurgence of the Cyprus question, at least at that stage, out of fear of the danger of turbulence. This attitude of the Greek government hardened after it had received the vote of confidence in Parliament. Indicative of this attitude was the interview Papandreou had with Athenian newspaper reporters [23 November 1963]: ‘I regard the Agreements as a mistake,’ he said, ‘and I am sure that, under the circumstances of the time, they might have been infinitely better. But since they have been signed, a real situation has been created and dealing with it needs utmost care.’144

The historical evidence that has been cited shows conclusively how unfounded the theory was that outside conspiracy had been the basic cause of the 1963 crisis. Given the relationship Yiorgadjis had with US secret services,145 and given the – unjustified but existent – American fear of Cyprus becoming a second Cuba, and their permanent obsession with fighting communism,146 one cannot exclude the possibility of the Americans having since then been thinking about double enosis. Moreover, one cannot exclude the possibility that, through the underground connections they had, they might have

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encouraged the extreme elements on both sides in the direction of conflict through which to dismantle the Republic of Cyprus and force partition in the form of double enosis. However, if such US planning had existed before December 1963, it must have been the outcome of the indisputably autonomous planning of Makarios in the direction of overthrowing the Agreements. On that last eventuality they had left no doubt about their opposition, a fact that further weakens the above hypothetical proposition. Furthermore, foreign influence in creating popular feeling could have been only indirect through the underground activity of Yiorgadjis’s power mechanism. Makarios was the only one who could create popular feeling through both the magnetism of his charismatic personality and his ‘legal–rational’ power as Archbishop and President. Given that the plans of both the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot sides were incompatible and mutually exclusive, conflict was unavoidable. The when and how of the first spark was a secondary matter. A second and more significant factor that emerges from the above-cited historical evidence relates to the perception of the solution by the Greek Cypriot community in the period 1960–3. The frenzied celebrations with which the Greek Cypriots received the news of the signing of the Agreements (19 February 1959)147 and the euphoria with which they received the solution, aware that it excluded enosis, bear convincing evidence that the people saw in the solution the essential precondition, which was liberation from the colonial rule and prospects of improvement in their living conditions. However, burning criticism of the Agreements by ultra-right political forces and by AKEL on the course towards the first presidential elections,148 and the ominous shadow of a future storm thrown up by the ‘Deniz’ incident (18 October 1959), began to create doubts about the auspicious future that independence promised and that the dithyrambic speech of Makarios, on his return from exile, had reaffirmed. When Makarios himself, in speeches from January 1962 onwards, began to send out ominous messages with regard to the Agreements, concern about the pending issues in the implementation of the Constitution started gradually being transformed into anxiety and fear, intensified by acts of violence led by ‘dark forces’.149 In that ominous atmosphere that forecast imminent storm, anxiety and fear pushed popular feeling to radical positions in line with Makarios’s objectives, which the people intuitively perceived and impulsively followed, closing ranks with their leader and prelate. The need to face the ‘imminent threat’ led emotions to fever pitch, leaving no room for calm rational approaches. In such a climate, Clerides and AKEL confined their reservations on the course matters were taking to private meetings with Makarios. Either they could not muster the courage or they judged that conditions were not sufficiently propitious openly to appeal to the people in order to create popular support for the Agreements.150

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In this climate of crisis, where critical thought was easily replaced by emotional nationalist exaltations fed by absolute intuitive notions of justice, people were drawn, as in 1931 and 1948, to the logic of ‘absolute solution’ – which this time took the form of absolutely unrestrained independence, the establishment of a majority government and the creation of conditions in which the majority, unimpeded by any conditions, would exercise the right of self-determination. The democracy-subverting role of Yiorgadjis (and of Denktas, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter) contributed, in proportion to the measure of influence his power mechanism exerted, in turning suspicion into hostility and erecting the nationalist wall that still holds the two communities apart.

5.4. Between the devil and the deep blue sea From the outbreak of intercommunal clashes (21 December 1963), the withdrawal of the Turkish Cypriots from state organs, and the creation of Turkish enclaves up until the coup and the Turkish invasion (July 1974), Cyprus lay between the devil and the deep blue sea. As for Makarios, he found himself faced with a personal drama reminiscent of Epimetheus, which might best be described by the saying: ‘The greatest enemy of the good is the better.’ His effort to topple the London and Zurich Agreements, with the aim of achieving the better and, if possible, the ideal, brought him into a long desperate encounter with exactly that which he had passionately struggled to avoid: partition. On the one hand, Turkey, following the outbreak of clashes, started implementing, step by step, plans for administrative autonomy of the Turkish Cypriots to a degree that was far more extensive than provided for by the 1960 constitution. The Turkish position, as recorded in Galo Plaza’s Report (§ 72), moved gradually from complete partition at the beginning of the crisis to a federation that would be erected on the basis of geographical separation of the two communities. On the other hand, George Papandreou, who, though at first he supported, at least in public, Makarios’s line of full unrestrained independence,151 later on, following Acheson’s appearance on the stage, in an effort to achieve US intervention to prevent an invasion by Turkey in Cyprus,152 turned to openly supporting enosis with territorial and military compensation to Turkey.153 This would certainly have led, on implementation, to double enosis, which was simply an alias of partition. What was worse, Papandreou did not confine himself to simply putting the Cyprus problem on this new basis. Drawing up the theory of the national centre,154 he tried to drag Makarios over to his own strategy. Meantime, he tried to move the ground of popular support from under the feet of Makarios through the return of Grivas to Cyprus, through conspiratorial activity by the

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Greek military detachment in Cyprus,155 and through the encouragement of newspaper writing that was hostile to Makarios.156 Makarios was fully aware as to where Papandreou’s policy was leading. But under the weight of multiple pressures, and particularly of accusations of oath violation,157 which were salt in his wounds, ‘his policy started gradually to shift between independence and enosis’.158 At the Crown Council of 7 May 1965, Makarios found himself under unbearable pressure to concede territory in return for enosis.159 In an obvious reaction to those pressures, he declared, while speaking in Thessaloniki (11 May 1965): . . . Through the unfurling of the banner of enosis, we shall remain tenacious and unyielding on our national battlements. [. . .] We shall not accept the ceding of any amount of Cyprus territory to foreigners. [. . .] We shall resist pressures, we shall resist threats, we shall fight and die [. . .] but we shall not give an inch of our holy land [. . .] and we shall never cease struggling until we fulfil our yearnings and our aspirations by uniting Greek Cyprus with mother Greece.160

While Greece was turning unwittingly to enosis and consequently making Cyprus a NATO battleground,161 and while Makarios caused confusion by sloganeering for enosis, Turkey was turning, at least outwardly, to ‘clear attachment to the Zurich Agreements, maintenance of Cyprus’s independence, and recognition of the existence of two communities as the basic component of a predefined balance of interests’.162 Within the policy of maintaining the independence of Cyprus, Turkey promoted the position for a broadened administrative autonomy of the Turkish Cypriots at all levels.163 This position, which, during the intercommunal talks that commenced in 1968, was shaped in the demand for ‘a central organ of local administration’,164 remained a constant of Turkish policy throughout the intercommunal talks until the invasion. And when, following Johnson’s letter and Acheson’s failure, Turkey sought international support for its Cyprus policy outside NATO, it managed, after the fall of Khrushchev (October 1964), to neutralize Soviet support for Cyprus165 thus tightening the grip round Makarios. The dangers threatening Cyprus assumed dramatic dimensions after Papandreou’s fall (15 July 1965). The situation became even worse when military dictatorship was installed, in place of parliamentary governments subservient to the palace, on 21 April 1967. Without the international support he had enjoyed in 1964, Makarios was now faced with the undisguised hostility of successive Greek governments as well as with internal insurgency directed from Athens.166 As to the substance of the Cyprus crisis, Greece and Turkey carried on a dialogue of the deaf in which the Greeks spoke of enosis with exchanges, and the Turks just listened, confining themselves to supporting

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the Zurich regime revised in the direction of their positions.167 In the meantime, Turkey was assembling a landing fleet. The crushing defeat of enosis policy at Evros168 and, following the battle of Kofinou (November 1967), the withdrawal of the Greek army division from Cyprus under humiliating conditions, offered Makarios a unique opportunity to re-examine his strategy. Responding positively to a relevant appeal contained in Resolution 244 of the UN Security Council (22 December 1967),169 he announced his intention to introduce peace-making measures (23. December 1967)170 and, on 12 January 1968, he addressed a historic declaration to the people.171 In that declaration, without precluding the ‘desirable’– that is, union with Greece – he decisively opted for the ‘feasible’ – that is, the consolidation of independence and the restoration of normal constitutional order. In this regard, he asked for renewal of his popular mandate and called for presidential elections on 25 February 1968. The overwhelming 95.45 per cent he received, as against 3.71 per cent for his opponent, Takis Evdokas, who had openly campaigned for enosis, recalls the almost absolute convergence of leader and people in realizing freedom through the concept of an independent state during the first year of independence. In retrospect, had Makarios capitalized on that convergence in consolidating the idea of independence instead of regressing to the ethnarchic tradition and his oaths, the future of Cyprus would very probably have been different. Nevertheless, at the critical moment, Makarios had the ability to take on board the message of political reality, as he had the flexibility to adapt his tactics to new contingencies. He had shown this ability in 1955 in the aftermath of the London Tripartite, in 1958 in the face of the threat of implementation of the Macmillan Plan, and in 1959, when, in the face of the danger of partition, he accepted the Zurich Agreements compromise. Makarios’s leap towards the ‘feasible’ might also be explained in the light of his four-year traumatic experience of the suffocating impasse to which first his own obsession with the ‘absolute solution’ and then Greece’s one-dimensional policy of enosis had led. The greatness of Makarios’s leap towards the ‘feasible’ is realized when compared with the attitude of the other prelates, the Bishops of Paphos, Kition and Kyrenia. Immediately after Makarios’s declaration, they asked for an extraordinary meeting of the Holy Synod. At the meeting (25 January 1968), they suggested that, in the event of a ‘feasible’ solution other than enosis, ‘Makarios should resign as President, leaving the Office to a layman whose actions would not commit the Church, so that the latter might continue, free of any commitment, its leading ethnarchic role in the struggle for the national cause’.172 The attitude of the three prelates is demonstrative of the weight of the ethnarchic tradition Makarios bore on his shoulders. It further shows the magnitude of the effort he must have made to transcend the imperatives of

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that tradition. This quality of Makarios recalls the Weberian notion of charismatic leadership, which further illuminates the stand of the leader at that critical moment of the decisive turn to the ‘feasible’. – and which also explains the people’s verdict at the elections. The absence of substantive political dialogue during the election period could be explained by the lack of developed political life, partly because of the all-encompassing presence of Makarios and, furthermore, the paternalistic way he managed political affairs. Judging by today’s measures, one might have thought that the opposition opinion was not given an equal opportunity, particularly as Yiorgadjis’s power mechanism was given free hand to stifle free expression.173 However, as at stake in the elections was the stark choice between the ‘desirable’ and the ‘feasible’ – that is, between obviously unfeasible enosis and feasible independence – and as there was no concrete plan to introduce complex notions and ambiguities, but rather there existed simply a choice of direction, the elections took on, in all respects, the form of a referendum. The verdict was closely connected with the clear messages sent out by crude political reality. And the messages, to anyone having even basic contact with reality, left but one single option: that of feasible independence. Notwithstanding the role of reality, the determining factor was the leadership of Makarios, who exercised a unique charismatic domination of popular feeling. Thus, while, in the period 1961–3, Makarios’a ambivalences, owing to his obsessions with the ideal solution, had caused confusion among the people, his adamant position in 1968 penetrated deep into the substratum of popular conscience, which was desperately seeking an outlet. The outcome of the elections was the unprecedented, almost absolute convergence of leader and people. And the verdict of the elections was an unconstrained mandate to Makarios to proceed to a compromise on feasible independence, on the basis of the conditions that the four-year ordeal had imprinted on the political situation. In this direction, Makarios possessed unexpectedly the support of the Greek government, which, having been defeated both in the political and the military field, had no option but to uphold Makarios’s change of direction as well as his initiative for the commencement of intecommunal talks within the framework of the good offices of the UN Secretary General, as was provided for by Resolution 244 of the UN Security Council.

5.5. ‘Interlude of joy’174 The year 1968 was really an ‘interlude of joy’ for the people of Cyprus as a whole. After a long period of tribulation and uncertainty about the future, all of a sudden there opened a window of hope. The submission by Makarios to the UN Secretary General of a proposal for the commencement of intercommunal

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talks (12 March 1968), the consent to the return of Rauf Denktas175 in order that he might undertake the role of interlocutor on behalf of the Turkish Cypriot community (13 April 1968), the positive response of the Turkish side and the auspicious climate surrounding the first exploratory meeting between Clerides and Denktas in Beirut (3 June 1968), generated the feeling that we had left behind the ordeal of 1963–5 and the multiple convulsions of 1967.176 The inspiring speech with which the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative, Ozorio Tafall, inaugurated the talks at Ledra Palace (24 June 1968) was indicative of the climate and the expectations. He pointed out to the two interlocutors that their meeting was staged in an atmosphere of increased expectations; that, if those expectations were not duly fulfilled, there was the danger of new tensions on the island. He pointed out the importance of quickly attaining a modus vivendi that would allow the situation to return to normal again so that all the people would share in economic growth and prosperity. Such a development, he concluded, might be the springboard to an overall agreement.177 Subsequently, opening statements by the interlocutors,178 in which they demonstrated an unusual determination to move beyond past obsessions towards the future, raised further expectations for a happy outcome. Internal reports on the meetings of Kyprianou and Caglayangil in London179 and of Triantaphyllides with Zekia and Bilge in Strasbourg,180 during the same period, confirmed and further strengthened expectations. The most significant factor, though, was the decisive turn of Greek foreign policy and the full support of Makarios’s policy of the ‘feasible’. A determining factor in this turn was the veteran diplomat Panayiotis Pipinelis, who, having been appointed Foreign Minister in the middle of the Kofinou crisis (20 November 1967) and on coldly assessing potential consequences, had persuaded the leading junta figure, George Papadopoulos, ‘to swallow national pride and at all costs come to an accommodation with Turkey’.181 The basic premiss of Pipinelis’s political analysis in relation to the Cyprus problem was the following: enosis could not be achieved and should be shelved. War on Cyprus between Greece and Turkey would be disastrous for both Greece and Cyprus. It was in the interest of Greece to seek friendship with Turkey, as Venizelos had done in 1930. A satisfactory solution of the Cyprus problem might make Cyprus a bridge between Greece and Turkey. The United States was adamant in its opposition to a war between Greece and Turkey. He noted, in this regard, clear warnings by the United States to both Greece and Cyprus that it would not intervene, in the event of a Greek–Turkish war or a Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The intercommunal talks were the most appropriate procedure for reaching a settlement in Cyprus. Further delay in solving the problem ‘could mean disaster particularly as there might be unfavourable political developments in Turkey’.182 Had Pipinelis’s strategy been endorsed and methodically implemented, it might have led to a ‘feasible’ solution.

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On completion of the first phase of the talks and the joint statement of the interlocutors (25 July 1968),183 the Turkish positions in relation to the 1960 constitution could be briefly described as follows: 1. Abolition of the Vice President’s veto powers and provisional acceptance of a joint electoral roll for the election of the President and the Vice President on condition a certain percentage of Turkish Cypriot votes was safeguarded for the election of the Vice President; 2. Participation of the Turkish Cypriot community in the executive, the legislative and legal posts, as well as in the civil service, in accordance with the population ratio; 3. Abolition of the separate majorities in the House of Representatives on condition the government undertook the cost of Turkish Cypriot education in accordance with the schools’ population ratios; 4. Election of the President and the Vice President of the House of Representatives (who could not belong to the same community) by all the members of the House, but retention of separate electoral rolls for the election of the members of the House; 5. Unification of the courts of justice; 6. Abolition of the posts of the non-Cypriot Presidents of the Supreme and the Constitutional Courts with the right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights; 7. Abolition of the Cyprus Army; 8. In exchange for the above cited amendments, which satisfied in a substantive way Makarios’s 13 points put forward in 1963, the Turkish side asked for acceptance of a broadened local administration, with the grouping of villages made on the basis of ethnic criteria and with broadened powers, which, however, were clearly confined to the sphere of local administration competence.184 An additional, important parameter of those talks, which emerges from clear indications converging in the same direction, was the haste with which Denktas and Turkey wished to reach an agreement. Apart from direct references by Denktas to this matter,185 which also explain his readiness from the very start to submit proposals capable of being accepted, information in this direction was given to Clerides (17 July 1968) by the German and Italian Ambassadors, who invoked relevant reports from their countries’ embassies in Ankara.186 The need for a quick conclusion of the talks was also suggested by the Turkish Chargé d’affaires Yiavuzalp, during a meeting with Foreign Minister Kyprianou (19 July 1968). Yiavuzalp tried further to predispose Kyprianou to the possibility that Denktas ‘might not have been able the next year to accept what he actually accepted that time’.187 The same concern for

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a quick conclusion had already been expressed by Caglayangil during his meeting with Kyprianou in June that year.188 At a second meeting that the two men had in Paris (14. December 1968), Caglayangil showed throughout the long discussion his concern for a quick conclusion.189 He had made himself clearer, however, at a meeting he had had with Pipinelis in Brussels (November 1968), in which ‘he had expressed his disappointment at the slow motion of the intercommunal talks and had underlined the need for a quick solution’.190 The acute economic problems Turkish Cypriots were facing owing to their isolation in enclaves, and the heavy burden Turkey was bearing for their support, must have added to the reasons that pushed both Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots towards seeking a solution.191 At his very first meeting with Clerides within the framework of the talks (27 June 1968), Denktas had brought up the question of the serious economic problems facing the Turkish Cypriots and the need for substantial economic assistance to his community. ‘It would be in the interests of the Greek Cypriot side to assist financially the Turkish Cypriots,’ he intimated to Clerides, ‘for only in this way would their economic and political reliance on Turkey be reduced’.192 Denktas had additional personal reasons, which were connected with his antagonistic relations with Kuchuk and Orek. Through quick positive results, he calculated that he would regain the leading position among the Turkish Cypriots that he had lost during his long absence.193 On the other hand, it may be inferred, from Caglayangil’s talk with Kyprianou, that Turkey urgently needed to restore its relations with Greece because of the current international tension resulting from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the deterioration of Soviet relations with Yugoslavia and Rumania and the strong presence of the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean.194 In the light of that overwhelmingly positive convergence of events, it was only reasonable to expect that Makarios would get the messages, would see in Denktas’s proposals the ‘feasible’ solution and would unhesitatingly grasp the opportunity presented by the prospect of solution, and try to promote, with positive spin-off in terms of enhanced efficiency, the extension of local autonomy.195 However, contrary to such expectations, Makarios seemed to have overestimated his capabilities and to have believed that, by pushing things to the precipice, he would have drawn closer the absolute, the ideal, to his way of thinking, solution, which now consisted of an orthodox unitary state with majority government and minority rights safeguards for the Turkish Cypriot community. Contrary to insistent suggestions by Clerides, in his capacity as negotiator, and though he seemed to have been receptive of Denktas’s reasoning, he instructed Clerides not to make any commitments, nor to proceed to setting up subcommittees to elaborate on matters agreed upon, until all issues had been cleared up.196 As a result, when the Greek Cypriot proposals were submitted during the second phase of the talks, they provided for a presidential system with all

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executive power in the hands of the President, and without any provision for a Vice President. On the matter of the legislature, the Greek Cypriot side insisted on joint election rolls without taking into account Denktas’s argument that he ‘could not discover a procedure for general elections, capable of satisfying Greek Cypriot wishes for unification while at the same time preventing Greek voters from imposing on the Turks Turkish candidates who might be completely unacceptable to them’.197 The Greek Cypriot side also proposed two Deputy Presidents of the House of Representatives, one being a Turkish Cypriot. Finally, on the local administration issue, on which the Greek Cypriot side submitted proposals during the third phase at the beginning of 1969, it completely rejected the Turkish proposal. It only accepted the village as an autonomous unit of local government, and rejected Denktas’s demand to the effect that the powers of local government authorities were drawn directly from the Constitution.198 And, while it did not reject Denktas’s request relating to the return of Turkish Cypriots to their villages, it dragged its feet over implementation, owing to an unwillingness to ease the economic problems faced by Turkish Cypriots so that these problems might be used as leverage at the talks.199 Drawing again on his tactics of tightrope diplomacy, Makarios set aside what Tafall had suggested at the commencement of the talks with regard to bridging the economic gap between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Furthermore, entrapped in the ideal of the ‘right’ solution, as will be demonstrated below, he ignored Tafall’s warning in the same statement, as to the dangers emanating from the lack of progress over time. As he also ignored the Secretary General’s written message (26 March 1969) in which he asked for acceleration of the pace of talks, pointedly noting that ‘the time factor is, in this case, of great importance’ and warning that ‘the lapse of a long time might possibly damage instead of helping towards a settlement of the Cyprus problem’.200 During his meeting with Pipinelis (5 January 1969), Makarios explained his ‘inflexible’ –as described in his own words – stand as a ‘purely negotiating tactic’ that aimed at ascertaining ‘the point to which the Turks might retreat from the extreme positions they have assumed in their proposals’ relating to local government.201 Apart from his substantial reservations over the autonomy of local government, regarding which he believed that, if ceded to the Greeks as well ‘there will not be a separating element but the government machine will be seriously obstructed’,202 on matters of procedure he once again adopted tightrope tactics. He showed himself to be receptive of Pipinelis’s argument that ‘time might work against us’. ‘However,’ he retorted, ‘it is not enough to have a solution; it has to be the right solution’.203 The ‘right’ (solution) is an absolute notion, which substantially departs from the notion of the ‘feasible’ solution. Consequently, after the overwhelming popular verdict in favour of the ‘feasible’ solution, that he himself had suggested,

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Makarios started gradually falling back, through ‘tightrope tactics’, on the logic of ‘absolute’ solution – which would not only never have come, but would also have thwarted the ‘feasible’ solution. The ‘interlude of joy’ was running out.

5.6. Towards the abyss A statement by Christodoulos Veniamin, General Director of the Foreign Ministry (a man close to Makarios), to the effect that, ‘as long as there is a Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean, Turkey will not dare stage an invasion of Cyprus’,204 intensified Pipinelis’s concern about Makarios’s delaying tactics and made him write a long classified memorandum to the Cypriot President (27 November 1968).205 In that document, he elaborates on the assessment relating to the Soviet fleet, to describe as ‘completely unsubstantiated any consideration that the presence of the Soviets in the Mediterranean might guarantee the security of Cyprus from outside attack’.206 Later in his memorandum, he points out that ‘the above assessment is particularly more unfounded in that it considers the present calm in Cyprus may last for ever or at least for a long time’. He then warns that ‘any irresponsible act might provoke immeasurable turbulence’. He further points out that ‘the situation in Turkey is volatile and no one may be certain that the moderate politicians who rule today will continue to be in power tomorrow’.207 Finally, he rejects as untenable the expectation of profit from a possible economic collapse of the Turkish Cypriots. He pointedly notes: ‘The time of a possible collapse of the Turkish Cypriots in the remote and uncertain future will not mean the time of solution in Cyprus. On the contrary, it will mean an even worse crisis. Ankara not only will not allow their unconditional surrender but will exert an even more intense effort –quite possibly a violent one – to avert such an eventuality.’208 He rounds up with the following advice, which is also meant as a warning: ‘To postpone a settlement today without being certain that the conditions tomorrow will be more propitious is an extremely dangerous and reckless attitude.’209 A few months after Pipinelis’s memorandum, with the maniac Ioannidis pulling strings from Athens, the ‘National Front’ brought enosis back to the fore in a violent cycle, a harbinger of the future ordeal. One year later, a murder attempt against Makarios was made (8 March 1970), to be followed by the murder of Yiorgadjis (15 March 1970), while in August 1971 Grivas returned to Cyprus to initiate a new cycle of bloody violence by EOKA-B.210 In Greece, the death of Pipinelis (19 July 1970) put an end to the interlude of diplomacy. One year later, the junta was led to the Lisbon Agreement (4 June 1971) and, two years later, Ioannides ‘toppled the ‘moderate’

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Papadopoulos, to add an additional daemonic element to the precipitating disaster. As for Turkey, since the spring of 1969 and while the Greek Cypriot community was torn apart by internal strife, it had been gradually hardening its positions, firmly insisting on a completely autonomous local government. The military coup of 12 March 1971 brought to power, as an appointed Prime Minister, the theoretician of partition, Nihat Erim. And, since the October 1973 elections, the elected Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, having inaugurated Turkish claims in the Aegean, had completely neutralized the by that time meagre prospects of a solution regardless of the fact that the constitutional experts, Dekleris and Aldikasti, thought they were in sight of a solution some days before the 15 July 1974 coup.212 Makarios’s tactics of pushing the negotiations to the edge of the precipice with the aim of seizing maximum concessions from the other side as well as his wait-and-see policy in the hope of pushing the Turkish Cypriots to even further concessions had an exactly opposite outcome from that anticipated. One of the reasons for this might have been sought in the inadequate evaluation of the constants of Turkey’s Cyprus policy. These constants were the exclusion of enosis and the safeguarding of the bi-communal character of an independent Cypriot state, which could not, under any circumstances, threaten its ‘warm’ ports. The bi-communal co-founding partnership character of the state was for Turkey inextricably embedded in the Zurich constitution. Therefore, the Turkish side might have abandoned excessive Turkish Cypriot privileges, which would have been a permanent cause of friction and might well have accepted amendments to constitutional provisions that had proved to be dysfunctional, such as the Vice President’s veto and separate majorities. However, it would never have abandoned what it considered a fundamental principle – namely, the bi-communal character of the state, which it viewed as emanating directly from the core of the Zurich Agreements. Wholly opposed to Turkey’s position, Makarios regarded the 1960 Constitution as having collapsed. To him it was neither a starting point nor a point of reference. In his view, the approach to the solution should be free of any commitments to the past. His aim was to set up a new constitution providing for a completely unitary state, with sufficient participation by the two communities212 but not with a constitutionally safeguarded bi-communal character. On such a premiss, Makarios rejected the post of Vice President, separate election rolls and autonomous local government on a communal basis, simply because such elements, either through symbolism or in substance, enshrined the bi-communal character of the state.213 This diametrically opposite to the Turkish position approach was capable of being theoretically supported at the legal–constitutional level. However, the insistence on abolishing the bi-communal character imposed by Zurich,

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a purely political issue, was in outright conflict with the political balance of power and interests at both the regional and the international level, which there was no realistic possibility of overthrowing. It was exactly in this respect that Makarios leaped beyond the confines of the ‘feasible’ solution and led things towards the abyss. His excessive self-confidence214 that he could have upturned this reality – a fundamental element of the tragic drama – constitutes one of the factors in the Cyprus drama as it unfolds from the time of the attempt to overthrow the Agreements until the catastrophe of 1974. Despite this, in the minds of ‘his people’, Makarios was still the indefatigable warrior, the leader who had struggled against all kinds of conspiracies led both from within and from outside, and had been defeated in the end – rather he had lost one battle – owing exclusively to the existence of crushingly overpowering forces wielded by the enemies of Cyprus. Subsistent political life, and the lapse of a substantial political dialogue that might have revealed the limits of the feasible, led people to absolute confidence in their leader – in the shape of the dominating relationship of the charismatic leader and his people – thus projecting the heroic at the expense of the tragic element in the drama of 1974. Within this internal process, the limits of the feasible were also raised in the minds of ‘his people’ to meet the lofty measures called for by the leader. As a result, the drama of the leader became the drama of ‘his people’ as well, with its consequent outcome.

5.7. The perception of federation by Makarios The thrilling account of Makarios’s pursuit during the coup and his final rescue reaffirmed, in the people’s minds, his ‘divine endowment’. And that dramatic voice from the Paphos Free Broadcasting Station, while the state controlled CBC transmitted news of his death: . . . Hellenic people of Cyprus, You know the voice you are hearing. You know who is speaking to you. It is me, Makarios. I am the one you have chosen to be your leader. I am not dead [. . .] I am alive and on your side, your fellow combatant and standard bearer in our common struggle . . .215

– that voice crowned Makarios’s charismatic relationship with ‘his people’. His people’s response surged, from within the ruins of catastrophe, when Makarios returned from his second exile, to the same place again, the Archbishopric, on 7 December 1974. The thousands of refugees who had lined the streets ‘to give him a rapturous welcome’, ‘waving flags and banners, saw him as the champion who would restore them to their homes and lands rather

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than as the leader whose policies had so much contributed to their tragedy’216 – as Stanley Mayes would remark pointedly after his death. The tragic events of 1974 and the new protracted ordeal that the catastrophe had in store for ‘his people’ deeply wounded both Makarios the man and Makarios the leader,217 and may have defeated the indomitable self-confidence he had shown before the invasion. And, regardless of his declaration from the balcony of the Archbishopric, in a monumental example of direct intuitive communication from the charismatic leader to his people, that ‘we shall never recognize or accept the fait accompli’ and that ‘we shall not accept any solution providing for transfer of populations’,218 he had started, while still in exile, to perceive the solution in the form of a painful compromise with the fait accompli of invasion and displacement. On 15 November 1974, in London, he intimated to Kranidiotis his readiness to accept a plan proposed by Kissinger, which provided for a multiregional federation, if he could make some improvements. Despite being aware of Kissinger’s dark role in the tragedy of Cyprus, he believed he was ‘the only one who might help us’.219 The same expectations he intimated to Clerides when the latter visited him in London on 20 November 1974. He even told Clerides that he expected Kissinger to put pressure on Turkey to accept multi-regional federation. However, Clerides dispelled his hopes for multi-regional federation by quoting Kissinger as pressingly asking him in Geneva to accept bi-regional federation. Clerides further told him that he did not see any indications of change in the US policy.220 The reality on the ground that he faced in Cyprus, and awareness of the unwillingness of the great powers to act in the direction of overturning the fait accompli of the invasion,221 and, certainly, the inability of Greece to enter into a war with Turkey for the above reason, led Makarios, in a matter of months, to the conclusion that there was no way of restoring the pre-1974 situation. Under the weight of such a depressive situation, and while attending the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe at Helsinki (30 July 1975), he intimated to Karamanlis that, if the Turks confined their demands to 20–25 per cent of the territory of the Republic, he would be ready to accept ‘bi-regional’ federation. With the consent of Karamanlis, he communicated his new orientation to other European leaders and, through Bitsios, to the Turkish Foreign Minister. His immediate objective was a new initiative for a comprehensive solution.222 The Brussels Agreement between Bitsios and Caglayangil (12 December 1975) set the procedure for the commencement of intercommunal talks. However, the talks foundered before they started, owing to repeated reneging on the part of Denktas and the confusion that ensued in the Greek Cypriot side, which led to Clerides’s resignation from the post of negotiator (April 1976). Makarios mentally crystallized the outline of the feasible solution under

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the circumstances in the Four Guideline Agreement that he concluded with Denktas on 12 February 1977. That Agreement outlined the following principles on which the solution should be based: 1. We are seeking an independent, non-aligned, bi-communal federal Republic. 2. The territory under the administration of each community should be discussed in the light of economic viability and productivity and landownership. 3. Questions of principle such as freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, the right to property and other specific matters are open for discussion, taking into consideration the fundamental basis of a bi-communal federal system and certain practical difficulties that may arise for the Turkish Cypriot community. 4. The powers and functions of the central federal government will be such as to safeguard the unity of the country, having regard to the bi-communal character of the state.223 Makarios elaborates on the reasoning behind this painful compromise during the meetings of the National Council of 27 January, 2, 13 and 28 February, and 9 and 17 March 1977.224 The perception of the solution by Makarios, as this was expounded at those meetings of the National Council, as well as the strategic movements towards a solution, might be outlined as follows. As to the form of the solution, he definitely accepts the painful compromise of ‘bizonal’ federation, with 20–25 per cent of the territory under Turkish Cypriot administration and with safeguards, as provided for in the Four Guideline Agreement, for freedom of movement and settlement, and for the right to property. As he does not believe that a great number of Greek Cypriot refugees would wish to return to their homes under Turkish Cypriot administration, but would opt for compensation, and that the same would happen with the Turkish Cypriots, he considers that 20–25 per cent of the territory of the Republic would safeguard for the Turkish Cypriots a majority in their own federal state within the framework of a federation. As to the constitutional issue, he does not appear to have in mind any particular constitutional structure regarding the powers of the central government. His vision is confined to the fourth principle of the Guideline Agreement providing for such powers as to safeguard the unity of the state. Makarios was fully aware that such a painful compromise, on the basis of which a number of refugees would not return to their homes, ‘carries along an element of unpopularity’ and that therefore ‘a solution within that framework will be unpopular’. However, he pointed out to the members of the National Council: ‘we must consider the whole issue with a sense of responsibility and

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not with the criterion of popularity.’ As to the strategic moves towards a solution, he seemed to be aware of how strictly confined room for manoeuvre is. Thus, despite his awareness that Clifford’s initiative for recommencement of the talks served mainly NATO interests, he stated that ‘this should not divert us from exploiting a possible convergence of our interests with those of NATO if such a move would help towards reaching a solution in Cyprus’.225 Although he made it clear that he did not believe there would soon be a solution,226 he showed himself determined to take on the responsibility of submitting comprehensive proposals, including a map on the territorial issue, so as to draw up, through such proposals, the framework for the compromise within which talks would move. As to opposition by Council members to the submission of a map on the grounds that this might separate the refugees into those who were returning and those who were not, and thus cause friction on the domestic front, his answer gives the measure of his determination to proceed with the compromise: . . . Of course, there is a way to avoid both painful decisions and negative reactions if we avoid taking a position or a decision and follow the line of wait and see. However, we’ll be forced sometime to undertake the responsibility. Therefore, I suggest we take our decisions now and thus shape developments instead of passively wait for events to take shape alone.

At another point during the same meeting, Makarios returned to the same subject and set the measure of political responsibility for the leadership: ‘If we do not want to proceed, it is easy not to proceed. But it is not the right thing for a leadership to say: “Because there are risks involved and because I am still concerned, I do not move”.’227

5.8. The two ‘precepts’ of Makarios Under the weight of the new deadlock in talks owing to the reneging tactics and, mainly, the outright refusal of the Turkish side to discuss the return of territory within the framework of federation, as well as his awareness that a long struggle would be needed until prerequisites for a viable solution were created, Makarios judged that conditions had not matured enough to allow him to set before the people the reasoning he had expounded in the National Council. Therefore, in his last speech from the bastion of Freedom Square on the third anniversary of the invasion (20 July 1977),228 again employing that direct charismatic contact with ‘his people’, he confined himself to imbuing in the souls of the people faith and perseverance in the ‘long struggle’ that conditions made imperative:

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. . . For three years you have been living in affliction and suffering. But, in spite of that, you still stand upright. And upright you shall always remain on the bastions of struggle. Proud of you, proud of the privilege of being your elected leader, I address my greeting of love, to you, the hero and great martyr, Hellenic people of Cyprus.

After warning against the reneging tactics of the Turkish side and the fruitless lapse of time lost through talks, Makarios pointed out that ‘the Greek side has no more margins for further concessions’. Having also outlined a course of internationalization along with persistence in principles and faith in justice, he called upon the people to be ready for a ‘long struggle’, as a ‘dictate of need’ and as a ‘national imperative’, until the ultimate vindication. He did not link such vindication with keeping to the agreed framework, which was not the subject of his speech, but nor did he de-link it either, nor did he make mention at any point that the Greek Cypriot side should desist from that framework. However, those political forces that, following Makarios’s death (3 August 1977), started gradually bringing back to the fore the logic of ‘absolute solution’ in the sense of absolute implementation of the principles of justice in Cyprus, found refuge in his last speech as being his final ‘precept’, and from that they drew up arguments to legitimize their political line as being that of Makarios. In contrast, the political forces that maintained the reasoning of the ‘painful compromise’ sought refuge in the Makarios of the National Council for legitimization. Admittedly, this was valid, at the party level, only with the ‘pro-Makarios’ forces – that is, AKEL, DIKO, and EDEK, which had allied themselves under that banner, in the elections of 1976 against the ‘Democratic Rally’ of Glafkos Clerides. These two opposing political trends, which started from different perceptions of the solution, became crystallized during the 1980s as the ‘realisticcompromising’ (‘submissive’ for the opposite camp) and the ‘militant-patriotic’ (‘intransigent’, ‘rejectionist’ and ‘nationalist’ in the eyes of its opponents). With marginal mobility at the popular level, and with minor temporary diversions, due mainly to electoral calculations at the summit of party pyramids, the ‘militant-patriotic’ camp rallied round EDEK and DIKO, and the ‘realistic-compromising’ round AKEL and DISY. Within the framework of another general categorization, one might assign to the ‘realistic-compromising’ camp: (a) the traditional Left, the political thought of which had always been closely linked with the course of left-wing reformist trade union movement, and which at party level was represented by AKEL, and (b) the middle and upper bourgeois social strata of the Right, a substantial part of which had, since the 1980s, been politically represented by Glafkos Clerides. On the basis of the same general categorization, one might assign to the

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‘militant-patriotic’ camp the following groupings: (a) a militant socialist Left under Vassos Lyssarides, whose high-flying rhetoric and close relations with the Arabic nationalist movements and later with Andreas Papandreou’s leftist radical nationalism, shaped EDEK’s political physiognomy; (b) a socially nonhomogeneous pro-Makarios Right, with the Church as its chief rallying pole and the countryside its main strongholds, including a part of the bourgeoisie middle and lower social strata, which was politically represented through DIKO under the leadership of Spyros Kyprianou; (c) a vertical social division that permeated all social strata, with its main strongholds in the rural areas and its main adhesion being any kind of bonds with EOKA, taking shape in a network of rightist clubs and organizations that quite frequently overlapped, such as PEK, EOKA Fighters Associations, Nationalist Clubs, Greek Orthodox Foundations, Young Men’s or Women’s Christian Associations (OHEN), and other Christian Associations. Of this amalgamation, the EOKA fighters associations and the Nationalist Clubs were politically aligned with DISY, PEK and the associations linked to the Church with DIKO.229 The convergence of Clerides and AKEL, in relation to the perception of the solution, to the ‘realistic-compromising’ political line goes back to the search for a solution in the aftermath of the invasion. Clerides, speaking at ‘Argo’ in Nicosia (6 November 1974),230 expressed the view that, under the weight of the new conditions created by the invasion, the only solution capable of being accepted by the Turkish side was federation on a geographical basis. At the Athens meeting (30 November 1974) under Karamanlis and Makarios, Clerides put forward that position and added that ‘AKEL favoured immediate start of talks on the basis of multi-regional federation’ and ‘if we failed to reach an agreement with the Turkish side on such a federation, we should not refuse to negotiate on the basis of bi-zonal federation’.231 The support AKEL gave Clerides both before and after the return of Makarios232 confirms their convergence on the major issue of the perception of the solution, a convergence that, despite intense confrontations at times of election contests, denotes a stable orientation towards compromise. The convergence of Clerides and AKEL thus recurred following the election confrontation of 1976 and was clearly marked in Clerides’s and Papaioannou’s positions during the dramatic meetings of the National Council in February–March 1977, when they both adopted Makarios’s compromising line. Those meetings of the National Council also marked out the opposite trend, of which main exponents were EDEK President, Vassos Lyssarides, and DIKO President, Spyros Kyprianou.233 Reading between the lines of torrential interventions by Lyssarides, one can see at the back of the politician’s mind the strategy of averting bi-zonality and even federation itself. In fact, he did not openly reveal such a strategy, confining his disagreement to a pre-emptive strategy against the danger of the Greek side being led to continuous concessions

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without a response from the Turkish side that might open the way to a solution. Insisting on the pre-invasion line of Makarios when he rejected the bicommunal character of the state, he foresaw dangers in the use of the term ‘bi-communal’ by the Guideline Agreement, as denoting ‘partnership’, a notion he considered to be ‘opposite to the positions and the principles of the Greek Cypriot community’.234 He was aware that, within the framework of bi-communal bi-regional federation, it would not be possible to gain full implementation of the basic principles of settlement and property to the effect that all the refugees might return to their homes. Consequently, he demanded ‘first the acceptance of the principles and the withdrawal of the occupation troops so that the refugees might freely exercise the right to resettlement’ and only ‘as a result of the exercise of the principles by the people establish either a multi-regional or a bi-zonal solution’.235 He maintained that ‘our proposals along with the submission of a map were already leading to a strict form of confederation’ and that ‘we are actually proposing the establishment of a springboard of Turkey extending to the 25 per cent of Cyprus territory which Turkey will use to bring about partition’.236 Within the framework of this viewpoint, Lyssarides called on the Greek side ‘to submit proposals providing for the return of all the refugees, the exercise of full political rights by the returning refugees, and the withdrawal of the occupation troops’ and ‘to demand clear and categorical implementation of the principles both for Greek and Turkish Cypriots’.237 Carefully concealing the obvious fact that, with the preconditions he posed, he was actually rejecting federation, even stating that ‘if the proposed solution was the final solution I would accept it’, he foresaw that ‘there will not be an agreement even by the submission of the proposals outlined by his Beatitude’, thus feeling sure he would not find himself in the need to accept federation.238 In fact, he overestimated partly current but also partly hypothetical dangers in the submission of comprehensive proposals, while, on the other hand, he did not seem to consider equally evident dangers in actually refusing to negotiate a compromise solution. As for the strategy towards the solution that he proposed – ‘We should locally create a fighting spirit, we should rally the people of Greece against the ruling establishment, and undertake a diplomatic struggle’239 – it constituted a vague theoretical conception, built on ethical principles of justice, but unrealistic and far remote from political reality, which made the inevitable need of a painful compromise an imperative. Lyssarides’s substantive disagreement with Makarios was not to be found in the assessment that there was no solution in sight. In fact, Makarios himself warned against this danger. It was simply about a basically divergent approach, which envisioned heroic struggles that might capture the imagination, but which did not consider the consequences. Spyros Kyprianou followed Lyssarides’s line of thought, but without his

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inventive and imaginative exposition. He saw dangers in the acceptance of bizonal federation focusing on the psychological climate among the people and the weakening of the internal front, the more so because ‘it promotes the expansionist appetites of Turkey allowing it to easily transform any solution into partition’.240 He maintained that ‘any discussion should be made on the principles’ and that ‘we should never give the impression that we might accept a solution that would not allow the return of all the refugees’. He finally declared: ‘If the principles are accepted, if the return of all the refugees is safeguarded, if the occupation troops are withdrawn, if the territory under Turkish Cypriot administration is confined to 20–22 per cent, if effective guarantees are safeguarded, if all the other aspects safeguard a federal solution, then I do not preclude a bizonal federation’.241 As in the case of Lyssarides, it was obvious that the preconditions he posed not only did not provide for a federation but envisaged a unitary state. Owing either to inability of perception of the feasible or a naive perception of a rather automatic functioning of justice, both Lyssarides and Kyprianou failed to comprehend basic keystones of politics. The pivotal role that the presidential system and the internal balance of the parties’ electoral power assigned to DIKO dragged mainly AKEL (1978,1983, 1988, 2003), and to a lesser extent Clerides (1993), into election alliances that might have resulted in temporary adulterations or distortions of the two opposing political lines of thought regarding the perception of the solution. However, such cases have been mere digressions in a long process that spans the period until the referendum of 2004. Parallel electoral calculations as well as ideological and historical divergences have held AKEL at a ‘safe distance’ from DISY. Even when AKEL is completely identified with Clerides’s line, it opts for a parallel but – with the exception of 1985 – never one that is in common with that of the party of the Right. Furthermore, AKEL sees the maintenance of opposition on the basis of a pro-Makarios vs an anti-Makarios front as a convenient vehicle for keeping both the calculated distances from DISY and its domination – owing to sheer numbers – in the political spectrum of Makarios’s ‘heirs’. However, it gives its own version of the Makarios heritage relating to the perception of the solution by focusing on the Makarios of the National Council and the Four Guideline Agreement in order to legitimize as Makarios-oriented (‘makariaki’) its ‘realistic-compromising’ line. The unpredictable course things would take during AKEL’s recent alliance with Tassos Papadopoulos (the successor to Kyprianou in the leadership of DIKO) and the way AKEL has been deluded into the ‘militant-patriotic’ perception of the solution will be explored in a later chapter. Meantime, there has been serious dissent among Makarios’s political descendants – that is, those who have claimed the leadership of the pro-Makarios front and mainly of the ‘authentic’ Makarios’ ‘militant-patriotic’ inheritance, until the unification of these scattered forces under Tassos Papadopoulos, and

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more significantly under the banner of NO to the Annan Plan in 2004. The prevalence of Kyprianou in the right-wing segment of the front and the displacement of Papadopoulos (1978) from among the leadership claimants did not solve the leadership question. Makarios’s successor in the Church leadership, Archbishop Chrysostomos, self-portrayed as the new Ethnarch and guarantor of Makarios’s ‘militant-patriotic’ heritage, came close at times to exercising undisguised tutelage of political life. As for those on the left among Makarios’s ‘heirs’, the failure of Lyssarides to win the support of AKEL for the presidency (for reasons the analysis of which is beyond the scope of this work) has led the socialist leader on a lonely but autonomous path that has allowed him, on the one hand, safely to criticize Kyprianou’s inconsistencies, while, on the other hand, to project his own perception of the solution as Makarios’s genuine militant precept by making continuous references to Makarios’s last ethnarchic speech. Two banner headline articles – the one in Haravgi on 6 August 1980, ‘Two opposing lines’, and the other in Ta Nea of the same day, ‘Hybris to Makarios’ – on the occasion of speeches made by George Ioannidis and Ourania Kokinou during an event in memory of Makarios, give a clear indication of how the two opposing trends in the perception of the solution seek legitimacy, with the one finding refuge in the ‘precept’ of the National Council, and the other in the ‘precept’ of the last speech. This fundamental dichotomy in the perception of the solution will constitute the two opposing camps to which the powers of yes and the powers of NO to the Annan Plan will rally at the referendum of 24 April 2004.

5.9. The perception of the solution and electoral calculations The traumatic experience of the Turkish invasion (20 July 1974), as a consequence of the role of the junta in Cyprus, which culminated in the 15 July 1974 coup, lengthened the distance between Cyprus and Greece. The doubleedged dogma of Karamanlis ‘Cyprus decides and Greece backs its decisions’, which, in its positive aspect, set aside the theory of the ‘national centre’ by recognizing the Republic of Cyprus as an independent state that had the last word on its problem, in a negative interpretation brought to the surface the solitary situation in which Cyprus lay. The feeling of such solitariness, fed by awareness of the crucial importance of maintaining the sovereign status of the Republic of Cyprus in the aftermath of the invasion, led to the growth of trends towards a Cyprus-centred management of the Cyprus problem (Kypropoeisi tou Kypriakou). First manifestation of this new trend, relating to the notions of the ‘desirable’ and the ‘feasible’ of 1968, was the definite closure of the ‘enosis’ chapter. Unionist irredentist nationalism had already

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been buried in the ruins of the invasion. Its survival among certain marginal, completely negligible, groups no longer exercised any influence in Cypriot political developments. In this political climate, autonomous citizens established the New Cyprus Association (19 March 1975). The name of the Association itself ‘expressed the conviction of its members that, out of the catastrophe and the chaos, there would emerge a new Cyprus’.242 The Association’s basic objective was ‘to fortify the sense of pride, love and dedication of all Cypriots to their Country (Cyprus) and work for the rapprochement of all Cypriots in a united, peaceful and democratic society’.243 At the same time, the Association felt the need to clarify that ‘these objectives in no way discourage Cypriots from paying due respect to their national identity, their traditions and their cultural heritage’.244 The New Cyprus Association remained a numerically marginal group of non-party-committed intellectuals. Despite this, it exercised significant influence towards forming a new perception of the solution both through its direct interventions in political developments and indirectly through the reactionary polemics against its ideas and messages by regrouped ultra-right nationalists as well as by political parties that officially professed the ‘militant-patriotic’ vision. Slogans such as ‘Cyprus belongs to its people’ or ‘The Turkish Cypriots are not our enemies, they are our brothers’, which were voiced by the organized youth of AKEL following the invasion and for decades constituted elements of the party identity, were a parallel expression of, if not a direct response to, the new trend as it was imprinted on the New Cyprus Association statutes. With the elevation of PASOK to power in Greece (1981) and the nationalization of the Cyprus problem by Andreas Papandreou along with renewed tension with Turkey (redeployment of Greek defence forces to face the danger from the East, militarization of the Aegean islands, and casus belli for Cyprus), the political climate started to be reversed in Cyprus. One could observe the invigoration of a new form of nationalism free from the irredentist elements of the pre-1974 period but endowed with maximalistic aspirations that reached beyond the real capabilities of Greece and took no account of the real balances of power and influence in the region. Papandreou’s visit to Cyprus (27 February 1982) sparked off the new high aspirations, which were clearly expressed in the Archbishop’s address to the Greek Prime Minister on the latter’s visit to the Archbishopric. The Archbishop spoke of ‘the feeling of abandonment by those who should not’, because of which ‘our people have sunk into defeatism and pessimism’ as they tend to believe that Greece ‘looks upon us not as a part of the Nation but as some remote relatives’ whom ‘in spite of its desire, is not able to help’. He greeted Papandreou’s ‘repositioning of the Cyprus problem as one of invasion and occupation and not as an intercommunal dispute’, he chastised ‘the

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ostensibly reasonable but suspect arguments of an out of place realism’, and reversed the reasoning of the ‘feasible’ by insinuating that ‘the unfeasible of cold reason becomes feasible in the soul and the mind of one who perseveres and keeps on fighting’.245 Andreas Papandreou, in his very first statement on his arrival in Cyprus, placed the Cyprus question at the highest priority of Greek foreign policy.246 He called it ‘an enormous mistake on the part of anyone to believe that Greece might chart a foreign policy which would ignore the Hellenism of Cyprus’.247 In his speech at the House of Representatives, he stated as one of the aims of his visit the healing of the trauma caused to the people of Cyprus by the feeling of abandonment and ‘to assure you that you are not alone’. ‘If Greece accepted a solution that would not allow the return of all the refugees to their homes’, he added, ‘if it accepted a solution that would not give the people of Cyprus all the rights for an independent, united, demilitarized, non-aligned Republic of Cyprus, then it would shoulder tremendous responsibility to history and the nation’. He concluded his speech by declaring the Papandreou dogma as replacement for that by Karamanlis: ‘I have come to Cyprus to convey the love of Greece and to state that we are fellow fighters, not mere supporters.’248 The ‘Minimum Programme’ of DIKO and AKEL aiming at Kyprianou’s re-election to the Presidency, only one month after Papandreou’s visit, led to the estrangement of official Cyprus from the ‘repositioning’ of the Cyprus problem by the Greek Prime Minister.249 The Minimum Programme, viewing two aspects of the Cyprus problem, ‘the internal and the international’, referred the international aspect to the ‘International Conference’, which had been proposed by the Soviet Union and rejected by Turkey, while it gave priority to the solution of the internal aspect through the intercommunal talks on the basis of the UN resolutions and the High Level Agreements. It made specific reference to the proposals of the National Council under Makarios in 1977 and directed one whole chapter to ‘rapprochement’, to secure which it was imperative ‘to uproot chauvinism and promote a spirit of mutual respect among Greek and Turkish Cypriots’.250 This dissension within the Greek political camp on the basic parameters of the Cyprus problem had already been indicated by the General Secretary of AKEL in the statement he had made after his meeting with the Greek Prime Minister on his visit to Cyprus: . . . We have explained our views in relation to the two basic aspects of the Cyprus problem, the internal and the international aspect. We have pointed out (to the Greek Prime Minister) that the best kind of help Greece could have given us would have been its withdrawal from NATO as it is Natoist armies that are occupying 40 per cent of Cyprus’s territory, the British bases and the American spying stations are Natoist, the forces which impede a

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solution in Cyprus are Natoist, as behind the Turkish intransigence is American and generally Natoist imperialism.251

Papaioannou could not have been unaware of the obvious reality that the withdrawal of Greece from NATO would have helped neither Cyprus nor broader national interests. Therefore, the message he apparently intended to give was that the nationalization of the Cyprus problem by Papandreou should not have stood in the way of promoting the intercommunal dialogue towards which he was pushing Kyprianou through the cooperation of AKEL and DIKO, which was already under way. That statement by the General Secretary of AKEL had somehow been the prelude to the crisis that was ignited between Greece and Cyprus, immediately after the announcement of the Minimum Programme. Papandreou perceived it as undermining the ‘crusade’ he had undertaken within the framework of his ‘repositioning’ of the Cyprus problem. What really annoyed him was not only the priority the Minimum Programme gave to the ‘internal aspect’ through the intercommunal dialogue, which he considered as an ineffective ‘extemporizing’. Reading his letter to Kyprianou,252 one gathers that what annoyed Papandreou more was the alliance itself of Kyprianou with AKEL. The support, or rather the dependence of the Cypriot President, on a communist party would obviously have made things difficult for Papandreou in the ‘crusade’ he was undertaking to persuade Western centres to exert pressure on Turkey in the direction of terminating its aggression against Cyprus. The immediate sharp reaction by AKEL at the highest level – that is, its Central Committee253 – would hold AKEL in permanent underground hostility towards Papandreou’s PASOK. This hostility would at times come to the surface and create new tensions during the Joint Defence Dogma in the 1990s. Ideological factors as well as links with internal party politics in Cyprus and Greece may have had some role in this tug of war. Not accidentally, the Greek Communist Party gave full cover to AKEL on this issue.254 In fact, the antiimperialist rhetoric helped AKEL, on the one hand, to outflank EDEK’s leftist radicalism and, on the other, to differentiate itself from Clerides’s Right, against which it wished to place electoral fortifications with which to cover its substantial convergence in the perception of the solution. By removing to the ‘imperialists’ (and the pro-West Right in Cyprus), the whole responsibility for the tragedy of Cyprus, this anti-imperialist rhetoric led, through underground channels, to the emergence of a peculiar latent ‘anti-imperialist’ nationalism. This peculiar nationalism would emerge, within the Left as well as within extremist groups of the Right, as a driving force towards the ‘resounding’ NO at the referendum of 2004. The nationalization of the Cyprus problem by Papandreou was linked in Cyprus with Makarios’s ‘militant-patriotic’ will, as it had been expressed in

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his last speech, and turned suddenly into a rallying point of all the ‘militantpatriotic’ forces in Cyprus. This regrouping included both those who claimed to be the heirs of Makarios’s ‘militant will’ and those ‘militant-patriotic’ groupings within the political camp of DISY. It is not accidental that the review of Greek foreign policy by George Papandreou and Simitis on the model of the European paradigm in the 1990s pushed the two leaders towards a rapprochement with AKEL. In the judgement of these reformist Greek leaders, AKEL might exercise a catalytic role in the process of the historic compromise that would open the door to the entry of a reunited Cyprus into the new era as an EU member state. It is a tragic irony that AKEL belied those expectations with its unpredictable removal towards the ‘militant will’ camp, as this was expressed by Tassos Papadopoulos in the course towards the referendum. As for the relations between DIKO and AKEL, their diametrically opposite perceptions of the solution resulted in Kyprianou’s dissociation from the Minimum Programme (22 December 1984) when the submission of the first Cuellar Plan (November 1984)255 led the two opposing perceptions of the solution to an all-out confrontation. After that, Kyprianou joined Papandreou’s nationalization policy and, through Papandreou’s reasoning of rejection of dialogue with Turkey until substantial preconditions for a solution had been fulfilled, he adopted the policy of ‘protaxis’ along with a vague ‘patriotic’ rhetoric that accompanied him until his death (12 March 2002). The abandonment of the political framework of the Minimum Programme and the rallying of the ‘militant-patriotic’ forces, at the party level as well,256 under Papandreou’s umbrella of internationalization, removed towards Athens the centre of gravity in charting policy on the Cyprus problem. AKEL’s failed attempt to win back its role in the handling of the Cyprus problem through a parallel course with Clerides’s Right (February–May 1985),257 and its defeat at the elections of the same year, were also a defeat of the attempt to denationalize, or, more precisely, to make Cyprus the exclusive centre of decisions on the Cyprus problem. Defeat of this policy was also contributed to by the intransigent stand of the Turkish side, which, by refusing any commitment and even any discussion on substantial return of territory, undermined a priori the credibility of the Cuellar Plan and the procedure of the talks itself. An additional side effect of the electoral defeat of AKEL was what could have been called ‘the syndrome of the parallel course’ with DISY. This syndrome would weigh in all future political decisions of AKEL and would work again as an undeclared electoral calculation against a new comingtogether in relation to the Annan Plan in the pre-election period of 2003, as well as in the course of the referendum. The sense of denationalization of the Cyprus problem and the feeling of abandonment, as a result of Papandreou’s shift at the Davos meeting (30 January 1988), brought again to the forefront AKEL’s Cyprus-centred approach,

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thus helping the Party’s candidate for the presidential elections, which were at the home straight. In the end, the election of AKEL’s candidate, George Vassiliou, as President (February 1988), a novice in politics but free of the obsessions of Makarios’s ‘heirs’ and quite versatile with the European political culture, was in all respects a positive development towards a renewed search for a solution through the dialectic approach of the ‘realistic-compromising’ perception of Clerides and AKEL. A further asset of the new President was that he could appeal to large segments of the population. While through his ideological descent he might appeal to the Left, his successful entrepreneurial career created a positive image of him within the spectrum of the bourgeois Right. However, in spite of this convergence, the leader and exponent of the bourgeois Right, Glafkos Clerides, would leave Vassiliou alone and take side with the ‘patriotic’ forces at the time of the critical handling of Cuellar’s initiative in 1991 to be followed by Boutros-Ghali in 1992. Election considerations in view of the presidential elections of 1993 to win over Kyprianou and Lyssarides would make Clerides join them in the ‘patriotic’ rhetoric for outright rejection of any negotiation on the basis of the Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’, which, for the first time in UN proposals, included a map providing for substantial return of territory. Clerides’s election to the Presidency (February 1993), after a cooperation agreement with Kyprianou and secretive support by Lyssarides,258 would lead to a new period of nationalization – and militarization – of the Cyprus problem. That policy was interconnected with the Joint Defence Dogma as well as with the controversial ‘policy of the active volcano’,259 which Clerides inaugurated soon after he had come to power. However, that policy would have an inglorious end (December 1998), with the breakthrough in the S-300 missile crisis on the model of the previous one of 1964. From then on, Clerides turned decisively towards the logic of the Helsinki strategy (1999) and followed it consistently until the end of his term of office in 2003. However, despite this turn, the ‘militarization’ of the Cyprus problem and the ‘mythology’ that developed around the S-300 missiles, having been interconnected with the anti-imperialist nationalism mentioned above, would leave behind a blurred notion in relation to the perception of the solution, which would take on dramatic dimensions at the time of the referendum.

5.10. Return to the logic of ‘absolute solution’ The crisis that erupted within the Greek Cypriots in 1985, in relation to the Cuellar Plan, reflected, for the first and possibly the last time in party convergences, the bi-polar dichotomy in the ‘militant-patriotic’ and the ‘realisticcompromising’ perceptions of the solution. During that crisis, Tassos

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Papadopoulos re-emerged on the stage as the theorist of the hard ‘patriotic’ line against the ‘submissiveness’ of AKEL and Clerides. In a long series of scalding articles in his paper Kirikas, which he signed as ‘Democritos’ and which would continue with unabated tension until the paper was closed in 1991 when he was incorporated into DIKO, Papadopoulos chastised the ‘submissiveness’ of AKEL and DISY260 and demanded the rejection of the Cuellar Plan and of any intercommunal dialogue until ‘protaxis’ had been fulfilled. He repeatedly projected the claim that equalled rejection of federation that ‘the Turks will remain the Masters in the North and, in addition, they will become equal partners in the South’. Right up until Davos, he demanded a panethniki meeting (meeting of all Greek and Cypriot parties in Athens under the Greek Premier) to denounce submissiveness,261 insisted on rejecting any dialogue on the basis of the Cuellar Plan and called for the arrival of a Greek army division in Cyprus. Papadopoulos would recall the theory ‘Masters in the North and Partners in the South’ and further elaborate on it in a speech at a seminar organized by KYKEM (February 1986).262 He linked this theory to the principle of ‘political equality of the units (the two communities) and not the citizens’ within the framework of a federation. Implementation of this principle, he warned, would be ‘a prescription for the creation and perpetuation of deadlocks’, which would allow Turkey to become ‘master in the North and equal partner in the South’. Two months later, writing in his paper, he was to put forward the theory of the ‘second best solution’.263 His reasoning was that negotiation on the basis of the Cuellar Plan would lead to an ‘unjust’ and consequently ‘not viable’ solution, since only marginal improvements could be achieved. On the basis of this premiss, he suggested ‘the avoidance of the worse’ – that is, ‘to remain as we are until further ahead’, when ‘Greece will be called, in its capacity as a guarantor power, to shield us and safeguard that the situation will not deteriorate politically or militarily’.264 And he rounded up his article by asserting that ‘Greece was capable of fulfilling this condition’. In view of the presidential elections of 1988, Tassos Papadopoulos supported Kyprianou’s candidacy because ‘he is following the nationally right policy’, that of ‘protaxis’.265 In the years that followed, he continued his scalding articles against the ‘troika’,266 repeatedly warned against an initiative by the UN Secretary General following the war in Iraq as he predicted that there would be a come back of Cuellar’s ‘Ideas’ or Outline Proposals of 1989, and insisted on the absolute conditions of ‘protaxis’.267 At the same time, he declared his opposition to the announced intention by Jacques Poos to lead an EEC initiative, if it did not focus exclusively on the basic principles of ‘protaxis’.268 He also came out against the intended move by President George H. W. Bush towards a solution within the framework of his planned visit to Athens and Ankara, if there was no prior commitment of Turkey to implement the prin-

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ciples of ‘protaxis’. As he also rejected contacts of Greek and Turkish Cypriot political leaders because ‘they create the impression that the dispute in Cyprus is an intercommunal one whereas the Cyprus problem is a question of invasion and occupation of part of Cyprus and not a question of intercommunal dispute’.269 Furthermore, he fiercely attacked Papandreou over Davos in 1988270 and, three days before the historic meetings of the National Council that gave the Unanimous Proposals of January 1989, in a signed article in Kirikas, he set before the participants the conditions the intended proposals should fulfil. He set the condition for the return of all the refugees and rejected the ‘political equality’ of the 18 per cent (the Turkish Cypriots) with the 82 per cent (the Greek Cypriots) ‘beyond the limits the rights of the minority defined’. Finally, he denied the members of the National Council the right to decide ‘for the future generations of Hellenism’, which ‘have not elected you, have not authorized you, and have not given you the right to sell their future’.271 During that time, the ‘militant-patriotic’ camp was fortified by the intense political presence in Cyprus of two former Greek Ambassadors in Nicosia, Michalis Dountas and Efthymios Stoforopoulos, who had resigned their posts in disagreement with the Davos policy of Andreas Papandreou. Through militant writing in the press and speeches both in Greece and in Cyprus, they called for the return to ‘protaxis’, rejected the ‘equalization’ through federation of the minority with the majority, proposed preservation of the status quo as ‘second best solution’ and suggested release of Cyprus from its commitment to the Makarios–Denktas Agreement.272 Stoforopoulos went a step further calling on the Greek side openly and unequivocally to reject the federal solution and move towards a unitary state where the majority would rule and the minority rights would be guaranteed. As a political expression of this position, Nikos Koutsou founded a new party, the ‘New Horizons’ (NEO), which, both in its Founding Declaration (18 February1996) and the ‘basic principles’ of its statutes, as well as in its public statements since then, has declared its objective as that of promoting a ‘unitary state’ with parallel rejection of the federation. Resurgent nationalism found a natural ally in the Church. Having failed in its spiritual and pastoral mission, and being in an endemic state of corruption in its higher ranks, the Church saw in the ‘patriotic’ rhetoric the opportunity to regain its ethnarchic role. It even came to the point of officially suggesting, through the Archbishop, re-establishment of the Ethnarchic Council (February 1995).273 Nationalism left little room for social criticism of previous political decisions by the leadership. On the premiss of nationalist political analysis, the Cyprus problem was the exclusive outcome of Turkish expansionism and foreign conspiracy against Cyprus, masterminded and led by the United States and Britain. The Greek Cypriot community’s share of responsibility was just

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‘dissension’!274 The nationalist discourse undermined, in the minds of the people, the credibility of the federal solution. Political leaderships paying lip service to federation as a painful concession created confusion over its concept by the content they would place in it. Reading between the lines of such positions brings to mind rather a unitary state with majority rule than a federation. While it is difficult for the researcher to understand precisely the content of the solution sought by the Greek-centred nationalist circles of the ‘militant-patriotic’ perception, it is apparent that they reject federation as incompatible with the idea of a Greek Cyprus.275 Caesar Mavratsas, lecturer at the University of Cyprus, having gone through research carried out by Intercollege and Cyprus College as well as by private organizations, covering the period 1994–5, concludes that the findings of a negative attitude towards federation are connected with the growing rejection of the federal perspective.276 Andreas Hadjikyriakos, in an analysis of party positions on the Cyprus question in view of the May 1996 general elections, observes that ‘the majority of them still want federation but the NO minority is getting larger’.277 More precisely, DIKO stated acceptance of federation, but from the content it gave it – ‘a functionable federation where the will of the majority will prevail over that of the minority’ – it actually rejected it. Openly in opposition to federation were the positions of the New Horizons and the Ecologists-Environmentalists Movement (KOP). As for EDEK, it moved in the same hazy atmosphere as that of DIKO. It maintained that ‘under the pseudonym of bi-communal bi-zonal federation’, ‘an attempt was made to impose a partitionist solution’. EDEK President Vassos Lyssarides went a step further against federation when, during a television debate on the federal solution as it was outlined in the Unanimous Proposals of the National Council of 1989, he stated: ‘I have never accepted nor do I accept them.’278 Hadjikyriakos comments that the appearance of New Horizons and their stand on returning to the logic of the unitary state have ‘undoubtedly created the need, in some of the existing parties which had never felt convenient with bi-zonal bi-communal federation, to review their positions in the direction of rejecting federation’. In such a climate, the prevalent values of which were the militarization of the Cyprus problem, the policy of the ‘active volcano’, the ‘Greek-centred’ and the ‘anti-imperialist’ nationalism, the political atmosphere became so explosive that the President of the House’s Defence Committee, Takis Hadjidemetriou, felt the need to warn against the danger of potentially uncontrollable consequences: . . . The exaggerated emphasis on the defence effort, the excessive publicity and big words that are being pronounced, have created in some circles a climate of illusions as to the balance of power between Cyprus and Turkey. I am deeply concerned about possible adventures where such illusions might

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lead. They are not few those who believe that we are capable of starting a liberation war.279

The position of DIKO, at the time ruling partner in Clerides’s government, was that the Cyprus Hellenism should not have abandoned the war option for solution to the Cyprus problem.280 There was also a parallel reasoning of ultranationalists for a military solution through an offensive strategic deployment connected with the Joint Defence Dogma.281 Furthermore, press reports about Arsenis’s ‘pincer strategy’ against Turkey, the marginal range and the meagre results of which lagged far behind the inflated literature seemingly fed by Arsenis himself,282 all these and other similar manifestations, fostered in Cyprus an unrealistic and outdated, maximalistic nationalism that could not but cause concern over the unrealistic high-flying aspirations it created, leading to and fostering the perception of ‘absolute solution’. Tassos Papadopoulos, having been elected President of DIKO and having emerged from opinion polls as the dominant candidate for the Presidency, expressed, from a reverse side – that is, from what he rejected – the mainstream viewpoint of ‘absolute solution’: . . . We reject a solution that will not safeguard the return of the refugees to their homes. We reject a solution that will not be a federation, a solution of confederation or one that entails confederation. We reject a solution that will not enforce practical implementation of human rights and basic freedoms. We reject a solution that will allow the right of intervention of any other state in our country. We reject a solution that will not be functional, not only because this will be an evil but also because it will of its own impede our EU accession process.283

The logic of the ‘absolute solution’ was returning to be sustained and led to a new resurgence along the path towards the referendum of 2004. Nationalism, Mavratsas observes, being the dominant driving force in the contemporary history of Cyprus, created a political culture that, in Weberian terms, ‘is based on the “ethic of conviction” rather than the “ethic of responsibility”’. In other words, it focuses on ‘the pursuit of absolute ends’ ‘morally and emotionally charged’, but ‘without any deliberation on the possible consequences of one’s actions or choices’.284

5.11. Helsinki and the reunification perspective Through his ‘active volcano’ policy, Clerides aimed at a controlled crisis, which, in the face of the ‘danger of eruption’, would have mobilized the United States and the EU in the direction of both solution and accession.285

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However, political instability in Turkey, which encouraged among politicians a patriotic rhetoric while leaving to the Generals complete control of the political decision-making field, did not leave Clerides any margins for manoeuvring. The S-300 crisis rekindled in Turkey the anti-Hellenic Imia reaction precluding any movements that might have been perceived as ‘concessions’ in Cyprus. Furthermore, this political volatility immensely strengthened Denktas’s position. Having always had direct contact with the generals, he now became completely independent of any control by the politicians, thus blocking any progress in the intercommunal dialogue and precluding Turkish Cypriot participation in the EU accession negotiations. Cyprus’s solitariness in the face of escalating Turkish threats, as well as of real dangers in its European course, persuaded Clerides that it was beyond the capabilities of Cyprus to manage such a crisis. He must also have come to understand what Yiannos Kranidiotis pointed out, immediately after the crisis was over, that militarization enclaved the Cyprus question in a field of action in which Turkey had incomparable superiority.286 However, the dimensions the whole issue had taken and the emotional charge relating to it,287 as well as public commitments at leadership level,288 drastically confined search for alternative options. The intense diplomatic activity of Pangalos and Kranidiotis in the direction of Holbrooke and the UN gave Clerides a saveface outlet, in Resolutions 1217 and 1218 of the UN Security Council (22 December 1998), to accept cancellation of the missile project in view of the suggested commencement of a new initiative by the UN Secretary General aiming at sustained negotiations until a comprehensive solution was achieved.289 Nevertheless, the maximalistic aspirations generated by the militarization of the Cyprus problem were not abandoned. After a period of confusion and embarrassment, they were channelled in the European perspective that was opened up by the Helsinki decision – for the reception of which, the creation of a supportive political culture, at the levels of both the people and the party leaderships, had been completely ignored. If after the 6 March 1995 Agreement, instead of patriotic rhetoric, electoral calculations, and personal strategies,290 a sustained effort had been made towards internalizing the European paradigm, there might have been, first, a realistic perception of Helsinki and, second, a positive perception and solidarity with the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas and Ankara, which started a little later. But the political leadership, during that crucial transitional period following 6 March 1995, proved inferior to circumstances. The ‘militant-patriotic’ wing, which DISY had also joined through the ‘activevolcano’ policy, obsessed with militarization and completely ignoring, if not disinterested in, what the European paradigm really meant, did not show the slightest interest in analysing in depth the substantive elements of the transitional nature that the accession perspective entailed. They did not do this even

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after the accession negotiations had commenced (March 1998) nor did they think of it after Helsinki (December 1999). On the other hand, the leadership of AKEL stubbornly refused to come to terms with the European phenomenon. Obsessed with the traditional prejudice of orthodox communist parties against social democracy, with which the EU was in many respects identified, was incapable of realizing that AKEL’s history, trade union and political culture placed it, in respect of its idiosyncrasy, in the political spectrum of social democracy.291 Furthermore, through its close attachment to conventional anti-imperialist rhetoric, a convenient method of distancing itself from the Right, it was enclaved in the peculiar anti-imperialist nationalism already referred to above, and through the blinkers of this nationalism it faced the European challenge. The consequence of this political climate was the absence of the dominant European orientation one might have expected. Nor was there a sustained effort by the parties, the intellectuals, the press and the media to internalize the European paradigm. The catalytic role of Cyprus’s European path was approached only through envisioning the political and economic benefits and the change of balance with Turkey. There was not the slightest interest in the role our European course might have exercised towards the creation of the appropriate political climate among the public, the preparation of the people to accept, along with EU accession, a solution to the Cyprus problem that would have been in many respects outside both their experience and their line of thought. It was not difficult for one to predict, within the context of regional and international reality, that the solution capable of being achieved would have been, in its basic parameters, outside and beyond the logic of a centralized national state. For thirty years following the invasion and another ten years since before the invasion, the Greek Cypriot community had exclusive control in the management of a homogeneous, unitary, centralized national state.292 Given that situation, there should have been a sustained effort by the state through education, by the parties through their contact with the people at large and by the intellectuals through public interventions, all aiming at helping youth and society at large to internalize the multicultural identity of Europe, and even more, its postmodern political culture. However, there had not been a sustained effort in this direction. As there had not been a sustained effort towards internalizing fundamental European values such as the transcendence of nationalism, the acceptance of dissimilarity, of diversity, of compromise and consensus, it is not accidental that the two Education Ministers of the crucial period (1995–2003), Cleri Angelidou and Ouranios Ioannides, both exponents of the EOKA fighting spirit that they tried to revitalize, positioned themselves against the solution perspective envisaged in the Annan Plan. It was in this political and cultural climate that Cyprus lived at the time Simitis and Papandreou were feverishly working towards the Helsinki accord. And when the countdown had started towards the historic decision, which will

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remain a unique moment in the history of the Cyprus problem since the invasion, Cyprus was just staring confused, a ship without compass. AKEL, DIKO, EDEK and the ‘militant-patriots’ of DISY were entrenched behind ‘protaxis’ as a precondition for Turkey being granted the status of candidate country for EU accession, being unable to decode and comprehend the message of Helsinki293 – this message being the challenge of the historic compromise through which to transcend the notion of the national state. They did not receive the message. DIKO and AKEL continued to hold firm on their hard line, in DISY the extremists fell back, while in EDEK, for the first time in its history, Lyssarides was left ‘almost alone’ in his attempt to pass a decision to the effect that Helsinki constituted a ‘retreat’.294 The confusion at leadership level was apparently reflected in the society at large. Where one might have expected an almost universal acceptance of the Helsinki Decision, an opinion poll showed only one-third of the citizens to have positively received such a decisive and perhaps unique achievement in Greek diplomacy since the post-war internationalization of the Cyprus problem.295 The only positions maintained were the maximalistic aspirations of the pre-Helsinki era. On the one hand, AKEL used them to justify an ideologically based criticism of Helsinki. On the other hand, the militantpatriotic front simply removed them from the ‘dynamic solution’ and transferred them to the ‘European solution’, where an ‘automatic pilot’ would lead through implementation of the acquis communautaire. For the first time since 1974, the Helsinki Decision made reintegration of Cyprus an objective of the majority for the Turkish Cypriots, thus belying assessments of foreign centres that the maintenance of the status quo was a choice both communities were getting accustomed to.296 Already before Helsinki, at the height of the S-300 missile crisis, serious academic essays had questioned assessments in favour of the status quo as being incompatible with the strategic goal of the achievement of sustainable peace in the East Mediterranean. The militarization of Cyprus and the escalation of tension in 1998 had shown how unstable the status quo was and how real the threat of war. Questions were also raised on the option of agreed partition and the creation of two separate ethnically homogeneous states. First, it would have bred antagonism and, in time, militarization and tension. Second, such a situation would have impeded Greek–Turkish rapprochement, thus further complicating security issues in the Eastern Mediterranean. The end result would have been escalation of tension between Turkey and Greece and further militarization of the two Cypriot states.297 In contrast to the above options, ‘a unified Cyprus would enable powersharing to produce a sense of common purpose, identity and mutual security between the two Cypriot communities’.298 Institutional power sharing was seen as ‘a way to square the circle between democracy and nationalism by constructing a liberal politico-economic system which avoids the potential

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excesses of the majority (feared by Turkish Cypriots) and prevents a tyranny of the minority (as Greek Cypriots fear)’. As a result, ‘the domestic transformation in Cyprus would become a model for other similar cases of ethnic conflict and external aggression’.299 In relation to broader regional factors, a timely accession of a unified Cyprus to the EU would have provided ‘a supranational framework’ in which both economy and security would have benefited. Finally, ‘a stable peace on Cyprus would remove one of the most significant obstacles to overall Greek–Turkish normalization thereby increasing Greece’s support for Turkey’s eventual EU membership’.300 It was further thought that ‘the context of EU membership may well provide a long-term model compatible with the integration ideal, but the kind of “soft” integration explored in the EU rather than that involved with consolidating nation states’.301 That reintegration would have provided for limited derogations from the acquis ‘such as those provided for the purchase of property in Austria, Denmark and Finland’s Aland islands’.302 The above cited thoughts were expressed with the awareness of reservations among the Greek Cypriots for reintegration, because of the possible cost until living standards of the two communities had been balanced and, more importantly, because of the limitations power sharing would have entailed. They were also expressed in the shadow of indications given by an increasing number of Greek Cypriots that ‘a divided island may be the least undesirable solution provided that there are sufficient territorial and security concessions on the Turkish side’.303 Such considerations by the Greek Cypriots with regard to cost and power sharing, given that they had got used to exclusive management, might have been reasonable, in view of the insistence of Denktas and Ankara on confederation of two sovereign ethnically homogeneous states. However, when the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas and Ankara opened the door to reintegration, the Greek Cypriot leadership appeared unprepared to decode the messages sent out by the new reality and explore in depth all possible scenarios. Nor did it seriously contemplate on the direct correlation that a solution must have had, first, with Cyprus’s political reality and, second, with the European supranational multicultural postmodern paradigm. Maximalism and populist patriotic rhetoric, in which it moved both before and after Helsinki, as well as electoral calculations and personal strategies, in view of successive election contests,304 did not leave room enough for such contemplation. Under such circumstances, when the sustained involvement of the international community took concrete shape in the Annan Plan and the process towards the referendum was determined, there did not emerge a leadership endowed with the ability to transcend the power of inertia and creatively engage in the negotiating process.

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Chapter 6

The Perception of the Solution by the Turkish Cypriot Community 6.1. The inception of Turkish Cypriot nationalism In Cyprus’s traditional rural society, peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims, who lived in either separate or mixed villages scattered throughout the island, used to be the rule during the entire period of Ottoman domination. Common conditions of life and the cooperation that the way of life made imperative are considered by researchers with a sociological approach1 to be fundamental elements in peaceful coexistence. An additional factor, which worked as a deterrent to conflicts on the basis of religious or cultural differences, was the relative tolerance of the Ottoman state towards non-Islamic religions and cultures2 and, in connection with this attitude, the relatively autonomous internal functioning of ethno-religious communities (millet). Mutual religious tolerance in Cyprus presents evident signs of syncretism, the most manifest example of this being the linobambaki (lit. linen-cottons), who became integrated into the Turkish community when, with the development of the two opposing and conflicting nationalisms, compromise situations were no longer tolerated in either community. Social turbulence and conflicts in Ottoman Cyprus, which sometimes took the form of violent uprisings, were rebellions mobilized from below. The insurgents were usually Christians and Muslims alike, who moved against oppression from above, targeting ultimately rapacity and harsh taxation on the part of both the pashas and the prelates.3 Cooperation at the political level, in the face of common economic and social problems, was also exhibited during British rule at times when serious common problems left the enosis goal outside the domain of the Legislative Council. Paschalis Kitromilides, noting that such political cooperation in the Legislative Council was made possible as long as the enosis aspiration was left outside the body, observes that dissension between the two communities on the national status of the island ‘remained academic, was confined to the elite level, and was never

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strained enough to cross the threshold of violent ethnic conflict’ until the 1950s. In support of his observation, Kitromilides adds the fact that the Greek Cypriot 1931 uprising for enosis did not provoke any interethnic incidents.4 The same conclusion is reached by Michael Attalides. He notes the fact that Turkish Cypriot leaders ‘had, through declarations, early opposed the Greek demand for enosis’ but he concludes that ‘this was not a nationalist movement’. ‘It remained’, he explains, ‘at the level of religious and political elite and did not spread to the mass of the Turkish Cypriots’. On the basis of this assumption, he interprets the appearance of Turkish Cypriot nationalism as a popular movement in the 1940s, in reaction to the enosis resurgence following the war.5 However, Altay Nevzat, whose extensive research in archive material and Turkish Cypriot press evidence since the 1880s has brought to light facts until recently unknown to researchers, places the inception and growth of Turkish Cypriot nationalism at a much earlier stage.6 He reaffirms the peaceful coexistence of the two communities, their cultural convergence and their syncretism, as well as the many cases of their political cooperation within the framework of the millet system. But at the same time, he notes, the Greeks and Turks of Cyprus ‘did maintain a separate distinctive communal existence throughout the Ottoman epoch’,7 certainly ‘thought of by their members as being not “self-contained”, Cyprus-based nations but as integral parts of larger nations’.8 To the same extent that the millet system allowed cooperation at the top, it strengthened a distinct communal identity at the bottom. M. Hakan Yavuz notes accordingly: ‘The religious differences between the Muslim-Turks and the Christian-Greeks were in the process of being transformed into political differences during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. However, these primordial, religious and cultural identities gained new impetus as a result of the political institutions and policies created and implemented by the British.’ The 1882 Constitution, he adds, ‘formalized ethnic divisions and gave an impetus to bi-national consciousness’.9 The lack of a hierarchical authority in Islam, and consequently the lack of a powerful politico-religious institution such as that of the Orthodox Church, deprived the Turkish Cypriots of organized leadership ‘to balance against the Greeks when the nationalist push started’. ‘Communities that have highly organized religious institutions are more likely to be affected by the first wave of nationalism than those that do not,’ Yavuz concludes.10 This structural difference explains, to some extent, the delay in the political organization of the Turkish Cypriots. While the starting point of Greek nationalism in Cyprus might conventionally be placed to 1821, the advent of the British in 1878 might be connected chronologically with the inception of Turkish Cypriot nationalism – but not as an outcome of the British ‘divide and rule’, as many researchers think, projecting the experience of the 1940s and the 1950s back into the 1880s.11

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While the change of regime in Cyprus sparked off the resurgence of Greek Cypriot nationalism, it awakened the Muslim Turkish elite to the danger of losing its privileged position, the danger of losing Ottoman domination itself and ultimately the incorporation of Cyprus into Greece. In roughly the same way as the feeling of insecurity generated Ottoman and later Young Turk and Kemalist nationalism, in Cyprus this feeling worked as a vehicle of transfer, diffusion and inculcation of ideas of Turkish nationalism in the Muslim Turkish community. This nationalism functioned as a counter-trend to Greek nationalism, and moved in the opposite direction of the enosis movement, towards the return of Cyprus to its ‘lawful owner’, the Ottoman state.12 In the 1880s the Ottoman Club (Kiraathane) was established in Nicosia in the form of a ‘public reading place’, a coffee shop, a meeting place for its elite members and a melting pot of discussion on political and everyday matters. Soon the Club had its own printing house and started publishing its own journal, Kir’ati Zaman, a mouthpiece of nationalist Young Turk ideas.13 The papers Umid and Saded were also launched in the same decade.14 A decisive role in the development of nationalism in the Turkish Cypriot community, as it happened in the Greek, was exercised by education, which, since the Tanzimat reform, gradually shifted away from the exclusively religious character. Although Turkish Cypriot education was almost exclusively controlled by the colonial administration, the fact that all secondary school teachers were graduates of Turkish universities facilitated direct transfer of ideas to Cyprus, particularly the ideas of the Young Turk nationalist movement. Primary school teachers, as well, having passed through the Lycée and been influenced by their teachers, were then transformed into preachers of nationalism in the communities where they worked. The tolerance of the colonial administration, having unleashed nationalist ideas within the Greek community,15 later allowed the diffusion of radical nationalist ideas by the Young Turks, as well as circulation of publications propagating such ideas more freely than in areas controlled by the Ottoman state.16 Since the 1890s, the papers Yeni Zaman and Kibris had carried clear Young Turk influences,17 with references to the ‘nation’ and distinguishing the ‘national’ from the ‘religious’ identity.18 The 1890s also witnessed the presence in Cyprus of cadres of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), who were responsible for mobilizations that caused the reaction of the Turkish Cypriot religious establishment and of Abdulhamid’s envoys, as well as the colonial administration.19 In early 1907, an official CUP branch was established in Nicosia and in December the same year a second branch in Larnaca, which, owing to the large number of memberships, became the Headquarters of the CUP in Cyprus.20 Issues central to Young Turk ideology, such as modernization, Islamism, Ottomanism and Turkism, became matters of everyday discussion among the Turkish Cypriot

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elite. The shift towards science and education and the need for unity among the Muslims were prevalent themes during the initial phase. Towards the end of the nineteenth century precedence was given to the Ottoman national identity, reflecting the ideas of the world of the Ottoman Empire at large.21 During the first years of the twentieth century, the Turkish Cypriot elite intensified its efforts to strengthen the bonds with the Ottoman state, while it raised nationalist tones and tension with the Greek Cypriot community. Islamism, Ottomanism and Turkish nationalism went hand in hand, but gradually Turkish nationalism became the dominant element, with Islamism and Ottomanism functioning as supportive poles.22 In the first decade of the twentieth century more and more references were made in the Turkish Cypriot press to the ‘motherland’, the ‘nation’ and ‘Turkism’. Following the example of romantic European nationalism, they sought the nation’s roots, its history and grandeur through the victorious march of the Turks into Asia Minor and the creation of the Empire. After the Young Turk revolution (July 1908), the struggle for the cause of the ‘Turks’, for ‘Turkism’, ‘Ottomanism’ and ‘patriotism’, became the focus of political thought in the Turkish Cypriot community. Turkish Cypriot intellectuals looked upon the Young Turk movement as the power that would liberate them from foreign domination (the British) and save them from the possible threat of enosis.23 It was during this period that tension arose between the two communities. A report by the High Commissioner in 1903 refers to anti-Greek agitation by Turkish Cypriots in Nicosia, in reaction to enosis agitation led by Andreas Themistocleous. Two years later, the High Commissioner asked London not to withdraw the armed garrison in Cyprus, as he predicted further escalation of the enosis agitation and consequently of tension between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.24 In April 1906, following enosis agitation led by Katalanos in Famagusta and the entrance of Greek Cypriot marchers, according to claims, onto the premises of a Turkish mosque, hundreds of Turkish Cypriots held a rally in Nicosia shouting slogans: ‘Long live the Sultan!’25 In October 1907, a Turkish Cypriot delegation visited Istanbul and had contacts with Ottoman officials during which they asked for the return of Cyprus to the Ottoman state.26 Churchill’s visit to Cyprus, in October 1907, caused new tension between the two communities. And it was only through police intervention that violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots was averted during Churchill’s welcoming event at the port of Famagusta. The recognition by Churchill of the right of the Greek Cypriots to demand union with Greece, despite his clarification that Britain respected Turkish sovereignty in Cyprus, sparked off a new protracted crisis in the relations of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.27 In December 1907, the Turkish Cypriots of Famagusta staged a nationalist play by Namik Kemal, and special arrangements were made for the transportation of Turkish

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Cypriots by train from Nicosia to attend the performance. ‘National awakening’ was the keyword in speeches made by community notables both before and after the performance.28 Another area of friction was the municipal councils, in which the Greek Cypriot majority had absolute control. In 1907, Hami Bey, a member of the Legislative Council, tabled a proposition in the Council in which he demanded rotation in the Mayors’ terms between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in proportion to the population of each municipality. He further asked that, in the event that an elected Mayor was a Greek Cypriot, the Deputy Mayor be elected from among the Turkish Cypriot Councillors.29 The next year, the Turkish Cypriots of Famagusta demanded that their area be declared a separate municipality.30 In both the first and second cases, reasons presented were the prejudiced, as claimed, policies of Greek Cypriot majority-controlled municipal councils towards Turkish Cypriots.31 An additional factor, which fed Turkish Cypriot nationalism from the 1890s until the ascendancy of Rauf Denktas, was what Niyazi Kizilyurek calls the ‘Crete syndrome’.32 The similarity of the case of Crete with that of Cyprus (size, position, strategic importance, Ottoman connection, dual population structure, existence of an enosis movement and involvement of Western powers) acted as a strong stimulus for the enosis struggle of the Greek Cypriots,33 while at the same time being a precedent to be avoided by the Turkish Cypriots. Crete became a central point of reference in the Greek Cypriot press in the 1890s, but even more so in the Turkish Cypriot press. As the Greek Cypriots saw in the massacres and persecutions of the Cretan Greeks their own fate in the event that Cyprus was returned to the Ottoman state, the Turkish Cypriots saw their own fate in parallel developments in Crete, where the victims were threatened to be, or actually were, Cretan Turks.34 The eruption of a Greek–Turkish war in 1897, the main issue being the Cretan question, caused such tension between the two communities that the High Commissioner felt the need to issue a proclamation prohibiting meetings, assemblies, processions or written articles.35 The Turkish Cypriots, in reaction to the campaign for union of Crete and other parts of the Ottoman Empire with Greece, identified themselves more and more with the Ottoman Empire and asked to remain under its sovereignty or even demanding withdrawal of the British and return of the island to its ‘lawful owner’, the Ottoman Empire.36 Following the Balkan War of 1912, the ‘Crete syndrome’ was dragged to the surface every now and then, either by the Turkish Cypriot press or by Turkish Cypriot political leaders whenever they felt the threat of enosis or, even when this had ceased to exist after 1974, when they wanted to stir up ethnic hatred as a weapon against the reunification of Cyprus. One hundred years after the Cretan uprising of 1896, Rauf Denktas, obsessed with this past, would write in his memoirs (1996): ‘With the help of General Turgut Sunalp,37

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I am reading through the Cretan files in the Archives of the General Staff; I have the feeling that I am reading the history of Cyprus.’

6.2. From Young Turk to Kemalist nationalism The Young Turk revolution (July 1908) was received with jubilant celebrations by the Turkish Cypriots, with dithyrambic articles in the Turkish Cypriot press,38 and with the establishment of new clubs which expressed the spirit of the Revolution.39 Loyalty to the Sultan, who had previously symbolized the Ottoman state, was now transferred directly to the state. Still in the shadow of the adverse political climate that Churchill’s visit had created the previous year, the Turkish Cypriots saw in the Revolution the salvation of the Ottoman Empire and consequently the protection of their own interests.40 The initially progressive and unifying message of the Revolution led to a loosening of tension between the two communities, and Greek Cypriots accepted invitations and attended events celebrating the Revolution. However, several months later (early 1909), on the one hand, the emergence of Turkish nationalism as the driving force of the Revolution and, on the other hand, the recurrence of enosis agitation again brought back anti-Greek feeling and the ‘Crete syndrome’ among the Turkish Cypriots. Friction, having resurfaced through the press in both communities, centred round enosis and restoration to the Ottoman state respectively.41 In extreme expressions of Young Turk spirit, there appeared ideas that constituted economic nationalism: exhortations to purchase Ottoman products and to set up a Turkish Bank in order to break free from dependence on Greek Cypriots.42 Linguistic nationalism was also manifest in press articles suggesting the cleansing of the Turkish language from foreign influences and the use of Turkish words comprehensible to the public, since ‘the purpose of the press is to serve the nation’.43 And in 1911, in reaction to anti-Turkish articles in the Greek Cypriot press and statements to the effect that, in the event that the British left, Greek Cypriots would not allow the occupation of Cyprus by any power other than Greece, the Turkish Cypriots staged an unprecedented rally (21 September 1911) to voice their opposition to such a development.44 The capture of the Dodecanese by Italy (May 1911) during the Turkish Italian war led to further escalation of tension between the two communities, again bringing the ‘Crete syndrome’ to the fore among Turkish Cypriots. In that tense atmosphere, an isolated incident in Limassol (May 1912) led to intercommunal clashes of such dimensions (four killed and more than a hundred wounded) that made the government declare marshal law.45 On the outbreak of the Balkan War (October 1912), the British administration made repeated warnings, and took strict precautionary measures, to

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prevent intercommunal clashes. The feeling of despair among the Turkish Cypriots as a result of the successive defeats of the Young Turks is expressed in a petition to the British government (December 1912), in which they asked that, in the event that it became imperative to bring about a change of regime, the island be ceded to Britain or to Egypt (!) but in no way to Greece. Such a case, the petition noted, would have brought an evil fate to their community.46 Further desperate letters and messages were sent to the British government by Turkish Cypriot notables during 1913 on news reports that Britain was intending to cede Cyprus to Greece.47 When the triumvirate of Enver, Talat and Cemal took over absolute control of the state (23 January 1913) and Pan-Turkism became the official policy of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Cypriots followed the official policy of the Ottoman state and adapted to the dominant trends in Istanbul. They backed the Empire’s war effort by raising funds mainly for the navy and their press turned out noisily against Britain for having taken over two ships under construction for the Ottoman navy, in 1914 following the outbreak of the First World War.48 At least until early in the war, a Young Turk party was active in Cyprus ‘siding with the Ottoman Empire and Germany against Great Britain’.49 Young Turk nationalism had infiltrated the schools and had become the dominant ideology of the Turkish Cypriot Press.50 Leading circles in the Turkish Cypriot community, realizing the dire situation in which they found themselves, and the danger of losing the relatively privileged position they still held in the administration, welcomed the annexation of Cyprus by Britain (5 November 1914) during a visit they paid the next day to the High Commissioner. By allying themselves with the colonial regime they had a better chance of keeping their privileged positions and, on the other hand, prevent enosis, which was their main concern.51 Nevertheless, evidence cited by Altay Nevzat shows that, among those Turkish Cypriots who were not directly dependent on the British administration, there was an intense pro-German current that spread beyond the towns. An indication in this direction is the suggestion of High Commissioner Clauson to the British government (end of 1916) to set up a prisoner-of-war camp in Cyprus in order to shake off the idea of German invincibility in the minds of Turkish Cypriots.52 The offer of Cyprus to Greece in 191553 resulted in a flurry of protest telegrams, most characteristic being that of the most pro-British Turkish Cypriot notable, Irfan Bey (11 November 1915), who used Turkish Cypriot loyalty to ‘avert this calamity’.54 Knocking on other doors as well, Irfan Bey sent a letter to the Earl of Cromer in which he asked his support to avert ‘a most appalling disaster’, and recalled the events in Crete as proof that their apprehensions were not groundless.55 When, after the war, the Greek Cypriots were preparing to send a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference to raise the question of enosis, the Turkish

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Cypriots reacted with intense political activity and decided on a delegation of their own to Paris, but the British authorities refused them passports.56 Continued Turkish Cypriot agitation in a climate of intense anxiety, in connection with intelligence reports about planned disturbances during Easter Week 1919, led the British administration to pre-emptive arrests and internment, in the Kyrenia Castle of three leading cadres of the party ‘Union with Turkey’, which had been established by Turkish Cypriot nationalists after the war to fight against union of Cyprus with Greece.57 During the Asia Minor War, Turkish Cypriots were emotionally involved on the side of Mustafa Kemal, with a flurry of manifestations including nationalist theatrical performances and inflammatory press reports and commentaries.58 The capture of Izmir (9 September 1922) sparked off jubilant popular celebrations and dithyrambic reports in the press. The Ankebut journal (13 September 1922), acting contrary to Islamic dogma, carried a portrait of Mustafa Kemal captioned: ‘Our Commander-in-chief, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasa, declared the Mediterranean as the objective for our armies.’59 (It is worth noting the identification in the use of the pronoun ‘our’.) It was now the turn of the Turkish Cypriots to see their irredentist aspirations belied at Lausanne,60 as had been the case with the Greek Cypriots at Sèvres three years earlier. In spite of Turkish Cypriot agitation, Inonu agreed at Lausanne the complete abandonment by Turkey of any claims on Cyprus. What he successfully tried to safeguard was the right of the Turkish Cypriots to opt for Turkish nationality and migrate to Turkey if they so wished.61 Consequently, the declaration of Cyprus as a Crown Colony (1 May 1925), contrary to strong Greek Cypriot protests, was welcomed by the Turkish Cypriots (as with the annexation of 1914). The main reason was that they interpreted this British action as safeguarding what had been expressly noted by the British government, in reply to the protest of Archbishop Cyrillos III, that, ‘the question of the union of Cyprus with Greece has been finally closed and cannot be reopened’.62 Difficult economic conditions in Cyprus and, in that connection, the bright future promised by the new Turkey and the effort by Mustafa Kemal to attract Turks from the periphery, led to a wave of emigration to Turkey, from 1924 until the early 1930s. Emigration took on such dimensions that it caused concern to the colonial government. Having decided to keep Cyprus, Britain needed a Turkish Cypriot presence to counterbalance the insistence of the Greek Cypriots on enosis. Therefore, it resorted to bureaucratic procedures that made things difficult for emigration applicants.63 The wave of emigration also caused concern among the leading circles of the Turkish Cypriot elite, as well as among a segment of ultra-nationalists. They all saw emigration as leaving open the road to enosis. And they tried to check it. The negative messages of many returning Turkish Cypriots, who had not found things

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as expected in Turkey, also contributed towards containing the wave of emigration.64 The years between the Treaty of Lausanne and the Greek Cypriot uprising of 1931 constitute a uniquely formative period throughout British rule. The burial of enosis aspirations in the ruins of the Asia Minor Disaster and, a little later at Lausanne, the abandonment by Turkey of any claims on Cyprus, generated the possibility for the two communities to leave aside their irredentist ideologies of the past and come together in their common homeland, Cyprus. The Venizelos–Atatürk Friendship Pact of 1930 gave a strong outside impetus to the new dynamic. Furthermore, acute social and economic problems, caused by internal social processes, as well as by the world economic crisis, hit both Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike, and demanded joint action on common interests. Another development that pushed things in the above direction was the authoritative character of Governor Ronald Storrs’s regime, particularly the arbitrary decisions in relation to education and the penal code, where democratization and delegation of power were urgently needed. All these factors created, for the first time, the dynamic of convergence of the two previously divergent nationalisms towards a joint anti-colonial struggle that might gradually spread, in a ‘spillover effect’, to substantive political issues regarding the future of the island and ultimately lead to a modus vivendi for the two communities. As Kemalist nationalism shed irredentist elements of Pan-Turkism and focused on modernization, it was promptly followed by Turkish Cypriot nationalism. The triumph of Mustafa Kemal in the War of Independence and his evident success in the process of building the new state acted as powerful legitimizing factors in the minds of the Turkish Cypriots, who embraced the Kemalist reforms with enthusiasm.65 Indicative of how the Turkish Cypriots received those reforms is an angry letter to the Governor by an ulema (21 April 1930) who identifies Kemalism with bolshevism and shows his indignation at the fact that ‘of late years this perishable fire began to fall also in this unfortunate Cyprus like lightning, and some of the thoughtless people began, without thinking for it beforehand, to blow this with all their power’.66 The chief vehicles of transfer and diffusion of Kemalist nationalism among the Turkish Cypriots were the press and education. A relatively large number of newspapers and periodicals, which started publishing after marshal law had been abolished (1919), became militant advocates of modernist Kemalist ideas. Even the papers that expressed the conservative ruling establishment, Hakitat (1923) and Birlik (1924), glorified Mustafa Kemal and antagonized the Kemalist press in showing off faith in Kemalism. In the field of education, the cooperation of the Turkish Cypriot members of the Legislative Council with the colonial government (1920–30) achieved proportionately larger subsidies compared with those for Greek education. As

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a result, a greater capacity to address the drive towards learning, brought about by modernist Kemalist ideas, led to a vertical increase in the numbers of pupils and students in the 1920s. Statistical data for the years 1921 and 1931 show an increase in numbers of primary-school pupils from 7,327 to 9,967, despite the drastic decrease in productive population, owing to emigration to Turkey. As for Lycée students, form a figure of 253 in 1921, they had surpassed 600 by 1931. And as books and curriculums came from Turkey, secondary-school teachers from Turkish universities and primary-school teachers from the Lycée, schools were transformed into seedbeds of Kemalism, despite administrational control exercised by the colonial government.67 Notwithstanding these social changes, the Legislative Council was dominated by the moderate conservative, Musa Irfan, until 1925, and by Mehmet Munir until 1930, both of these being representatives of the social and ruling establishment. Irfan and Munir successively cooperated with the colonial government. During Irfan’s leadership the law was passed on Muslim education (1920), which greatly contributed to the growth of Turkish Cypriot education. Under Munir’s leadership (1925–30), Storrs actually took control of the main communal institutions run by the Turkish Cypriots. He abolished the post of the Kadi of Cyprus (1927), abolished the henceforth relative autonomy of Evkaf by appointing all its representatives (1928), and finally abolished the office of the Mufti (1929), the spiritual leader of the Turkish Cypriots.68 In spite of the fact that the aforementioned measures by Storrs bore an element of modernization, the fact that they actually abolished institutions that expressed the autonomy of the Turkish Cypriot community in religious and cultural fields made them the target of Kemalist nationalists, particularly as the Orthodox Church and Greek education retained their autonomy almost intact. The Kemalists led their campaign against both the British colonial rule and the Munir-led conservative elite, which they accused of adopting a subservient attitude towards the British. When the moderate Greek Cypriot representatives who had been elected in 1925 at the Legislative Council asked for a broadening of political freedoms, their Turkish Cypriot colleagues, led by Munir, took a negative defensive attitude, believing that, behind the demand for political freedoms, including delegation of higher administrative posts to Cypriots, were, on the one hand, the goal of enosis and, on the other hand, the possibility of the Turkish community losing the privileged position it still held in the administration, particularly in the police. The same attitude was held by Turkish Cypriot Council members when, in the aftermath of the Asia Minor Disaster, Greek Cypriot members had asked for self-government with proportional representation of the two communities in the constitutional organs (December 1922). The fears, then as well, were enosis and majority rule. Their experience of the use the Greek Cypriots had made of their majority in the municipal councils was an

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additional factor strengthening Turkish suspiciousness towards Greek intentions – a suspiciousness further reaffirmed by the fact that, even when the Greek Cypriot Leaders spoke of self-government, they never failed to remind that their ultimate goal was enosis.69 Nevzat observes that ‘Greek–Turkish political cooperation was persistently limited by the two sides’ incompatible views as to the ultimate or ideal political destiny of the island, and here there was never any serious effort to reconcile the two positions’.70 Nevertheless, the incompatibility of political objectives aiming at absolute solutions did not permanently impede Greeks and Turks from joining hands at times in the Legislative Council, particularly in the years 1925–30 in order to address mainly economic problems. The overthrow of the Munir-led ruling establishment in the elections of 1930, and the emergence of the Kemalist nationalist, Necati Ozkan, dramatically changed the delicate balance in the Legislative Council. In an unprecedented election campaign, during which Necati Ozkan, running for Nicosia, and his fellow candidates in the other districts toured all their constituencies both in town and countryside, Ozkan vehemently accused Munir and his circles of subservience and of being in league with the colonial government rather than considering the interests of the people. At the same time, the Kemalist nationalist press portrayed Necati Ozkan, through Kemalist rhetoric, as ‘the populist who had put himself forward for the common good of freedom and happiness, to liberate the people from such absolutism’.71 The clash of the Turkish Cypriot nationalists with Governor Storrs continued unabated after the elections, demonstrating that it was not opportunistic electoral sloganeering but a substantive anti-colonial populism absolutely compatible with the progressive revolutionary Kemalism of the 1920s and the 1930s. In a climate of escalating confrontation with the colonial authorities, on 23 April 1931, the anniversary of the establishment of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, Necati Ozkan published an announcement to ‘the Honorable Turkish Cypriot People’ calling upon them to ‘send delegates to a national congress that would discuss how best to defend their national rights’.72 The National Congress, having been convened in Ozkan’s house on 1 May 1931, and comprising 140 representatives,73 decided to put forward the following demands: 1. Autonomous secondary education, as was the case with the Greeks and the Armenians. 2. Restoration of the Office of the Mufti as spiritual leader to be elected by the Turkish Cypriot community. 3. Autonomous status of the religious courts or, alternatively, cases appertaining to Turkish Cypriot family law to be tried by Turkish judges. 4. Restoration of the autonomy of Evkaf, which should be administered by a six-member committee to be elected by the National Congress.

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5. The Congress finally elected and declared Ahmed Said, a Kemalist, as ‘the Mufti and the Spiritual Head of the Turkish Community of Cyprus’.74 ‘This decision’, ‘Soz’ commented, reflecting Kemalist populism ‘is the national pact of the island’s Turks’.75 The ultra-nationalist leadership of the Greek Cypriot community, which, under the Ethnarchy and Alexis Kyrou, had managed to place under its complete control the representation in the Legislative Council and which, acting contrary to Nicodemos Mylonas’s reasoning of 1925, unyieldingly insisted on the absolute enosis line, did not bother to see that Ozkan’s ‘national pact’, did not contain the slightest reference to nor even a hint of irredentist aspirations. And they completely ignored the fact that Necati Ozkan, accompanied by Pheidias Kyriakides, had visited the Archbishop after his election and had promised him that he would resist British pressures to support all government policies.76 Nor did it take into account a joint proposal by Theodotou and Ozkan for complete separate control of education by the two communities (April 1931).77 Nor did it consider the stand of the Turkish Cypriot Council members along with the Greeks, whereby they blocked the imposition of new taxes to cover the budget deficit (28 April 1931).78 Nor did they seem to have thought that the ‘13th Greek’ of Ronald Storrs,79 and the majority of the Turkish Cypriot community that he represented, might have become their allies, with certain prerequisites, and might have taken to the path with them in a common anti-colonial struggle. The fact that the Turkish Cypriot nationalists rejected enosis in the same absolute manner as before had been made amply clear in the Council by Necati Ozkan himself. In reaction to references to enosis as Greek Cypriots’ ultimate goal, he declared that Greece had no claim to Cyprus, and, ‘as this island is part of Asia Minor, those who are strangers in it may go to Greece’.80 On the same issue, Zekia moderately suggested that ‘it might have been to the benefit of the island if the question of enosis was put aside and all the members of the Council joined towards taking measures in the interest of the country as a whole’.81 This convergence, Altay Nevzat observes, helped by the new climate in Turkish Greek relations, may have been a unique opportunity for Greek and Turkish Cypriots ‘to build long-needed bridges of political alliance, to cooperate against colonial rule – ‘on a non-maximalist basis’ – and, perchance, in time to build thereby the foundations of a common ‘Cypriot’ cause’.82 A similar assessment is made by Jeannette Choisi, who notes that ‘the beginnings of the 1930s marks the only period in the Cypriot history, where a realistic chance to overcome the artificial division of Cypriot society existed’.83 In fact, there had been Greek Cypriot leaders, such as N. Kl. Lanitis, who, acting within the climate of the Venizelos–Atatürk Pact, and moved by the

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urgent need for cooperation with the Turkish Cypriots in order to address accumulated problems, had assured the Turkish Cypriots that their cooperation was not requested with the aim of achieving enosis but to coordinate their efforts in the Council exclusively on issues of internal administration.84 Furthermore, as President of the Sports Club Olympia, he organized an unofficial football meeting between the Greek and Turkish teams of Limassol (December 1930) within the framework of celebrations for the termination of Greek–Turkish national antagonism.85 However, the dynamic created by the convergence of events was left unexploited as the Greek Cypriot representatives at the Council, feeling accountable to the radical nationalists, and fearing that they might be branded ‘pro-government’ and even ‘worse’,86 returned to the conventional unyielding enosis line and to the logic of the ‘absolute solution’, which would ultimately lead to the October uprising and the misfortunes it carried along. Yiannis Pikros would close his treatise, ‘Venizelos and the Cyprus Problem’, with the following melancholic remark: ‘The 1931 uprising pushed the Cyprus problem many years backwards, closing the door to a course in the direction of independence which in no way precluded enosis and which independence, after so many blunders and lost opportunities, we are invoking today.’87 The emergence of the Kemalists in the Legislative Council brought the 1882 Constitution to its limits, a constitution that depended on a marginal majority presupposing solid alignment of the Turkish Cypriot representatives with the official members. In the first place, it pushed the Greek Cypriot representatives into sterile opposition to, and permanent friction with, their Turkish Cypriot colleagues, which, in its turn, caused problematic knock-on effects. In the second place, the populist nationalism of the Kemalists undermined the very reasoning on which the constitution was founded, thus overturning the fragile balances it was based on. The deadlock to which colonial rule led created, for the first time, the possibility of common action taken by Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the basis of ‘a common Cypriot interest’.88 It also generated, for the first time again, the prerequisites for an evolutionary broadening of political freedoms, not on the oppositional basis of the 1882 Constitution, but on the basis of political cooperation of the two communities. Such cooperation might have put aside patriotic rhetoric on absolute ultimate solutions and might have improved the life of the people both qualitatively and politically. Under such circumstances, during the course of decolonization of the following decade, there would have been a hereto empirical perception of a ‘political’ rather than a ‘national’ solution – that is, the perception of a political instead of a national state, in which diverse ethnic identities might have found the way forward to peaceful political symbiosis. However, rejection by the radical nationalists in the Greek Cypriot community

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of any dialogue as well as of any common action in this direction, and their unyielding persistence on immediate enosis, with no intermediate stages being acceptable, and inability to take into account the unfeasibility of such a goal, thwarted all potential prospects created by the convergence of 1930, and led inevitably to the dead-end road of the 1931 uprising.

6.3. The political organization of separation The post-October arbitrary regime, in which the oppression of any kind of political expression and complete control of education intensified anti-British nationalism in both communities, led to new deadlocks that had to be addressed. However, bearing in mind past experience as well as its determination to maintain its hold on the island, the British government started, in the 1940s, to re-chart its Cyprus policy on a completely new basis. Aiming always at suppressing the enosis movement by foiling any prospects of it being realized, it started moving in the direction of what it considered a more effective than heretofore approach. This new approach consisted in strengthening an autonomous political organization by the Turkish community and binding it to Turkey to such an extent that it would become on its own a dynamic determinant against the enosis aspirations of the Greek Cypriots. Since 1938, it had already been possible to observe a trend, on the part of the colonial government, towards reviewing its previously hostile approach to the Kemalists and realizing that it had to come to terms with them.89 At the same time, following relevant assurances to the British government by Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Aras,90 and probably his direct intervention, the anti-British attitude of the Kemalists began gradually to calm down and their loyalty to the colonial rule to be restored.91 During the war years, a period of reinvigoration of Pan-Turkism in Turkey and intensive organizational activity among the Turkish Cypriots resulted, in 1943, in the establishment of KATAK (Turkish Cypriot Minority Association). Since its inception, with the support of the colonial government and with the presence of seventy-six leading figures from the Turkish community, among them both Munir and Ozkan, KATAK aligned itself with the maintenance of the status quo as a counterbalance to enosis.92 In 1944, Fazil Kucuk detached himself from KATAK and established the Turkish Cypriot National Popular Party (KTMHP),93 while in 1945 both Kucuk’s party and other political and trade-union organizations came together in the Union of Turkish Cypriot Organizations (KTKB). In 1945 the first Turkish Cypriot leftist trade union was established. It was organically linked with PEO, and Turkish Cypriot workers rallied, along with their Greek Cypriot counterparts, in the joint mass strikes of 1948. The trade union sustained the idea of cooperation and criticized

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the nationalist Turkish Cypriot leadership for its refusal to support the joint labour mobilizations.94 However, the shift of AKEL towards the unyielding enosis line undermined the possibility that the Turkish Cypriot trade union would exert political influence in Turkish Cypriot political affairs. Finally, during the EOKA fighting and under pressure from the TMT, the Turkish trade union detached itself completely from PEO and aligned itself with the prevalent nationalist current within the Turkish Cypriot community. In April 1948, while the enosis campaign by the Ethnarchy was escalating along with an all-out confrontation with AKEL, which was participating in the Consultative Assembly, Governor Lord Winster set up the Committee for Turkish Affairs, which aimed at further strengthening the political organization of the Turkish community as well as its bonds with Turkey. Towards this end, all limitations on the Turkish Cypriots that had been imposed by Palmer in the 1930s were revoked and the Kemalist reforms on education and family law were introduced in the Turkish Cypriot community, along with the celebration of Turkey’s official national days.95 The alignment of the Turkish Cypriot community with Turkey reached such proportions that it caused concern to Colonial Office officials lest the situation moved to an uncontrollable crisis along the lines of those in Northern Ireland and India.96 While the crisis in political line within AKEL left the Ethnarchy free to impose, as in 1931, its absolute position of ‘Enosis and only Enosis’, Turkish Cypriots were organizing a mass rally in Nicosia (28 November 1948) against self-government, which they considered as ‘enslavement’ to the Greek Cypriots, and of course against enosis, which they saw as ‘death’ to them.97 At that rally Rauf Denktas appeared for the first time as a speaker.98 From the enosis plebiscite (15 January 1950) to the outbreak of the armed enosis struggle (1 April 1955), political separation of the Greek and Turkish communities took new unprecedented dimensions. Makarios tried consistently in Greece to capitalize on the people’s reaction to the state of subservience to the West that the country had entered into, so as to arouse feelings for enosis. Towards the same goal he also mobilized ultra-right nationalist circles. He used both factors as leverage upon Greek governments in order to achieve a more active support of the cause of enosis. Following his steps, but in the direction of Ankara, was the Turkish Cypriot leadership, with the encouragement of the colonial government,99 Fazil Kucuk being the leading figure until he was outflanked by Rauf Denktas. A whole network of Pan-Turkist organizations and press media, which had still been active since the war, functioned as the reception mechanism through which the Turkish Cypriot irredentist movement was speedily diffused throughout the country, continuously inflamed by respective enosis mobilizations in Greece. On 24 February 1951, the National Federation of Turkey’s Student Organizations staged the first mass rally on Cyprus in Ankara. On 25 March 1951, Fazil Kucuk

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published in his paper, Halkin Sesi, an open ‘letter to Celal Bayar’, in which he called upon the Turkish President to look upon Cyprus as ‘a second Iskenderun’.100 From then onwards, the establishment by the Pan-Turkist, Hikmet Bil, of the organization ‘Cyprus is Turkish’ (August 1954)101 and its speedy nationwide expansion through the Pan-Turkist organizations network, students organizations and the clandestine mechanisms of the ruling Democratic Party, set in motion developments that would have dramatic reverberations in Cyprus. Hikmet Bil’s organization would become the main ‘popular’ lever in voicing the demand for the ‘return’ of Cyprus to Turkey. In the wake of the outbreak of EOKA fighting, Hikmet Bil came to Cyprus (22 June 1955) to help in the political organization of the Turkish Cypriots. Two days later, Kucuk held an extraordinary congress of his party, which, following a proposition by Bil unanimously adopted, was renamed ‘Cyprus is Turkish Party’ on the model of Hikmet Bil’s Pan-Turkist organization in Turkey.102 Having toured Cyprus for a month, Hikmet Bil left for London, where he set up a branch of the ‘Cyprus is Turkish Party’.103 A little later, Kucuk founded the clandestine organization, ‘Volkan’, which was soon to be replaced by the TMT, from within the ranks of which Rauf Denktas would emerge as the new national leader for the Turkish Cypriots. The TMT was held responsible for the murders of tens of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and specifically for the massacre of Greek Cypriot villagers from Kontemenos in Kyoneli (12 June 1958) by ‘indignant’ crowds of Turkish Cypriots after a bomb had exploded at the Turkish Press Office in Nicosia. Six years later, Turkish Ambassador in Nicosia, Emin Dirvana (1960–2), wrote that the explosion was an act of provocation by the TMT. The aim, Dirvana denounced, was ‘to cause the wrath of the Turkish Cypriots and perpetrate acts similar to those of 6 and 7 September 1955 in Istanbul’.104 In December 1956, a new dramatic development made its entry, which would have disastrous consequences for the fate of Cyprus. On 19 December 1956, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies Alan Lennox-Boyd, presenting Lord Radcliffe’s constitutional proposal to the House of Commons, expressed the willingness of the British government to accept the implementation of the principle of self-determination in Cyprus, when the international situation allowed it. But he immediately added that ‘the exercise of the right to self-determination in a mixed population should include partition among alternative solutions’. He further explained that it was quite reasonable to cede to a community so closely linked with Turkey and only 40 miles from it the same rights as those to be ceded to the Greek community.105 The next day, the Turkish Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes, stated that, within the framework of Lennox-Boyd’s statement, Turkey accepted Radcliffe’s constitution as ‘a reasonable basis for negotiations’. On 29 December, speaking in the

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Grand National Assembly, he stated that partition of Cyprus was already a sacrifice for Turkey and that it would never accept a greater sacrifice.106 The idea of partition had been publicly mentioned, for the first time, in a letter to The Times of London (July 1956), by a Conservative MP who had suggested to Lord Radcliffe that he explore the alternative of partition in his constitution and foresaw that in time the only end would be the creation of a Turkish sector, a Greek sector and a British military base.107 It has not yet been established who really was the official ‘father’ of the idea of partition. Involved in the whole story are the British, the Turks, the Americans and even Evangelos Averof, then Foreign Minister of Greece.108 Nonetheless, what is of great significance is the fact that, one month before the statement by Lennox-Boyd, partition had been the focal point of a confidential report by Nihat Erim to Prime Minister Menderes (24 November 1956). Partition was, to Nihat Erim, the ‘second best solution’, provided that, in his assessment, Turkey could not achieve, through political means, repossession of the whole of Cyprus.109 Turkey’s tactical ‘retreat’ in accepting partition offered an apparently realistic goal, which the Turkish Cypriot nationalists served with the same fanaticism that the Greek Cypriots served enosis, and, in response to the Greek slogan ‘Enosis and only Enosis’, they countered ‘Partition or Death’.110 Kucuk came to the point of suggesting the partition line. On return from Ankara, where he had had contacts with the Turkish government (23 July 1957), he reaffirmed Turkey’s insistence on partition and drew its line along the 35th parallel,111 which passes south of Famagusta and Polis of Chrysochou and divides Cyprus roughly in the middle. Through brute force by the TMT, Denktas would impose the idea of partition on the collective conscience of the Turkish Cypriot community. And, as a preliminary stage prior to complete geographical separation, he would enforce the policy of economic separation through the campaign entitled ‘From Turk to Turk’, which he inaugurated in 1958.112 An inclination as to future geographical separation is given by the dramatic decrease in the number of mixed communities especially during this period of ethnic violence. Since the beginnings of the twentieth century, there had been a trend towards small ethnic minority groups leaving mixed communities. From a total of 345 that the mixed communities had numbered in 1891, they had been reduced to 252 by 1931. However, less than thirty years later, in 1960, the mixed communities numbered only 114, while in 1970 only 48 would be remaining.113 Other factors, of course, independent of security, had been at work as well. They were mainly social and economic factors, among the most important of them being urbanization and the growth of education. This is clearly indicated by the total reduction of rural communities from 702 in the first census of 1881 to 602 in the 1960 census.114 However, the process of small ethnic minority groups abandoning rural communities has been closely

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connected with the process of physical separation of the two communities, both peaking at times of intercommunal tension. The British government had used the threat of partition in order to suppress Greek insistence on enosis. But it privately admitted that partition was unacceptable to British public opinion and that it damaged the international image of the country by recalling similar practices in Ireland, India and Palestine.115 British unwillingness to proceed immediately with the implementation of partition, as became manifest with Sir Hugh Foot’s (January 1958) plan,116 caused the eruption of an unprecedented campaign of terror and vandalism by Turkish Cypriots against Greek Cypriots and Greek Cypriot properties, instigated and led by the TMT leadership and the long arm of Ankara, aimed at the immediate enforcement of partition.117 ‘Neither Sir Hugh Foot nor the British government have the right to force the two communities, each of which considers the other as an enemy, to live together’, Fazil Kucuk declared.118 At the same time, Turkish Foreign Minister Zorlu, speaking to a British mission to Ankara to negotiate the Foot plan, openly demanded a federal solution providing for complete local autonomy of the Turkish Cypriots and Turkish military presence on the island.119 And when EOKA, in reaction to Turkish provocation, fell into the trap of carrying out reprisals,120 intercommunal violence entered a vicious circle (July 1958) that tended, in a final analysis, to justify the reasoning for partition. In organizing and leading this new cycle of violence on the model of the Istanbul pogrom, Turkey showed the world the measure of its reaction to enosis.121 Using the TMT, as a blind instrument, an organization led by active Turkish army officers,122 it was applying the same provocation methods as in the Istanbul pogrom.123 The dynamic turn of events towards partition (1956–8) signals the most dramatic retreat, and, ultimately, the disastrous outcome of the unyielding nationalist enosis movement. The Greek government, having realized the dead-end nature of the enosis line, had started, from mid-1957, thinking of independence124 but had not found the courage to take an initiative in this direction. One year later, under the weight of the immediate threat of partition generated by the intercommunal violence and the Macmillan plan, Makarios took the first decisive step towards independence, in his interview with Barbara Castle, and the Greek government followed. Nevertheless, the course towards the Zurich Agreement would carry, along with independence, the seeds of partition.

6.4. The leading role of Rauf Denktas The shift of events towards partition was the outcome of a complex, multifaceted process. It was connected with Turkey’s ‘pre-emptive defence’ strategy

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aimed at preventing enosis, in some respects an undercover of expansionist ambitions to take control of Cyprus in the event of Britain’s withdrawal. It was also connected with an internal nationalist pressure in Turkey and the demagogic exploitation of nationalism by the Menderes government. It was further connected with Britain’s tactical manoeuvring intended as a counterweight to the enosis movement. It was finally, and perhaps more significantly, the ultimate outcome of unyielding enosis targeting by the Greek Cypriot leadership, which tended to ignore the existence of the Turkish Cypriot community and failed to realize and realistically assess the dangers posed by Turkey’s determination to foil enosis.125 However, the convergence of all these factors did not inescapably determine the course towards partition. Basic political awareness of the broader political interrelations and the geography of the Cyprus problem on the part of the Greek Cypriot – and the mainland Greek – leadership, provided there existed a political climate in the Turkish Cypriot community similar to that of 1930, might have led towards an evolutionary process of self-government that might, gradually, through a dialectic process, have led to a commonly accepted independence. In fact, there had been realistic possibilities of a meeting of minds and hearts by the two communities in the direction of independence. The first was generated in the period between Lausanne and 1931, the second after the war, beginning with the Consultative Assembly (1947–8) and fading with the Makarios–Harding negotiations deadlock (February 1956). The responsibility for the failure to ensure that those very real opportunities were given a chance falls on the shoulders of the Greek Cypriot and mainland Greek side, with the Greek Cypriot leadership having the bigger share. As for the shift towards partition in 1956 and the unrestrained campaign of terror aiming at the enforcement of partition, Britain is to blame for the encouragement, but chiefly Turkey for the conception and planning, and the Turkish Cypriot leadership for being a blind instrument in enforcing partition policy in the Turkish Cypriot community. At this juncture and in relation to the above role of the Turkish Cypriot leadership, decisive, to the extent that it influenced the course of history, would be the role of Rauf Denktas. The son of Judge Raif Denktas, a covert Kemalist, brought up in an atmosphere of Kemalist nationalism,126 Rauf studied law in London and became an advocate in Nicosia. At the age of 24, he was invited, in his personal capacity, to take part in the Consultative Assembly,127 at the initial stages of which he argued in favour of ‘small steps to full selfgovernment’.128 Contrary to the Left’s rejection of the Jackson constitution, Denktas, ‘voicing the unanimous approach of the Turkish minority’s delegates’ pointed out that the proposed constitution ‘was the ideal one at that stage’ and called upon the Greeks to cooperate, ‘taking into account how

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unacceptable the existing form of administration was’.129 When, after the Consultative Assembly had been disbanded, Governor Lord Winster set up the ‘Committee for Turkish Affairs’ (August 1948), Rauf Denktas was one of its appointed members.130 Speaking at the first Turkish Cypriot mass rally in Nicosia against enosis (28 November 1948), Denktas made his first step towards leadership when, in an emotionally charged style, he declared: ‘If Britain attempts to cede Cyprus to Greece we’ll take up arms and get to the mountains and fight the Greeks.’131 In 1952 he was appointed Crown Councillor and in 1956 Assistant Attorney, a post he would relinquish in early 1958 to become President of the Federation of Turkish Cypriot Organizations.132 The abandonment by Denktas of such a prestigious position had one exclusive aim: to put himself at the service of his community and above all of the Turkish nation, in the struggle to incorporate the Turkish Cypriot community into the Turkish state, either through partition or through capture by Turkey of the whole of Cyprus. He had already founded the clandestine organization, TMT together with Burhan Nalpandoglu and Mustafa Kemal Tanrisevdi, a Turkish national employed at the Turkish Consulate.133 The main goal of the new Organization was ‘resistance’ (mukavemet) against Greek intentions to unite Cyprus with Greece.134 In January 1958, as he writes in his memoirs, he was in Ankara with Kucuk, where, at a meeting with Zorlu, he asked for arms and military commanders for the TMT.135 The meeting of Denktas with Zorlu was of decisive importance. Both of them were of the view that it was not possible to achieve a ‘Turkish’ solution in Cyprus only by means of diplomacy. Zorlu believed in the need for an organization rivalling that of EOKA, in order to strengthen Turkey’s negotiating position. Denktas believed that ‘this problem could only be solved by means of arms’.136 Already, before the Denktas–Zorlu meeting, the Turkish government had asked the General Staff to explore the possibility of setting up an armed organization in Cyprus.137 By the end of December, the project was assigned to the Special War Commander, General Karambelen, who, having drawn up the ‘Plan for Repossession of Cyprus’, assigned the leadership of the Cyprus Command to Colonel Riza Vuruskan. In July 1958, Vuruskan, accompanied by six high-ranking army officers and fourteen reserve officers, started gradually disembarking in Cyprus.138 Vuruskan was fully aware of the ultimate goal, which was, ‘if necessary and if conditions were propitious, to cause a general uprising and take control of the whole of the island’.139 After studying the situation in Cyprus, he decided to reorganize the TMT instead of setting up a new organization.140 It was not accidental, as his first and most trusted link in Cyprus was Rauf Denktas, who thereafter was the Organization’s ‘political adviser’.141 Vuruskan soon realized that ‘all people appealed to Denktas for everything’. He speaks with respect for Denktas’s dedication to the national cause and the Organization,

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his trust in the cause of the armed struggle and his ability to inspire people and get them to rally themselves round the TMT.142 He further recognizes Denktas as the protagonist and the moving spirit behind the transfer of arms from Turkey to Cyprus and arming the Turkish Cypriots to such an extent that, in 1959, the TMT had 5,000 armed members.143 The possession of weapons and the military training in Turkey or in Cyprus by Turkish officers generated in the TMT members a sense of power that, in conjunction with their hatred towards the Greeks incited by Denktas’s inflammatory nationalist rhetoric, gave the TMT an undisguised fascist character that would be externalized with brute force not only against Greeks indiscriminately, but also against deviant Turkish Cypriots. In the case of the Turkish Cypriots in particular, deviation meant either participation in the PEO trade union or refusal to comply with the campaign ‘From Turk to Turk’, which was disastrous for their living standards, and continuation, on their part, of economic transactions with Greek Cypriots.144 Later, in the period of violent physical separation, TMT fascist terror was further felt by Turkish Cypriots who refused to abandon their homes or, after 1964 when conditions improved, Turkish Cypriots who wanted to return to their homes and properties.145 Revealing of the character of the TMT is the fact that, according to its statutes, ‘any measures might be taken against a person or persons whose actions might damage the community with the aim to make them come back to the right track’.146 And, as a first step in the direction of implementing this statutory provision, the first order issued by Vuruskan (5 August 1958) demanded lists of detailed information on deviant members of the community.147 With the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, Denktas opted for the autonomous communal office of President of the Turkish Communal Chamber. Apart from the strong say he had already had in the military arm of the TMT, he assumed full control of the educational and cultural structure (schools, foundations, clubs, associations and organizations), thus taking a further step towards imposing his domination on the Turkish Cypriot community. This domination he exercised with absolute dedication to the ‘national cause’, to which he subjected everything, even the well-meant interests of the community. ‘In order to uproot our compatriots from their homes and lands by force and impose partition’, Ihsan Ali would denounce, ‘they stifled freedom of expression and turned the people into mere robots’.148 Meanwhile, Denktas, speaking to boy scouts, would declare: ‘Our flag owes its color to the blood of 80 000 martyrs. I take an oath before it that the Turkish community will never become a minority, nor will the island ever become Greek.’149 And when, on 31 July 1964, he was disembarking – secretly, as he claim,s from the Turkish government – at Kokina with 500 volunteer students and Vuruskan to be near his community in the hour of battle, he ‘felt as if he was going to

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Asia Minor (like Mustafa Kemal in 1919) to fight against Greek occupation’.150 This identification with Mustafa Kemal would become second nature in Denktas and would follow him throughout his long career,151 to hold him captive of the past, completely alienated from the living people of the Turkish community at a time when they would be struggling to liberate themselves from their liberators.152 The fact that Vuruskan and Karambelen were removed from the TMT leadership by the 1960 Ankara regime, with the former having been recalled to Turkey,153 as well as the tense relations between the Turkish Ambassador and Denktas154 strengthen the assumption that Denktas had fallen out with the new military leadership in Ankara and with Prime Minister Inonu himself, as they considered him a Menderes and Zorlu man. Furthermore, the fact that the Inonu government showed itself to be pleased with Denktas’ self-exile from Cyprus (February 1964),155 and not only did it not do anything to secure his return but rather made him stay in Turkey, tends to verify his deposition after his arrest in the Karpas for having attempted to illegally enter Cyprus (31 October 1967), that the Turkish government considered him a troublemaker, that his return would have caused problems with Kucuk and that he would have led Turkey into hazardous ventures.156 Indirectly criticizing the Turkish governments of the time for indecisiveness, he passionately defends his irredentist viewpoint with regard to the Cyprus problem, which he puts right at the core of Turkey’s vital interests: . . . I have felt the necessity of explaining to a ‘happy minority’ who asks, ‘Is it right to drag 32 million into a war for the sake of 120 thousand people?’ that the Cyprus problem is not a cause of the salvation of 120 thousand Turks. The Cyprus cause is one determining the future of Turkey. A ‘megali idea’, slyly awaiting its chance, lies behind this problem. The Kurdish problem, Hatay problem, and a new Armenian problem also await the settlement of the Cyprus problem. It is mandatory for the Turkish national interests for it to emerge victorious from the Cyprus cause. [. . .] Also a few words for those who say, ‘We have lost Cyprus’. We are struggling in a fight not yet finished. We can win this fight. We are confident of winning it. We have to win it. But is everything done to win the cause? [. . .] There are some who say, ‘More than this could not have been done under present world conditions.’ I also shout out for their benefit in these lines, the world can never say ‘Stop’ to the righteous and strong one. It never has.156

After three and a half years of inaction in Ankara, in the face of messages of discontent from Turkish Cypriots at their miserable conditions, of friends and supporters calling upon him to return, of Kucuk’s circles on the one hand conveying to Ankara that they did not want him, and on the other insinuating

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among the Turkish Cypriots that he had abandoned them, Denktas decided, without the knowledge of the Turkish government, to return to Cyprus. His long deposition to the police following his arrest is not a deposition of one in custody. It is a political declaration of a leader aware of his ‘national mission’, who persists in the Turkish viewpoint of the Cyprus problem, but who states as the goal of his return a commitment to work for a compromise solution on the basis of some form of federation, who states that he has the courage to speak openly to the Turkish Cypriots about the need for a settlement. All this, intermingled with the personal pride of a fanatic nationalist and the wounded pride of a fall-out ‘national leader’. . . . I prefer my children to say that they are children of Denktas who died while landing on Cyprus and not to say that they are children of Denktas who abandoned his community at the hour of need and left [. . .] I have come to show you that I am not guilty. And to show my children that I am not a coward. And to show the Turkish government that I am not the man who will come to make war. I knew that, if I did not do that, I would not be able to live. I have come to Cyprus with different ideas from those I believed in before. Whatever I believed in has tumbled down. The people of Cyprus cannot bear war and we have no longer anything to win.158

Denktas gave roughly the same impression to Clerides, who had visited him while in custody. He only added to him that he was certain Turkey would invade Cyprus if enosis was declared or if an attempt was made to impose a Greek Cypriot state and downgrade the Turkish community into a minority.159 Clerides did not believe Denktas’s story regarding his intentions as well as his relations with the Turkish government. But he seems to have re-examined his initial reservations following a second meeting he and Tornaritis had with Denktas in Britain. And a probable briefing of Makarios by either of them might have influenced his decision to allow Denktas’s return and suggest him as negotiator160 when, in the aftermath of the Kofinou crisis, he had reached a conclusion similar to that of Denktas on Turkey, that neither was Greece willing to nor capable of conducting war for enosis. During the early stages of those talks, which had started in mid-1968, Denktas’s readiness to accept a solution that approached, as never before, the aspirations of the Greek side confirmed his adaptation to the new orientations of Turkey’s Cyprus policy. These new orientations focused on the search for a peaceful solution that would safeguard broad administrative autonomy for the Turkish Cypriots. Makarios’s failure to respond with the proper timing ultimately meant the loss of that opportunity. Negative developments in Turkey and Greece, as well as in the internal front of the Greek Cypriot community after 1970, thwarted the possibility of a compromise solution.

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From 1971 onwards, windows gradually opened to the winds of confrontational, absolutist solutions: enosis, on the one hand, and partition, on the other. Rauf Denktas, having abandoned his impulsiveness of the pre-1964 period, and having secured a sweeping popular mandate at the elections of 1970,161 and further, having secured the nomination as Vice President of the Republic in 1973, putting aside Kucuk with the support of Ankara, imposed himself as the undisputable national leader of the Turkish Cypriot community.162 ‘Since that time’, Sia Anagnostopoulou observes, Denktas ‘becomes the absolute manager of Kemalism within the Turkish Cypriot community and the only representative of the national centre in Cyprus’.163 And, along with the deepening of the crisis within the Greek Cypriot community and the arrival of Grivas to start a new cycle of violence and enosis agitation, Denktas, in complete alignment with Ankara, gradually hardened his positions at the intercommunal talks, putting forward new conditions every now and then, linking them with the escalation of violence and the recurrence of the enosis agitation within the Greek community.164 Polyvios Polyviou explains the sudden shift in the positions of the Turkish side at the intercommunal talks after September 1971 as follows: . . . The explanation for this seemingly abrupt shift in policy is not difficult to find. The Turkish government realized that the relations between Archbishop Makarios and the military junta had entered a critical stage of hostility and confrontation, and that an attempt to overthrow the Cyprus government would not be long in coming. This would give Turkey a plausible excuse justifying military intervention that would settle the problem once and for all. A military solution had become inevitable, Turkish strategists now knew, and the sooner it came the better.165

The Turkish invasion of 1974 makes Denktas’s ethnarchic vision come true and elevated him to the position of ethnarch of the Turkish Cypriots: on the one hand, the Cypriot Mustafa Kemal and, on the other, the counterpart of Makarios, by claiming a Turkish Cypriot struggle for the independence of Cyprus and a Kemalist counterpart of EOKA, the TMT, for the Turkish Cypriots. The invasion also functioned as a unifying force within Turkey itself by elevating the army as ‘the exclusively one pole of unity of the whole nation’ and generating a reciprocal relationship between the salvation role of the army in Cyprus and the ethnarchic role of Denktas, ‘the new Mustafa Kemal of a part of the nation’.166 This reciprocity elevated Denktas to a much loftier position than that of ‘agent’ of the Turkish nation in Cyprus. With the unilateral declaration of an independent secessionist state in 1983, an initiative of his own that he imposed on Turkish Premier Ozal,167 Denktas became the leader who, on behalf of the

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nation, gave direction to the Turkish state.168 Through his secessionist state, Sia Anagnostopoulou points out, ‘Denktas safeguards the Kemalist legitimization of his ethnarchic role: “I haven’t come here as a defendant [. . .] to apologize for the decision of my people. [. . .] With the help of God I have now my state; I have my country; I have my people;” he declares on 17 November 1983 at the UN Security Council’.169 As the one who gave direction to the Turkish state on behalf of the nation, Denktas would act in 1991–2 as well, both through undercover manoeuvring and through open confrontation, to foil the first Turkish attempt since 1974, made by Ozal, to reach a compromise solution providing for return of occupied territory.170 Speaking in an interview about his future successor, he described him as ‘one who would be in a position, if needed, without displeasing Turkey, to give her a NO answer’.171 In this same role Denktas would be stubbornly fixated in the years 2002–4, when he would come into head-on conflict with the new Turkish government and the Turkish Cypriot opposition in an attempt to foil acceptance of the Annan Plan. And, when Turkish Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, hinted at Denktas’s failure to win the support of his people, he would retort, recalling the triumphant march of Atatürk, that ‘he will get the support of the people of Anatolia and start waging a struggle’.172 However, it was too late for Denktas. During the twenty years that had lapsed since the declaration of his secessionist state, sweeping changes had occurred both in Turkey and within the Turkish community. Rauf Denktas had not been able to follow these changes. New developments in the region and in the world at large had led to re-examination of Turkey’s orientations and to radical changes in the Turkish community’s aspirations, which Denktas’s thought, hooked to the past, had not been able to assimilate. The analysis, in previous chapters, of the changes in Turkey and the regional and world environment, has shown how these changes influenced the shift in Turkey’s Cyprus policy in 2002–4. What needs to be examined further are the changes within the Turkish Cypriot community, and how these changes influenced the Turkish Cypriot perception of the solution following the invasion. The dramatic shift in attitudes of the Turkish community will then be examined, in relation both to the solution and towards Turkey and Denktas. As to the latter, this shift will lead first to the loss of his legitimacy and ultimately to his ‘dethronement’.

6.5. The perception of the solution by the Turkish community after the invasion The vast majority of Turkish Cypriots, having lived for ten years in the stifling confinement of the enclaves of 1964 and the closed – in some cases sealed

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off – Turkish sectors of towns, deprived of the economic development and the prosperity of the Greek community, received the Turkish invasion of 1974 with jubilation.173 First, it was the prospect of economic growth and prosperity created at first hand by the extent and the wealth of the lands that occupation and displacement of the indigenous Greek Cypriots had left at their disposal. Second, it was the feeling of security from Greek Cypriot harassment that had assumed new intensity during the first days of the invasion, with vengeance murders perpetrated by fascist gangs of EOKA-B members and junta officers. Security from the ‘age-long enemy’ would remain the central pivot round which Denktas’s policy would eternally revolve. Andm to carry it on as such and keep it always alive in the minds of the Turkish Cypriots, he would erect ‘monuments of barbarity’ out of isolated crimes, and would make them a vital part of school curriculum, and would always refer to them in order to sustain his policy of hatred and thereby, absolute physical separation.174 Within such a climate, Denktas nurtured and solidified the myth of liberation of the Turkish Cypriots by the Turkish army, to which – and through which to Turkey – they should feel everlasting gratitude.175 He further created for himself the myth of the new Mustafa Kemal, who led his community, through ten years of tribulation, to safety and freedom, and, even more, to the prospect of prosperity and peace. The proclamation of the ‘Turkish Federated State of Cyprus’ (13 Feb. 1975) was one further step in the long-term planning towards partition. Declaring that its objective remained a ‘bi-regional’ or ‘bi-zonal’ federation, Turkey escaped international pressure to terminate its aggression against Cyprus by making commitments that it would withdraw its occupation army from Cyprus as soon as there was an agreement between the two communities on the basis of geographical separation in relation to territory and federation regarding the constitutional structure. However, Denktas safeguarded, through quibbling and prevarication and reneging on commitments made, that there would never be an agreement, which meant Turkey would never be called upon to withdraw its army from Cyprus. Denktas’s unshakeable goal, as George Vassiliou would observe, was simply not to allow a solution. His statement ‘Let us consider that a non-solution is another option’, quoted by Vassiliou, is very revealing of this goal. Speaking of his experience from the talks he had with the Turkish Cypriot leader, Vassiliou points out that ‘Denktas’s main concern, far from reaching a settlement, was just to buy time so that the non-solution became in the end the only solution – that is, the status quo of partition to have ended up as the final solution.’176 The perception of geographical separation within the framework of a biregional federation had already been entrenched in the minds of the vast

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majority of the Turkish Cypriots as the only alternative that precluded the repetition of events like those of 1963–4, while at the same time it left the door open to the avoidance of partition. Rauf Denktas had also been granted, through ‘gratitude’ to Turkey and thereby to the ‘recipient’ of the nation’s mandate, the exclusive role in making vitally important decisions relating to the management of the Cyprus problem. However, the hopes of the Turkish Cypriots for a better life did not materialize. The continued occupation of Cyprus territory by the Turkish army allowed neither the legalization of the occupation regime nor, consequently, their exit from international isolation. On the other hand, the continuation of the anomalous situation created conditions of continuous flux that made difficult the exploitation of the occupied resources and, in particular, foreign investments. Furthermore, attachment to the Turkish lira created conditions of complete dependence on the Turkish economy, which had long been suffering from endemic inflation. In addition to the above-cited problems, and beyond the possibility that Turkish Cypriots would react, there came a new scourge – colonization – to hit hard, in particular those who had come from the South. It was an organized campaign, the agents being the Turkish state and the Denktas regime, aimed at changing the demographic structure and, ultimately, completely turkifying the occupied areas of Cyprus.177 The first wave of colonization started in 1975 and had slowed down by 1979. It consisted of two separate categories of settlers. The first category were poor rural populations from Anatolia, who were given plots of land and houses belonging to displaced Greek Cypriots in rural areas of occupied Cyprus. The second category consisted of army officers and soldiers who had taken part in the invasion, wives, children and siblings of soldiers and officers who had fallen in Cyprus during the invasion and Turkish army officers and civilians who had served in the TMT either in Turkey or in Cyprus. The settlers of this second category were given land, houses and installations in the already developed northern coastal strip of Kyrenia. This category of settlers made up the new ‘Turkish Cypriot’ elite.178 The first indications of Turkish Cypriot discontent were shown in the elections for the ‘Presidency’ and the ‘Assembly’ of the ‘TFSC’ (June 1976), when Berberoglu, as counter candidate of Denktas, polled 22 per cent against Denktas’s 76 per cent,179 while Denktas’s party Ulusal Birlik Partisi (UBP) (National Unity Party) polled only 53 per cent of the vote.180 The negative Turkish Cypriot attitude towards the Denktas regime, as reflected in the election results, became more apparent in the municipal and local elections (June 1980). In those elections, UBP’s share of the vote fell from 53 per cent to 37 per cent, while the two basic opposition parties, the Toblumcu Kurtulus Partisi (TKP) (Communal Liberation Party) and the Cumhuriyetci Turk Partisi (CTP)

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(Republican Turkish Party), polled 31 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. In spite of substantive differences, these two parties converged in their broad opposition strategy. They avoided any direct criticism of Turkey, and centred their attacks on Denktas and the ruling UBP for all the domestic problems, mainly mismanagement and corruption. As for the Cyprus problem, they supported, with slight divergences, bi-regional federation, and strongly criticized Denktas for his threats of a unilateral declaration of independence, which he had begun launching since 1979. Meanwhile, the opposition party leaders, like everyone else, were fully aware that everything was determined by the ‘National Coordination Council’ stationed at the Embassy,181 where the military commanders and the Ambassador had the main say.182 Being obviously nearer Denktas on issues relating to the Cyprus problem, the TKP, while rejecting economic integration with Turkey and supporting biregional federation with some territorial concessions, spoke as did Denktas of two peoples who should live side by side. It spoke with pride of the 1974 ‘peace operation’ and linked the Cyprus problem with the security of Turkey, in line with the ‘soft underbelly’ theory.183 The CTP, particularly after the elevation of Ozker Ozgur to its Presidency (October 1976), fully adopted the anti-imperialist rhetoric of AKEL and closely cooperated with it in a sustained effort for rapprochement of the two communities. It clearly opposed both economic and political integration with Turkey and stood consistently for a unified economy within the framework of a bi-regional federation. It vehemently opposed unilateral declaration of a separate state; it supported an independent, territorially integral, non-aligned Cyprus, and projected a notion of Cypriotism that was revolutionary at the time, not only in the Turkish community but, with the exception of AKEL, in the Greek community as well, even after the invasion: ‘All those born in Cyprus are Cypriots. We who live in the North are Turkish-speaking Cypriots. Those living in the South are Greek-speaking Cypriots. But we are all Cypriots. And Cyprus should certainly belong to the Cypriots.’184 A little later, Ozker Ozgur, criticizing the TMT Fighters Association for declaring Ankara as their national centre, compared them with EOKA-B, which declared Athens as its centre. At the same time, in an effort to preempt the possible accusation of treason, he clarified that, though the Turkish Cypriots loved and respected the people of Turkey, ‘in order to solve the problems of our homeland, Cyprus, we should orient ourselves towards Nicosia, not to Athens or Ankara’.185 Furthermore, in his message on Human Rights Day (10 December 1979), he expressed a pioneering vision of Cyprus: . . . We and our children and the future generations have the human right to breathe the free air of our beloved Cyprus, our homeland. [. . .] Turkish and Greek should be made compulsory for every Cypriot child so that our

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common Cypriot values, which have long been suppressed by chauvinism, may come to the surface and flourish.186

Such a stand could not but have caused the wrath of Denktas’s praetorians, who spoke of him as a ‘communist’, a ‘lackey’ of the Greeks, and as one who ‘denies history and Turkism’.187 However, the fact that Ozgur included Ecevit in the anti-imperialist camp,188 that he did not consider the ‘July 20, 1974, operation’ as ‘interference by foreign troops’,189 that his position for ‘one people’ was not incompatible with the notion of ‘political equality of the two communities’, that he rejected ‘a solution which would push the Turkish community into a minority status’ and that he favoured ‘a solution which would create the possibility for the Turkish community to live in security in its own region and which would comprise the Guarantee of Turkey’190 – all such positions were indicative, on the one hand, of the limits allowed to the parties in relation to Turkey and the occupation army,191 and on the other, of their actual positions regarding the nature of the solution, even of compromises made with electoral calculations in mind. One such compromise was their stand on colonization. Although Ozgur and his party criticized the practice of colonization as such, they said that poor toilers among the settlers, whom they looked upon as potential voters, bore no responsibility for that practice. The CTP had polled the lowest settler support in the 1981 elections (3.7 per cent of its voting strength). However, it showed continuous increase in this support, reaching 22.4 per cent of its strength in the 2005 elections.192 After declaration by Denktas of the secessionist state, the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (15 November 1983), which resulted in further losses for his ruling party in the 1985 elections, a new wave of colonization began, one that peaked in the 1990s. The settlers of the second wave came mainly from the slums of large cities. They were used as cheap labour, thus robbing Turkish Cypriots of meagre chances of employment and pushing them to emigration or to seek employment under better conditions in southern Cyprus. The uncontrolled wave of new settlers and the fact that they were granted citizenship by the Denktas regime almost automatically resulted in new tension between ‘locals’ and ‘aliens’, particularly as these wretched immigrant-settlers were associated with degrading work and life conditions and with high rates of criminality, conditions that pushed indigenous Turkish Cypriots to further emigration. Furthermore, the continuous dependence of these immigrant-settlers on those in power made them vote almost exclusively for Denktas and the nationalist parties of the ruling establishment. Turkish Cypriots saw in this development a definite overturning of the demographic structure in the North, leading to rigged elections and false representation of their political will. Nevertheless, irrespective of their reaction to colonization, the declaration

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of a separate state was perceived by the great majority of Turkish Cypriots as the outcome of the failure to reach a solution leading to the reunification of Cyprus and, consequently, as the only alternative providing an outlet for their isolation. In any case, Denktas declared, in all directions, that he was ready for the immediate commencement of negotiations with the aim of reaching a settlement. His speech at the UN Security Council (18 November 1983), apart from long digressions on crimes committed by Greek Cypriots and their monopoly of the state, was basically directed at seeking a federal solution on the basis of the Four Guideline Agreement of 1977.193 The message he conveyed to the Turkish Cypriots through the declaration of a state was negotiations on equal terms with the aim of achieving a solution that would safeguard partnership and equality.194 The unanimous adoption of the ‘Proclamation of Independence’ through positive voting by all parties in the ‘Assembly’, including the TKP and the CTP, despite the reservations of the former and the opposition of the latter,195 widened the rift with the Greek Cypriot community. From then on one could not easily distinguish between genuine and mere lip service to federation. Further to the unequivocal support of the ‘peace operation’, the Turkish Cypriot parties were now burdened with a second commitment, that of unreserved support, in all instances, of the independent Turkish Cypriot state. A new wave of nationalism permeated the Turkish Cypriot community. This was reflected in the party platforms, which were no longer much distanced from those of Denktas on the substantive aspects of the Cyprus question.196 It was not by accident that, in the 1990 elections, the UBP polled the highest vote ever, 54.7 per cent, surpassing even that of 1976. However, the triumph of Denktas’s policy would not last long. It would start to fade along with Cyprus’s EU accession process. The 6 March 1995 Agreement might conventionally be seen as the start of the countdown to the Denktas hegemony. Opposition leaders started realizing the vicious circle into which Denktas intentionally led the talks, aiming, inter alia, at relieving Turkey of international pressure for its continued aggression against Cyprus.197 Particularly following the Luxembourg decision, when Ankara and Denktas set out the undisguised threats of confederation and annexation,198 one might have observed a radical change in the perception of the solution among the Turkish Cypriot community. And when, after EU–Cyprus accession talks had started without Turkish Cypriot participation, owing to Denktas, and particularly after Helsinki, the bank crisis of 2000 came as the final blow, and the Turkish Cypriots rushed out into the streets. The turbulence that ensued, which would last – with but short intervals – until the referendum of 2004, cannot be appreciated and analysed in terms of opposition politics. This phenomenon has all the characteristics of an uprising.

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6.6. The Turkish Cypriot uprising The dynamic mobilization of the Turkish Cypriots and their militant demonstrations against the Denktas regime, and against him personally, were the overflow of an underlying and intensifying crisis. The bank crisis, which had scattered lifelong savings to the winds, may have been the spark. But it was just the final straw that caused the outpouring of despair, into which Denktas’s and Ankara’s policies had thrown them. Angry in character, but of small scale, were the demonstrations during the first half of 2000, until, in the first mass rally of 18 July 2000, in which thirty-five trade-union and other organizations participated, the slogan ‘This Country Is Ours’ was voiced.199 It was the condensed expression of popular feeling. And it spread like wild fire. Six days later, a new militant demonstration ended with the violent entrance of demonstrators into the ‘Assembly’, where there were clashes and mass arrests.200 And this, despite the fact that the day before a columnist in Hurriyet had pointed out that, following the mass demonstrations that expressed the indignation of the people, instead of exploring the reasons, those in power were just thinking of how to stifle them.201 After a couple of days, the Platform ‘This Country Is Ours’ was announced in a joint press conference of thirty-nine mass trade unions and other representative organizations, including two political parties (the CTP and the Patriotic Unity Movement). Central demands of the Platform were autonomy of the Turkish Cypriots from Turkey on matters involving political and economic decisions and the separation of the police from military control and the transfer of its command to civilians.202 Three days later, the Platform launched a campaign of signature collection in support of the demand: ‘This Country Is Ours’.203 The campaign developed into an avalanche that swept along the Turkish Cypriots in an uprising against both the Denktas regime and Turkey. Demonstrations, mass rallies, mass strikes, revolutionary declarations, revolutionary criticism in the anti-Denktas press, with the Avrupa journalist group pioneering in this regard, were the main features of the situation in the Turkish-occupied area of Cyprus during the second half of 2000.204 Apart from its aim of foiling the ‘economic Package’ of Turkey and the ‘TRNC’, which was meant to lead to integration with Turkey,205 the Platform took up the Cyprus question as well. Having collected more than 10,000 signatures in the campaign entitled ‘This Country Is Ours’, the Platform addressed a letter to the UN Secretary General, in which it conveyed the people’s demand for a federal solution (in opposition to the official confederation policy of Denktas and Turkey) on the basis of political equality of the two communities.206 Mass popular mobilizations continued unabated throughout the first half of 2001, focusing more and more on solution and EU accession. From this

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perspective they saw, on the one hand, liberation from Turkey’s grip and, on the other, improvement of their conditions within the framework of a solution ensuring the European future of Cyprus. ‘Our salvation is neither the package nor the Turkish lira, but peace and federal solution’ was written on posters that demonstrators placed on the walls of Denktas’s and Eroglu’s offices.207 Further, in one declaration, the Platform denounced Denktas as ‘no longer representing the interests of the Turkish Cypriots’ and pointedly declared: ‘We, the Turkish Cypriots who are against our country’s annexation to Turkey or any other country, want to continue our communal existence and to integrate with the peoples of the world in a federal and united Cyprus as a whole.’208 On every occasion, the Platform moved in the direction of the UN Secretary General, by calling for the intensification of efforts towards solution and accession,209 denouncing Turkey and Denktas’s puppet regime for ‘toughening their behaviour towards the Turkish Cypriots’,210 and calling for continuous mobilizations throughout the UN Secretary General’s visit to Cyprus (May 2002) in support of a ‘bi-zonal bi-communal federation’.211 An additional dimension to the tribulation of the Turkish Cypriots, which had surfaced for the first time since 1974 and was vehemently denounced, was occupation. On every occasion, it was brought to the fore and was monotonously denounced by Sener Levent and the Avrupa journalist group,212 who suffered all kinds of political and legal persecution, accusations of ‘treason’ and ‘espionage’, imprisonments, bomb attacks and acts of arson at the paper’s offices, confiscations of equipment, and all other punitive measures aimed to silence the paper213 – which, having suspended its publication, but having come back as Afrika (a direct allusion to the law of the jungle), continued its struggle with the same intensity.214 It was certainly not Avrupa and then Afrika alone that denounced occupation. ‘As time goes by, more and more Turkish Cypriots describe the peace operation as occupation,’ a columnist of Yeniduzen notes.215 In a proclamation of the Platform ‘This Country Is Ours’, distributed at a rally, the fact that Turkish Cypriots were not ruling their country but that all was determined at the Turkish Embassy by the National Coordination Council was denounced.216 The Teachers’ Trade Union, KTOS, gave the following paid announcement to the Turkish Cypriot press (which the proDenktas papers refused to publish): ANKARA . . . We want neither your money nor your economic package nor your officers. We, the Turkish Cypriots Have the knowledge, skill, potential, and competence, to rule ourselves. We do not want to be slaves.217

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Reporting on the police raid on its offices under banner headline: ‘Ankara hands off!’, the paper calls out: ‘Oh, Sultans of Ankara! This country is not yours but ours! In 27 years you have killed our roots, you have annihilated all of us! But all this is in vain! You cannot win this last round. We will get back our jasmines whatever the price – we have vowed it.’218 In all its pages in the same edition, the paper carried the slogan: ‘YES to the EU – NO to Turkey’s occupation and annexation’. However, the most telling evidence of the Turkish Cypriot uprising was given by Mehmet Ali Birand: . . . We have visited the Near East University, and we interviewed only Turkish Cypriot students. The students from mainland Turkey were admitted into the hall only as guests. We took that path because it is the Turkish Cypriot youths who will actually be living in Cyprus. They will stay there while the students from mainland Turkey will return to their own homeland eventually. So, we preferred to hear from the real owners of Cyprus. Tonight you will be astonished. I was quite surprised myself. I knew it all along but I had not expected the Turkish Cypriot youngsters to be so resentful, so reactive, so offended. These youngsters resent some of the policies Turkey has conducted over the past three decades. They are not being thankless towards Turkey. There are, among them, those whose fathers or grandfathers fought against the Greek Cypriots and were martyred. Despite all this they are resentful because of the current situation. These youngsters are not happy to be living in Cyprus. They are not confident about the future. And they do not hide the fact that if things continue in this manner they will not remain in Cyprus. They do not hide the fact that they will obtain Greek Cypriot passports should that be needed, that in fact some of them have already done so. The view I was presented with gave much food for thought. I do not know whether you will get the same impression tonight. These people do not have any bad intentions. They are merely young and impatient. Just like other youngsters they think about their futures. The incidents of the 1960s, Enosis or the Greek Cypriots’ ruses are not on their agenda. They do not see the Greek Cypriots as the enemy. When I asked them what kind of solution should be found to the Cyprus problem I received the following reply: ‘Any kind, just let us have a solution.’ They are not afraid of entry into the European Union. They say that if the federation will provide a solution they will opt for it. However, they add that Turkey’s guarantee must not be scrapped immediately. All these conflict with the official policies of both Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). If the Greek Cypriots are admitted into the European Union and the TRNC is left out – a lack of solution may

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lead to a situation where a great part of the ‘authentic Cypriot citizens’ will leave Cyprus and those who have migrated to Cyprus from Turkey and become Cypriot citizens, will become the majority group in the TRNC. At one point a student from Turkey in the audience wanted to speak, saying, ‘Then it would be best if you came up and annexed the TRNC to Turkey. Denktas would become the governor and Eroglu the mayor. And that would be the end of the issue. Both you and we would then be at ease.’ His words about annexation drew a negative reaction from the Turkish Cypriot students. I find this reaction quite remarkable. Those who are the real owners of Cyprus talked about how upset they are to be losing their identity and to be living according to the orders received from Turkey and with the money coming from Turkey. As I said, I was astonished. I knew about that but I was not aware that things had reached that stage. In the end, I went to TRNC leader Rauf Denktas and played out the tape recordings of the youngsters’ statements. And I asked him, ‘Are the alarm bells ringing?’219 [. . .] I think that what Mr Denktas could not or would not see is that there is an enormous abyss between ‘those who govern Cyprus and certain ruling circles in Turkey’ and the Turkish Cypriot youngsters.220

This revolutionary radicalization, and shift towards Cypriotism in particular, certainly did not reflect a unanimous attitude on the part of the Turkish Cypriot community as a whole. And it certainly did not express the opinions of, or to say the least did not interest, the settlers. As for the Denktas regime and the military–bureaucratic establishment of Ankara, they faced this situation with the only means they knew: suppression, intimidation, threat, stigmatization, recruitment of nationalist parties and organizations in counter ‘popular’ mobilizations. The Security Forces Commander, Brigadier General, Ali Nihat Ozeyranli, speaking at a conscript oath taking ceremony, vehemently attacked those who opposed the presence of the Turkish army in Cyprus. He branded them as ‘traitors’, and threatened that ‘they will be made to pay for this treason’.221 Denktas indignantly reacted to the anti-Turkey message of KTOS through the press. ‘This is not trade unionism – he said – it is clearly an act serving the enemy, it is treason, it is ingratitude.’222 Denktas’s indignant reaction was followed, the next day, by an order for police investigation into the Executive Committee of KTOS223 and an orchestrated campaign against teachers led by the ‘Prime Minister’, the ‘Assembly Speaker’, the UBP, the Nationalist Justice Party, the National Revival Party and the ‘Peace Operation Veterans Association’,224 while forty-five nationalist organizations, in a joint statement, condemned both KTOS and the Platform ‘This Country Is Ours’.225 Under the slogan ‘Flag, Motherland, Freedom’, seventy-one nationalist organizations

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held a rally in Nicosia (18 March 2001), desperately small in numbers, the majority of the participants being settlers.226 The year 2002 passed off in a climate of uneasy calm in expectation of the outcome of the ongoing intensive deliberations, which would peak on submission of the UN Secretary General’s plan for a comprehensive solution (11 November 2002). Without being suspended, popular mobilizations were slowed down both in number and in intensity, only to be rekindled and spread like wild fire when, following the submission of the UN Secretary General’s plan, there came forth – and soon showed more than ever before – the unyielding persistence of Denktas in not allowing a solution and reunification of Cyprus. What is equally significant is the fact that, beyond the spontaneous mobilization of citizens, there was unequivocal support for solution and accession by all the political leaders and mass organizations that had rallied in favour of federation and accession during the mobilizations of the years 2000–2.227 Furthermore, dozens of civil society organizations came out with clear positions in favour of the solution. The vehicle being now the ‘Common Vision’ Platform228 and with the clearly defined immediate target of ‘solution-accession’, a new cycle of popular mobilizations began, whose frequency, mass participation and intensity were unprecedented in the history of the Turkish and the Greek Cypriot communities. The first mass rally of 27 November 2002, numbering 15,000 participants,229 sparked off a flurry of almost daily popular demonstrations in support of the solution. The second mass rally of 26 December 2002, with more than 30,000 participants and militant voicing of the slogan ‘solution, accession, peace’, was described by NTV channel as the largest ever demonstration by Turkish Cypriots.230 The Turkish Daily News (28 December 2002) commented: . . . For Northern Cyprus a demonstration of 5,000 people would be massive. To see 30,000 spilling into the streets is unprecedented and shows how public sentiments have come to a boiling point. It is clear that the Turkish Cypriots, who have been on this island for centuries, want a solution and demand to have their part of the island also enter the European Union along with the Greek Cypriots. Then there are the mainland Turks who have migrated to the island since the 1974 Turkish military intervention and they are vehemently opposed to the UN plan and want to maintain the status quo on the island.

The crowds, amassing to more than 60,000 people that flooded Inonu Square in Nicosia, on 14 January 2003, chanting ‘Denktas, sign or resign’,231 did not simply constitute a rally. That unprecedented event signalled the outpouring of popular indignation. It was an uprising of the Turkish Cypriots against Denktas, which was reconfirmed with an even larger rally of more

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than 70,000, on 27 February 2003, while the UN Secretary General was on visit to Cyprus. This ‘massive pro-unification demo’ was described by the NTV as ‘the largest rally in the history of the Turkish Cypriots’.232 All these massive popular mobilizations of the Turkish Cypriots were the peak moment of convergence with the Greek Cypriot community – which, however, did not receive the message. More significantly, the political leaderships that expressed the majority of the Greek community completely failed to follow and analyse in depth the radical transformation within the Turkish Cypriot community as well as the equally radical social change in Turkey. This transformation was not simply reflected in the daily popular demonstrations against Denktas and in favour of solution and EU accession. It was also reflected in a whole series of opinion polls, the findings of which showed a substantive shift in the political orientation of the Turkish Cypriots as well as in their perception of the solution. In their vast majority, they rejected economic integration with, or annexation to, Turkey. They decisively shifted towards federation while, until 2000, the majority had followed Denktas and Ankara along the line of two independent sovereign states. They linked solution to EU accession, aspiring to betterment of their living conditions. They believed that the ‘TRNC’ had failed to come up to their expectations and they no longer trusted Denktas. They linked the solution of their problems with solution and accession as well as with a change of government. They accepted the return of territory within the framework of a solution, the majority of them showing preference for remaining in the area under Turkish Cypriot administration. As for the guarantees, they still considered the continuation of Turkey’s guarantees on the basis of the 1960 relevant Treaty to be necessary. A significant qualitative finding by the polls was that the higher percentages of positive attitudes towards solution and accession and negative attitudes towards Denktas were to be found in the higher educational standards, youth and indigenous Turkish Cypriots vis-à-vis settlers. As might have been expected, Turkish Cypriots revealed a focus on the ‘Cypriot’ interest, and youth on the future, while citizens with higher education showed a higher ability in analysis and autonomous assessment of political reality. A second, more significant, finding by the polls related to the role of the leadership, specifically with regard to the acceptance or rejection of the Annan Plan, the many and complex provisions of which were not easily assimilated by the common people. While autonomous acceptance of the Plan ranged between 60 and 65 per cent, in the event that the leaders of the two communities reached an agreement, acceptance exceeded 90 per cent.233 The fact that they placed economic problems on roughly the same level as solution and accession, and sometimes even higher, was not so much linked with the economic deprivation of 1964–74, as with a new social transformation, within the framework of which new social classes sought participation

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in modernity, where Cyprus was to enter through EU accession. They certainly claimed participation in the allocation of resources and opportunities both at Turkish Cypriot and at pan-Cyprian level. The most substantive factors in this social transformation were linked with the emergence of social strata with higher educational standards.234 Easy access to Turkish universities, particularly after 1974, opened up the horizons of Turkish Cypriot students to a wider more complex world, where they discovered that there were more Turkeys than the one preached by Denktas. On the other hand, this experience made them aware of their distinct Cypriot identity.235 However, what influenced even more the direction of radical changes that occurred in Turkish Cypriot society was the establishment of universities, some of them English-speaking, in northern Cyprus. The fact that, in the period of popular uprising against Denktas, there were six universities in northern Cyprus236 with more than 20,000 students,237 explains to some extent the sharpening of political awareness among Turkish Cypriots. The televised interview of Mehmet Ali Birand with Turkish Cypriot students in 2001, as well as another with students of the Eastern Mediterranean University,238 which was also shown on Greek Cypriot TV channels, bear convincing evidence as to the role and influence of students in the radicalization of Turkish Cypriot society. At this unique historic juncture, the first since the emergence of the two opposing nationalisms in Cyprus, we, Greek Cypriots, were given the opportunity to walk a common path with a strong majority current among Turkish Cypriots, who, for the first time, saw the Turkish Cypriot interest linked to a large degree, and converge with, the broader Cypriot interest. Through cooperation with these political and social forces, we might have charted a common course aiming at a compromise on the basis of a minimum common Cypriot interest. However, we remained instead passive spectators, through our TV sets, of fragmented images of the seismic developments of 2000–3 within the Turkish Cypriot community. Unjustifiably inactive in the face of these developments was the Greek Cypriot Left (AKEL, EDEK, KOP), which remained attached to the expedient inertia of the status quo, while at the same time valued participation in the ruling coalition as of higher priority, without counting the possible cost of such a choice.

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Chapter 7

From Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ to the Annan Plan 7.1. The UN peace mission in Cyprus UN peacekeeping and peacemaking in Cyprus started with Resolution 186 of the UNSC (4 March 1964). ‘Noting that the situation with regard to Cyprus (was) likely to threaten international peace and security’, the UNSC decided, as an initial measure, to send a UN peacekeeping force to Cyprus with the mandate ‘to prevent a recurrence of fighting’ and ‘to contribute to the maintenance and restoration of law and order and a return to normal conditions’. A second significant provision of Resolution 186 was the recommendation to the UN Secretary General that he designate a ‘mediator’ to promote ‘a peaceful solution and an agreed settlement of the problem confronting Cyprus in accordance with the UN Charter, having in mind the well-being of the people as a whole and the preservation of international peace and security’.1 As will be shown below, drawing on UNSC resolutions throughout the Cyprus crisis, the UN peace mission consisted of a process far more complex than mere implementation of the UN Charter. While the Charter provided the framework for the mediator’s mandate, what he was actually called upon to take into account was the interest of the people of Cyprus as a whole as well as the wider interests involved in the Cyprus question, whose clash endangered international peace and security. The Report by the UN mediator, Galo Plaza, to the UN Secretary General (26 Mar. 1965) constitutes a historic document for a student of the Cyprus problem, and signifies a turning point in the long involvement of the UN in Cyprus. However, the outright rejection of the Report by the Turkish side, which accused the mediator of having gone beyond his mandate, and the reserved attitude of the Greek side, which viewed with suspicion the suggestion for abandonment of insistence on self-determination on account of Turkish reaction,2 forced the UN organization to abandon that historic initiative. Galo Plaza was the second3 and last UN mediator. By contrast with his

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predecessor, Tuomioja, who had focused on the Greek–Turkish dimension of the problem, Galo Plaza centered his interest, as well as his contacts, on Cyprus and on the solution to the ethnic conflict between the two communities. This shift of emphasis was to constitute, thenceforwards, a permanent point of orientation for the UN peacekeeping and peacemaking mission in Cyprus. A second factor, which emerges as an outcome of the failure of direct UN mediation, is the fact that, from then onwards, the UNSC confined itself tο the Secretary General’s ‘good offices mission’. This formula drastically limited the role of the UN Secretary General to a mainly procedural one that focused on facilitating negotiations between the parties. The UN Organization would confine itself to the ‘good offices mission’ throughout the intercommunal talks from 1968 to 1974. However, neither the Secretary General nor his Special Representative in Cyprus would hesitate, during this period, to make substantive proposals in order to bridge gaps between the two sides or to issue warnings against delaying tactics.4 In an immediate reaction to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the UNSC issued Resolution 353 (20 July1974), whereby it called upon all states ‘to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Cyprus’, demanded ‘an immediate end to foreign military intervention in the Republic of Cyprus, and requested ‘the withdrawal without delay from the Republic of Cyprus of foreign military personnel present otherwise than under the authority of international agreements’. However, it did not suggest measures to be taken in the event of non-compliance. Instead, it was limited to an appeal to the three guarantor powers ‘to enter into negotiation without delay for the restoration of peace in the area and constitutional government in Cyprus’. A few months later, while Turkey was consolidating occupation in disregard of general appeals and UNSC resolutions, which, however, did not provide for sanctions, the Security Council found a convenient outlet in the form of intercommunal negotiations under the auspices of the Secretary General’s ‘good offices mission’, adopting a relevant provision of Resolution 3212 of the UN General Assembly.5 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the limitations of their ‘good offices mission’, successive UN Secretary Generals (Waldheim, De Cuellar, Ghali, Annan) were also to act as mediators as well, when they judged it necessary, by submitting ideas of their own with the intention of bridging gaps, making evaluations on progress achieved or making suggestions to the UNSC regarding its agenda or the contents of draft resolutions.6 From Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ (1981)7 until the Annan Plan (2002–4),8 while the mandate was still confined to the ‘good offices mission’, all UN Secretary Generals of the period, in their effort to break deadlocks, entered the field of mediation by submitting bridgingthe-gap proposals relating to both procedure and substance; to be accused now and then of exceeding their mandate by the side – usually Denktas – that intended to reject their proposals.9

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All proposals submitted by UN Secretary Generals have been far removed from the implementation of the UN Charter, even from provisions of UNSC resolutions on Cyprus. Since the aim of the UN peace mission has been the achievement of an agreed solution, successive Secretary Generals have sought equidistant positions in order to bridge the two sides’ incompatible positions with regard to the talks. The text of the ‘opening statement’ by UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, read out by his Special Representative, Hugo Gobbi, at the commencement of a new round of talks on 9 August 1980, introduced, as having been accepted by both sides, the ‘bi-zonal’ concept in relation to the territorial issue and the concept of ‘security’ in relation to ‘practical difficulties’ in the implementation of the basic freedoms. Despite the fact that Denktas had demanded the use of these two terms as a precondition for the recommencement of the talks, he rejected the Secretary General’s formula because the practical implementation of the above two concepts was left to ‘be dealt within the context of the substantive consideration of the constitutional and the territorial aspects’ respectively.10 Following a year of talks, Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ pointed out, in its first paragraph, that ‘the present evaluation of the talks [. . .] focuses on the points where positions converge and on those points from which the positions of the parties are equidistant’. On these last points, the Secretary General noted that his aim was the achievement of ‘median solutions’ or the ‘bridging of existing differences’.11 Within the framework of the logic of ‘median solutions’, the Secretary General actually went beyond the limits of a plain evaluation of the two parties’ positions and proceeded towards formulating proposals on the substance of the problem within the reasoning of equidistant ‘bridging of differences’. The idea of a six-member Federal Council proposed in the Annan Plan appeared for the first time in Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ (§ 13), this being borrowed from the Turkish proposals of January 1981 (articles 34–7), slightly amended in the direction of Greek Cypriot positions. Meantime, lack of progress and the absence of any prospect for a solution, together with the unwillingness or incapacity of the Secretary Generals to denounce the party responsible for the deadlock, actually confined UN priorities simply to maintaining the negotiating process. The conflicting interests of UNSC permanent members, mainly the refusal of the United States following the embargo to allow sanctions against Turkey, thwarted any possibility of implementation of the UN Charter or UN resolutions in the case of Cyprus. This is how former Secretary General Kurt Waldheim (1972–81) assesses the role, the limitations and the potentialities of UN Secretary Generals and of the UN Organization at large: . . . By quiet personal persuasion he can do more than is generally realized. But let him publicly take a position which is critical of a major power or

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bloc or one party to a conflict, and he risks losing the cooperation and support he needs to keep the Organization functioning at its best. The Secretary General is confronted with an unending series of dilemmas. Enjoying no sovereign authority and few material resources, he must do what he can to quell international tension. In situations where conflicting nations each affirm the righteousness of their cause, he must balance considerations of law, equity, and the possibilities of practical adjustment in attempting to bring about political settlements. [. . .] When he can move at all he must, like the classical mariner, steer between Scylla and Charybdis always in quest of the narrow passage leading to possible agreement.12 The truly meaningful issue regarding the United Nations is not whether it functions perfectly, or even rather poorly. It is whether humankind, taken as a whole, is better off with it or without it.13 The war syndrome is an inevitable outgrowth of the doctrine of state sovereignty. As long as states insist that they are the supreme arbiters of their destinies – that as sovereign entities their decisions are subject to no higher authority – international organizations will never be able to guarantee the maintenance of peace. [. . .] Such a world order should entail the subordination of the system of national states as we know it to some form of higher authority.14

Notwithstanding the UN’s meagre potential, the continuation of the negotiating process under the auspices of the UN, in conjunction with the maintenance of the UN peacekeeping force, fulfils a substantive requirement of the UN mandate, which is the prevention of a new outbreak of violence and the maintaining of calm through the establishment of a ‘negotiation culture’.15 However, the lack of movement entailed in the status quo and the maintenance of stability, no matter how fragile, tended to condition the two communities to this kind of situation. On the one hand, the Turkish Cypriot side felt quite comfortable with the status quo. Through its continuation, it achieved consolidation of the fait accompli of the invasion and relieved Turkey from pressure. At the same time it saw in its direct contacts with UN officials on an equal footing with the Greek Cypriot side some form of legitimization of the regime established in the occupied area of Cyprus.16 For its part, the Turkish Cypriot opposition argued that Denktas ‘is merely involved in negotiations to retain contacts with the international community and the UN to harvest the votes of the sections of the Turkish Cypriot community which want a solution and to relieve Turkey of international pressure for its role in the problem’.17 On the other hand, the Greek Cypriot side tended to see the status quo as the second-best option vis-à-vis the danger of relapsing into a

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new crisis including potential expansion of Turkish aggression. Moreover, a significant segment of the Greek Cypriot leadership saw in the status quo the ‘second-best solution’ vis-à-vis the encounter with a compromise solution that would lag behind full implementation of UN fundamental principles, such as the right of all the refugees to return to their homes, the withdrawal of all foreign troops and settlers and full protection from foreign intervention rights. Finally, one segment of the Greek community, which horizontally polarized the whole political spectrum from the Socialist Left to the Ultra Right, and which remained hooked on the logic of a national state with majority rule, tended to feel comfortable with the status quo, as this gave the Greek community exclusive management of the state, whereas a federation would, as they saw it, place the 20 per cent and 80 per cent population segments on an equal footing. These attitudes of the two sides, which, in the language of conflict resolution, recall ‘zero-game’ situations, in conjunction with UN impotence to enforce compliance with its decisions, have ultimately led to institutionalization of the peacemaking process and the approach to each round of talks as ‘a never-ending ritual’.18 As a consequence of such attitudes, all parties involved, at the local as well as at the regional and international level, have tended to see the Cyprus question as ‘a situation to be managed rather than solved’.19 It is not without reason that the Cyprus problem has acquired the reputation of being ‘a mediator’s graveyard’.20 Indicative of the frustration of consecutive Secretary Generals following the breakdown of their good offices mission in Cyprus is the following confessional narrative by Kurt Waldheim: . . . For ten years I labored for innumerable hours and with all the energy at my command to bring about a Cyprus settlement. I have to admit that it was not much closer when I departed than when I arrived. I was often tempted to throw up my hands in utter frustration. It was not within the power of an international civil servant to apply much more than the voice of reason and persuasion in dealing with antagonists who are unwilling to risk the compromises which alone can lead to settlement. As the servant of the world organization, and despite repeated setbacks, I persisted in my efforts. The United Nations could lead the horses to water. It could not make them drink.21

The Greek side, aware of the depressing balance of power in Cyprus following the invasion and of the inability of the UN to impose a solution, felt the need to appeal repeatedly to the United States in order to intervene and exert pressure on Turkey. But US foreign policy, still obsessed with the syndrome unleashed by Johnson’s letter, and considering vital strategic inter-

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ests connected with Turkey’s geostrategic position and power, confined its involvement to friendly counsel proffered to Turkey, and ‘facilitation’ of the ‘good offices mission’ of the UN Secretary General, which, however, it always subordinated to its wider interests in the region, particularly in relation to Turkey. Eventually, the development that would act as a catalyst and provide a boost to the UN peace process in Cyprus would be Cyprus’s and Turkey’s EU accession process, which commenced its journey with the 6 March 1995 Agreement and culminated in the Helsinki decision in December 1999. In the wake of Helsinki, the EU became involved in the UN peace process for the first time and has been recorded as the first Western power to put substantial leverage on Turkey. It is worth noting, however, that EU involvement in no way substituted nor reduced the role of the United States in the whole process. When the EU intervened, this was to safeguard compatibility of the provisions of the plan being prepared with the acquis communataire.22 A significant role in the process was also exercised by Britain, which acted both at the European level and as a guarantor power through its Special Representative at the intercommunal talks, Sir David Hannay (February 1996– May 2003).23 This unprecedented involvement of Western powers, which was consistently sought by the Greek side, was closely connected with wider American and European strategic planning aimed at achieving stability in the East Mediterranean region, involving energy sources and the pipelines and sea lane transport to the West.24 For the first time such planning, in conjunction with the dynamic created by Helsinki, opened up a window of opportunity for a comprehensive compromise solution in Cyprus. For the first time, with other factors already explored being in operation, a substantive precondition put forth by Boutros-Ghali was now being fulfilled. Ghali’s precondition was clearly indicated in his argument that ‘disputes have gone unresolved not because the techniques for peaceful settlement were inadequate but because of the lack of political will on the part of the disputants and the international community, and the lack of third-party leverage’.25

7.2. The Cuellar initiatives Javier Perez de Cuellar, as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Cyprus since 1975, had led Makarios and Denktas to the Four Guideline Agreement of 12 February 1977. Since that time he had been continuously involved with the Cyprus problem until he became Secretary General. From this new post (1982–91), Perez de Cuellar worked for Cyprus with the passion of his predecessor – certainly with his limitations as well –by undertaking

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personal initiatives whenever conditions left him some hope of breaching the deadlock, or at least of making some progress in the form of a further thrust in the negotiating process. His first mediation initiative took place with the submission to the two sides of an informal document in the form of soundings that became known as Cuellar’s ‘indicators’ (8 August 1983). In that informal document, he submitted in two legs alternative pairs of proposals on the executive, legislative and territorial issues. In the one leg, where proposals were nearer to Greek Cypriot positions, he suggested a Greek Cypriot president, with a 60:40 government participation by the two communities, proportional representation in the Lower House and 77:23 in relation to the territorial issue. In the other leg, approximating to the Turkish positions, he suggested a rotating presidency with 70:30 ratio in the government and the Lower House and a 70:30 ratio relating to territory. As in the case of Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’, the intention of the new initiative was clearly to move between the positions of the two sides, seeking practical outcomes on the basis of a compromise. Cuellar’s ‘indicators’ advanced an additional element in the UN mediation procedure, which would emerge in similar future UN documents, and certainly in the Annan Plan. In cases where there was no median solution, such as that of the presidency in the executive, satisfaction of the one side was counterbalanced by benefits to the other side on related issues. President Kyprianou’s indecisiveness and failure to move that initiative forward26 led to a deepening of the deadlock that Denktas exploited in order to carry out the threats he had been levelling since 1979 and unilaterally to declare the Turkish Cypriot secessionist ‘state’ on 15 November 1983. It is typical of the UNSC approach that both in Resolution 541 (18 November 1983), in relation to UDI, and in Resolution 550 (11 May 1984), in relation to the announced ‘referendum’ on the ‘constitution’ of the ‘TRNC’, it confined itself, as previously, to verbal condemnation of Denktas’s secessionist act and a request to the Secretary General that he repeat his ‘good offices mission’ with the aim of achieving resumption of the intercommunal negotiations. And no matter how strongly Resolution 550 called for the solution to be ‘in conformity with the principles of the UN Charter and the provisions laid down [. . .] in pertinent UN resolutions’ (§ 8), in practice the new mediation initiatives would again move within the compromising framework somewhere in the median field between the two positions. This same logic governed Cuellar’s three consecutive ‘Draft Agreements’ of November 1984, March 1985 and March 1986.27 Beyond that, as shown by both the content and the titles of the documents, they were simply draft frameworks with propositions on the basis of which an agreed solution would have been negotiated. A great deal of work still lay ahead for general provisions to be elaborated on, for ambiguities to be clarified, for gaps to be filled, for conflicting positions to be

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bridged, for implementation stages to be defined and finally for the full implementation of the overall agreement to be safeguarded. There were some profound, positive elements in those initiatives of Perez de Cuellar. First, they placed the secessionist ‘state’ outside the framework of discussions by reaffirming the aim of restoring the sovereignty and integrity of Cyprus as a bi-communal bi-zonal federation. Second, they brought back to the agenda and kept alive the issue of the withdrawal of occupation troops and settlers. Third, they recognized the need for return of territory to Greek Cypriots within the framework of a solution. Fourth, they identified the implementation of the basic freedoms (relating to movement, settlement and property) as one of the substantive issues involved in the problem. Fifth, they reiterated, as a priority issue, the return of Famagusta under UN administration until an overall solution was reached. Nonetheless, there were significant ambiguities regarding the exercise of federal powers, particularly in connection with citizenship, defence and security, as well as a possibly intended ambiguity with regard to withdrawal of troops and settlers, implementation of the three basic freedoms and delineation of the areas to be allocated to Greek Cypriot administration. As for the return of Famagusta, this was linked to the reopening of Nicosia International Airport under arrangements that might easily have been exploited by Denktas in his quest for recognition of separate state entity. Given that Denktas would have continued to dominate the Turkish Cypriot community, and given his unyielding persistence in achieving recognition of a separate, ethnically pure, Turkish state and in rejecting any return of occupied territory – all these coupled with his quibbling and reneging tactics – the probabilities of ultimately reaching a comprehensive agreement on all outstanding issues were in fact negligible. Given further that Turkey was not under any pressure to terminate its aggression, and that neither did it have any incentives to seek a solution in Cyprus, and given the absolute power of the army during that period, the chances of a solution narrowed even further. The establishment of a transitional government was, admittedly, conditional on prior agreement on a timeframe for the withdrawal of ‘non Cypriot military troops and elements’ and on completion of the task of the ‘working groups’. But, while no timeframe was determined for the completion of the task of the working groups, a fixed date required common agreement for the establishment of the transitional government provided the preconditions set were fulfilled. The ambiguity of the preconditions, particularly in relation to the completion of the task of the working groups, left open the eventuality that a transitional government might be convened by the pre-agreed deadline without, however, an agreement at the level of the working groups. There was a real danger of the status of the Republic of Cyprus being questioned the day after the fixed date for transition without there having been a compre-

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hensive agreement. The danger of continuous deadlocks being created by Denktas through the latter’s full use of extended vetoes and separate majorities were also clear. In order to avoid such pitfalls, it was of vital importance to have an effective deadlock-resolving mechanism, which the bi-cameral character of the federation could not have safeguarded, particularly under conditions of absolute suspicion and insurmountable hostility. The Greek Cypriot leadership was fully aware of such dangers. And it unanimously decided, at a meeting chaired by President Kyprianou, that ‘a transitional government might only be established after a comprehensive solution of the Cyprus problem is achieved’.28 Partial disagreement between AKEL– -DISY, on the one hand, and DIKO–EDEK, on the other, related to the readiness of AKEL and DISY to accept a phased withdrawal of troops to extend beyond the establishment of a transitional government provided there had been agreement on all other issues. President Kyprianou, along with DIKO and EDEK, wanted the transitional government to be established only after complete withdrawal of all Turkish troops.29 The aforementioned meeting, which extended to a second day,30 individually examined all matters that might have been raised at the President’s meeting with Denktas. The extremely reserved, and sometimes maximalistic, attitude was indicative of the complete lack of trust in the possibility that any agreement would function were Denktas to be granted even the slightest opportunity either to renege on commitments or to interpret provisions his own way or, ultimately, to cause continuous deadlocks.31 The positions of the Greek Cypriot leadership were somehow reflected in two clarifying documents President Kyprianou had sent to the Secretary General (8 and 13 December 1984) relating to his forthcoming meeting with Denktas. In those documents Kyprianou had asked for some modifications of the agenda for the meeting so as to address Greek Cypriot concerns.32 The rejection by President Kyprianou of the first Cuellar draft at the New York meeting with Denktas (17–20 January 1985), under circumstances that caused embarrassment to the Secretary General,33 sparked off a crisis within the Greek Cypriot front, with AKEL and DISY openly accusing Kyprianou of inconsistencies and mishandling the situation. Under pressure form AKEL and DISY, Kyprianou accepted Cuellar’s second draft of 21 March 1985, even though it did not satisfy substantial Greek Cypriot requirements,34 but it was Denktas’s turn to reject it. The third draft of 29 March 1986, with slight modifications in the wording towards fulfilment of Denktas’s demands, was accepted by the Turkish Cypriot leader but rejected by Kyprianou.35 During the deadlock that ensued, Kyprianou brought to the fore the logic of ‘protaxis’, which, without being specifically mentioned, had been the guiding principle underpinning his letter to the Secretary General in which he had conveyed his rejection of the third draft. The ‘protaxis’ reasoning meant that no new negotiations should be held unless there had first been discussion and

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agreement on the substantial issues – that is, the withdrawal of troops and settlers, the implementation of the three freedoms (movement, settlement, property) and the guarantees. The election of George Vassiliou as President (February 1988) and his readiness for talks devoid of the ‘protaxis condition’36 gave new impetus to the negotiating process and to the peacemaking mediation by the UN.37 The presentation by President Vassiliou of comprehensive compromising proposals in which, for the first time, Turkish Cypriot concerns were explored and accounted for,38 as well as his creative and communicative approach resulted in a new, personal involvement, on the part of the UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, and the submission of a ‘Set of Ideas’ for an overall solution.39 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’, without deviating from the general trend towards balance between the two sides, typical of all UN documents up to that time, shows particular sensitivity towards profound Greek Cypriot concerns that negative one-sided points in the 29 March 1986 ‘Draft’ proposal be redressed through restructuring of positions and clarifications, and by adding new ‘ideas’. In the chapter entitled ‘Guiding Principles’ (section entitled ‘unity’), it is clearly stated that the federal Republic will consist of one territory, will have one international personality, one sovereignty and one40 citizenship. The unity of the state is further safeguarded by vesting in the federal government, for the first time in UN proposals, ‘immigration and citizenship’, while the issue of ‘international transports’ in the UN proposals of 1981 to 1986 is clarified, to the satisfaction of the Greek Cypriot side, as ‘international ports and airports’ –that is, to operate under the control of the federal government. It partly satisfied the suggestion in the 1989 Greek Cypriot proposals that provided for universal suffrage in the election of President and Vice President (the Greek Cypriot votes would have been weighted so as to count equally alongside the Turkish Cypriot votes) by adopting universal suffrage for the election of the President. It clearly confines the veto powers of the President and the Vice President to foreign affairs, defence and security (as provided in the 1960 Constitution), and budgets and taxation (cf. 1960: separate majorities), adding ‘immigration’ and ‘citizenship’ as a further safeguard against the possibility of colonization following the agreement. It drops the correlation of ‘security’ of the Turkish Cypriot community with the implementation of the three freedoms (this was provided for in the UN plans of 1981–6), but it links the implementation of these freedoms with the provision for each community to have clear majority of population and land ownership in the area under its administration. This last provision was vehemently rejected by a segment of the Greek Cypriot leadership. However, it merely constituted an elaboration and slight modification towards the ‘median point’ of what was actually granted in the 1989 Greek Cypriot proposals, which recognized the need for the Turkish Cypriots to constitute the majority in the area under their adminis-

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tration.41 Beyond that, the proposal of the UN Secretary General offered a practical outlet that was far removed from Denktas’s insistence on an ethnically homogeneous Turkish state in the north. With regard to ‘the withdrawal of all non-Cypriot forces not provided for under the Treaty of Alliance’, Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ approached Greek Cypriot positions by noting that ‘this timetable will be fully implemented prior to the establishment of the federal republic’.42 It further clearly stated that ‘the demilitarization of the federal republic of Cyprus remains an objective’.43 As for the guarantees, the ‘outline’ noted that ‘the 1960 Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance will be updated’, clarifying that ‘any exercise of the Treaty of Guarantee shall be consistent with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and shall not impair the human rights of the citizens of the federal republic of Cyprus’.44 Furthermore, the ‘Set of Ideas’ came nearer to Greek Cypriot positions by recognizing that ‘there is a correlation between the size of the territory that will revert to Greek Cypriot administration and the number of Greek Cypriot displaced persons who can return to that area on the one hand, and the ceiling concerning the number of Greek Cypriots who may reside in the federated state under Turkish Cypriot administration on the other hand’.45 Denktas indignantly rejected Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’, questioning the UN mandate itself.46 On the Greek Cypriot side, the UN Secretary General’s proposal met outright rejection by the opposition parties, DIKO and EDEK,47 which accused President Vassiliou of deviating from the unanimous 1989 proposals of the National Council and rejected any negotiation on the basis of ‘ideas’ put forward in Cuellar’s document. However, President Vassiliou, having secured the support of AKEL and DISY,48 accepted the ‘Set of Ideas’ as a basis for further negotiations and cooperated with the Secretary General in the latter’s effort to smooth differences on thorny issues, mainly those of ‘territorial adjustments’ and the return of ‘displaced persons’, on which Denktas’s intransigent stand had not allowed any progress. The last two reports of Perez de Cuellar to the UNSC (8 October 1991 and 19 December 1991) reveal in depth the painstaking and persistent efforts of the Secretary General to achieve a settlement in Cyprus within the strictly limited framework of his ‘good offices mission’. A mere reading of these reports recalls the disappointment expressed in Waldheim’s memoirs, a disappointment Cuellar cannot conceal in recapitulating his personal involvement with the Cyprus problem since 1975. The feeling of disappointment in Cuellar converts to a feeling of pain felt by the Cypriot researcher who, on going through such texts, relives for a moment the experience of hope in a solution that was so uniquely and tantalizingly close. It was the time when President Turgut Ozal, in his effort to overcome the first major hurdle along Turkey’s European course, took initiatives that, for the first time since the invasion, were directed towards seeking a solution in Cyprus.

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The review of the developments cited in Cuellar’s report of 8 October 1991 reveals unprecedented mobility occurring under the auspices of the Secretary General, and consisting of direct involvement of a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official, direct contacts between the Secretary General and President Ozal and Premier Yilmaz, consecutive rounds of talks between the two communities in Cyprus and successive meetings of the Secretary General with President Vassiliou and Denktas. The high point in that mobility was the visit by US President George H. W. Bush to Athens and Ankara (July 1991), where he secured commitments on the part of both Turks and Greeks to the effect that they would support the Secretary General’s efforts to bridge gaps on thorny issues and that, such preconditions having been fulfilled, they would proceed to an international conference to involve the premiers of Turkey and Greece and the leaders of the two communities with the goal of signing an agreement. In the meantime, a UN negotiating team under the Secretary General was intensively working out a ‘Set of Ideas’ for a framework for an overall solution and was elaborating concrete proposals on issues in which there was relative proximity in the positions of the two sides; until Denktas, during the last round of talks (7–14 September 1991) shredded every proposal by demanding separate sovereignty, which was to be maintained even after the establishment of the federal republic and which was to include the right of secession.49 The UN Secretary General, deviating from the invariable tactic of avoiding value judgements on the positions of the two sides, rejected Denktas’s demand and reaffirmed the provisions of the Four-Guideline Agreement and relevant UN resolutions in relation to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus (§§ 18, 19, 20). Further, he conveyed to the Security Council ‘President Vassiliou’s reaction to the ideas’ to the effect that, ‘although differences remained to be resolved on a number of issues, the Set of Ideas as a whole provided a basis for working out an overall framework agreement’ (§ 16). In his last report to the UNSC (19 December 1991), the Secretary General, after speaking of progress made in the elaboration of the ‘Set of Ideas’ since 1990, laid down his mandate and expressed disappointment at the prolongation of uncertainty and insecurity in Cyprus, warning that ‘the status quo in Cyprus is not an option’ (§ 12). This bitter feeling of disappointment is also imprinted in Cuellar’s memoirs, where he does not mince his words with regard to Denktas’s ‘intolerable attitude’,50 or to Kyprianou’s inability to make decisions and lack of flexibility in handling situations.51 By contrast, he commends Vassiliou for his clear thought and direct communicative approach and writes in a way that reveals that he concurs with the latter’s comment during their last meeting that ‘the Turks had never wanted and had not expected to see a Cyprus settlement’ and that, ‘under strong pressure from the United States, they had to appear cooperative knowing that they could

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depend on Denktas to prevent an agreement’.52 The favourable atmosphere that President Vassiliou created in UN headquarters seems to have had some effect in gaining improved responsiveness on the part of the Secretary General towards matters of special interest or concern on the part of the Greek Cypriot side. A shift of UN approach in this direction is clearly evident in Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1989 as well as in the substantive deliberations of the years 1990–1, when the document known as the ‘Set of Ideas’ of Boutros-Ghali had actually been formulated.

7.3. Boutros-Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ The document entitled ‘Set of Ideas on an Overall Framework Agreement on Cyprus’ was submitted by the UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to the two sides in Cyprus on 25 August 1992. These ‘ideas’ were actually a continuation and elaboration of the Cuellar ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1989. It clearly emerges from the reports to the UNSC (by Cuellar, 8 October 1991, and by Ghali, 3 April 1992) that the elaboration and formulation of the 1992 ‘Set of Ideas’ had started in October 1990 under Perez de Cuellar and continued intensively until September 1991, when talks were disrupted owing to the outrageous conditions put forward by Denktas and the reneging by Yilmaz in Paris. The Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’ retained the structure of the 1989 document. It kept the seven chapters (1. Overall Objectives, 2. Guiding Principles, 3. Constitutional Aspects of the Federation Including Fundamental Rights and the Three Freedoms, 4. Security and Guarantee, 5. Territorial Adjustments, 6. Displaced Persons, 7. Economic Development) and added an eighth chapter entitled ‘Transitional Arrangements’.53 Until September 1991, intensive negotiations and personal interventions by the UN Secretary General had apparently covered substantial ground, and the two sides had been brought within agreement range on overall objectives, the federation’s guiding principles, the powers and functions of the federal government, federal legislature, federal judiciary, security and guarantee. In areas that had not been adequately discussed and where the positions of the two sides were still apart, such as territorial adjustments, displaced persons and the federal executive, alternative options were presented with the aim of facilitating negotiation.54 At the conclusion of the talks the Secretary General’s representatives had had in Ankara with senior Foreign Ministry officials (21– 4 August 1991), it became apparent that, ‘although the two sides in Cyprus remained apart on some issues and the territorial adjustments had still to be further defined, the revised text of ideas that had emerged from the talks at Ankara represented an important step forward which should provide the basis on which an agreement could be worked out’.55

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On taking office, the new Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, set in motion the negotiating process in Cyprus (February 1992) and had intensive deliberations with the governments of Turkey and Greece. However, until the submission of his first report on Cyprus to the UNSC (3 April 1992), Boutros-Ghali would have realized that ‘the difficulties which were described in the report of 8 October 1991 (by his predecessor) remained unchanged’56 and, in certain areas, ‘there had even been regression’.57 He would have felt the need to appeal to the Turkish side and indirectly ask it to ‘adhere faithfully to the principles led down by the Security Council’ as well as to warn both sides that ‘the current effort cannot be expected to continue indefinitely if all concerned are not willing to make their contribution to a compromise solution’.58 He would further have warned that, ‘if that effort does not succeed, consideration would have to be given to an alternative course of action in dealing with the Cyprus question’.59 The most significant element in this report by the UN Secretary General is the inclusion in it of a summary of the ‘Set of Ideas’ that emerged from the negotiations of 1991,60 along with the remark that, ‘if similar progress can be made on the outstanding issues, in particular territorial adjustments and displaced persons, an overall solution will be within reach’.61 With the exception of paragraph 26, which suggested separate referenda for EU accession and which was adamantly rejected by the Greek Cypriot side, the UNSC endorsed the ‘Set of Ideas’ expounded in paragraphs 17–25 and 27 of the Secretary General’s report as ‘an appropriate basis for reaching an overall framework agreement subject to the work that needs to be done on the outstanding issues in particular on territorial adjustments and displaced persons’.62 After sustained intensive talks involving the Secretary General himself or his representatives with President Vassiliou and Denktas from 18 June to 11 August 1992, as well as meetings between Vassiliou and Denktas (12–14 August),63 all focused on territorial adjustments and displaced persons, BoutrosGhali submitted a second report to the UNSC (21 August 1992), which was appended with the ‘Set of Ideas on an Overall Framework Agreement on Cyprus’.64 Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, for the first time in UN proposals, included a map that clearly delineated the boundaries of the two federated states. Although the map left the Turkish federated state almost the whole of coastline under Turkish occupation since 1974 (55 per cent out of 57 per cent of the entire coastline of the Republic of Cyprus held under occupation),65 it provided for the return of large areas in the western and eastern plains that had been densely populated with Greek Cypriots before the invasion and their displacement. The following villages in the eastern plain were to be returned, in addition to the town of Famagusta: Angastina, Tymbou, Pyrogi, Afania, Asha, Vatili,

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Lysi, Kondea, Achna, Makrasyka, Kalopsida, Acheritou and Agios Nikolaos. In the western plain, in addition to the town of Morfou, the following villages were to be returned: Gerolakkos, Agios Vassilios, Skylloura, Agia Marina, Kyra, Filia, Masari, Avlona, Katokopia, Argaki, Pano Zodia, Kato Zodia, Nikitas, Prastio (Morfou), Petra, Agios Yeorgios (Solea), Xeros, Karavostasi, Potamos tou Kambou, Limnitis, Galini, Varisha, Loutros, Xerovounos, Ammadies and Kokkina. The map provided for two Greek ‘enclaves’ in the Karpas, the first including Gialousa, Agia Triada and Melanarga, and the second Rizokarpaso. None of the enclaves had access to the sea. It also provided for five small Turkish enclaves including the villages Kouklia, Pergamos, Arsos, Ayia-Melusha and Louroudjina.66 President Vassiliou, ‘while he did not consider the suggested territorial adjustments to be equitable, stated that he was ready to negotiate an agreement on that basis’.67 In contrast to Vassiliou’s positive stand, Denktas first expressed ‘displeasure’ at the presentation of the map and then refused discussion on its contents, putting forward so many preconditions that he actually negated any return of territory. He put forward four alternative proposals, but ‘none of them came close to the territorial adjustments contained in the ‘Set of Ideas’, notably in the area to the west of Nicosia’.68 Denktas came out with even more intransigent positions on the issue of displaced persons – that is, the resettlement of such persons and repossession of their properties in the Turkish Cypriot federated state. He demanded recognition of the validity of the ‘title deeds’ he had issued to Turkish Cypriots and settlers on Greek Cypriot-owned properties and put forth ‘a long list of Turkish Cypriots currently in the former residences of Greek Cypriots, who, in his view, should not be obliged to vacate the properties in question in favour of a returning proprietor’. He further demanded that ‘the determination in respect of the above listed categories of Turkish Cypriot “owner”/occupants should be made by authorities of the Turkish Cypriot federated state’.69 ‘While one cannot ignore the practical difficulties involved in resolving the issue of displaced persons,’ the Secretary General comments on Denktas’s preconditions, ‘the manner in which these are addressed must not deny the principles of the right of return and the right to property’. ‘The Set of Ideas’, he adds, ‘offers reasonable arrangements that address the practical difficulties in a manner that takes into account the legitimate rights and interests of both sides’.70 The Secretary General, reporting to the UNSC (21 August 1992), openly commended Vassiliou’s positive stand: . . . For his part, President Vassiliou agreed that the ‘Set of Ideas’ provides the basis for reaching an Overall Framework Agreement. He insisted on the principle of the right of return and on the right to property while recognizing

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the need to resolve practical difficulties faced by the Turkish Cypriot side. He stressed that he was opposed to any recognition of massive confiscation of the properties of displaced persons, since that would be contrary to UN resolutions and human rights instruments.

The Secretary General further informed the UNSC of the data Vassiliou had presented ‘on the ratio between the respective 1974 values of Greek and Turkish Cypriot properties’, which ‘was 8:1’, that ‘he was opposed to the concept of “zeroing out” of the properties of displaced persons’ and that ‘he attached great importance to the option of long-term leasing and other commercial agreements’.71 Finally, the Secretary General’s Report let it be understood that Denktas’s views ‘on the questions of sovereignty, transitional arrangements, the federal executive, the membership of Cyprus in certain international organizations, and economic development’ did not fully comply with the delicate balance contained in the ‘Set of Ideas’ and were still at variance with UNSC resolutions.72 A new round of talks and ten joint meetings of Vassiliou and Denktas with the Secretary General in New York (28 October–11 November 1992) simply confirmed the deadlock. In his new report to the UNSC (19 November 1992), the Secretary General elaborated in detail on the positions of the two sides and particularly on Denktas’s absolutely negative stand.73 He noted specifically in this regard that ‘the objectives set by the Security Council in resolution 774 (August 1992) were not achieved’ because ‘some of the positions voiced by the Turkish Cypriot side are, in a fundamental way, outside the framework of the Set of Ideas’.74 As emerges from the Secretary General’s report to the UNSC (19 November 1992), President Vassiliou had made a creative contribution to the New York talks, particularly on the thorny issue of the displaced and the properties, an issue on which he submitted alternative suggestions with a view to solving practical difficulties arising from the return and resettlement of Greek Cypriots. He expressed reservations with regard to certain provisions in the ‘Set of Ideas’, particularly the withdrawal of the settlers,75 and to Cyprus’s accession to the EEC. His proposal on EEC accession addressed the problem in the same way as, ten years later, the Annan Plan would. It stipulated that ‘the separate referenda on matters related to EEC membership should be part of and conducted at the same time as the separate referenda on the overall framework agreement’.76 Despite those reservations, he told the Secretary General that he accepted the ‘Set of Ideas’ and the map ‘as a basis for reaching an overall framework agreement subject to any improvements for the benefit of both communities’.77 Despite the war waged on the ‘Set of Ideas’ by the opposition parties DIKO and EDEK and, from 1992 onwards, by Clerides’s DISY as well,

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with obvious electoral gains in mind in view of the presidential elections of 1993, this document constitutes a landmark in the undisrupted continuity of the UN Secretary General’s ‘good offices mission’. The ‘Set of Ideas’ is the elaboration and final formulation of Cuellar’s 1989 ‘Set of Ideas’. And it is at the same time the outcome of the positive convergence of events in 1991 already referred to in previous chapters. On examining the relevant material in the memoirs of Perez de Cuellar, one has the sense that one further parameter contributed towards this outcome that had more to do with persons than with politics. This was the personal sympathy of Perez de Cuellar that Vassiliou managed to win through his openly communicative approach and his negotiating inventiveness and flexibility, qualities that made him a reliable interlocutor. No matter how influential the weight of international interests and power balances may be, the way a people and/or the personality of a leader interpose themselves always makes a difference. It seems that history is a much more complex process than a mere equation of interests and power balances. The outright rejection of that UN initiative by Denktas and the Turkish Generals’ power mechanism may have neutralized the prospects of the ‘Set of Ideas’ as early as September 1991.78 However, the codification of those ideas by the new Secretary General in the document of August 1992, and particularly the submission of a concrete on-map territorial proposal providing for substantial territorial adjustments, would have constituted the starting point of the next UN initiative to be pushed forward following Helsinki. The prospects created by the Helsinki accord triggered an unprecedented mobilization of the international community and previously unknown level of deployment of human resources by the UN Organization. The renewed UN effort, characterized by both determination for a comprehensive solution and fatigue at repeated failure, would produce the Annan Plan, no longer as a framework document but as a full-fledged self-executive plan for a lasting solution.

7.4. The Annan Plan: on the tracks of the ‘Set of Ideas’ A brief comparative description of the basic provisions of the Annan Plan and corresponding provisions of the ‘Set of Ideas’ as well as of previous UN documents will, on the one hand, highlight the sustained continuity and general political rules that have governed the ‘good offices mission’ of successive UN Secretary Generals since 1975 (UNSC Resolution 367). On the other hand, such a comparative examination will make clearer most aspects of the Annan Plan first by tracing their origins, and, second, by stimulating thought concerning their possible influence on future UN initiatives. Such a study will further

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show that the effort towards a compromise, which permeates all UN proposals, is not motivated by a mechanistic approach involving ‘equi-distance’. The ‘Set of Ideas’, Boutros-Ghali remarks, ‘emerged from a sustained effort during the past several years, in the course of which the text was successively refined to take account of legitimate79 concerns and interests expressed by each side’.80 The issue at stake is the degree to which certain demands or concerns or interests on each side are legitimized in the mind of the Secretary General so as to prompt him to move in that direction and deviate from the median line along which he usually moves in search of a compromise. Nevertheless, regardless of the degree to which the Annan Plan evolved from the ‘Set of Ideas’ and other previous UN proposals, it was substantially different from all of them in one important respect. All previous UN plans had merely been outlines or frameworks of principles on the basis of which a final comprehensive document was to be elaborated for which there was no guarantee of future agreement. By contrast, the Annan Plan, as set out at the referendum of 24 April 2004, was a comprehensive self-executive plan, with all instruments of the federal republic and the constituent states ready to function from the very first day that the Foundation Agreement came into force.

7.4.1. The ‘new state of affairs’ The notion of the establishment of the federation as being a new start is an underlying principle in Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989) as well as in the UN documents of 1984, 1985 and 1986. In Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 2) it is termed ‘a new partnership’. It is a new formulation that would be incorporated in the Annan Plan.81 In the ‘main articles’ of the Plan’s preamble, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, affirming that ‘Cyprus is our common home’ and recalling that ‘we were co-founders of the Republic established in 1960’, decide ‘to renew our partnership’ and determine that ‘this new bi-zonal partnership shall ensure a common future in friendship, peace, security and prosperity in an independent and united Cyprus’.82 At a later point, article 1 of the Foundation Agreement states from the outset that ‘this Agreement establishes a new state of affairs in Cyprus’.83 The notion of ‘a new state of affairs’ was to be further elaborated in the Annan Plan and ultimately signified a complex political, rather than legal, process that commentators of the Plan would term ‘virgin birth’. However, the cominginto-being of a completely new state was something that was in no way stipulated in the Annan Plan. The new formulation was intentionally ambiguous on this point – it was called ‘constructive ambiguity’– so that the new state of affairs might satisfy both sides. It was actually an effort to put together the

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continuity of the Republic of Cyprus and the administrative regime that the Turkish Cypriots had created in 1967 and maintained thereafter84 with the establishment of a new state of affairs, in which the state had a new name,85 a new flag86 and a new national anthem.87 It is worth noting that a new flag and a new national anthem were provided for in Cuellar’s documents of 1985 (§ c5) and 1986 (§ 1c5), and that a new flag was provided for in Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 16), which pointed to a new state of affairs. The establishment of a new state of affairs was also alluded to in the ‘Set of Ideas’, with the following closing paragraph entitled ‘Notification to the United Nations’: . . . As soon as the Overall Framework Agreement has been approved in separate referenda by each community, the leaders of the two communities will address a letter to the UN Secretary General transmitting to him the text of the Overall Framework Agreement with the request that he submit the letter and the Overall Framework Agreement to the Security Council so that the Council may take note of the decision of the two communities to establish a federal republic in the manner described in the Overall Framework Agreement.

It may be clearly understood from the above reference that the matter was viewed not as an internal affair of the Republic of Cyprus involving the latter’s reconstruction into a federation, when no involvement of the UNSC was required, but as a new international state of affairs subject to endorsement by the UNSC. A similar letter to the UN Secretary General by the co-presidents of the transitional government is also provided for in the Annan Plan.88 The letter makes reference to the ‘inherent constitutive power’ of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the exercise of which, after the Agreement has been approved, puts into force the ‘new state of affairs’.89 ‘Virgin birth’ was a compromising ingenuity90 whereby the UN removed two significant technical obstacles without impairing the substance. First, it was the Turkish Cypriot demand for recognition of the ‘TRNC’, to which, for reasons of substance, the Greek Cypriot side would never have consented. Second, it was the abolition of the ‘TRNC’ and the absorption or re-accession of the Turkish Cypriots into the Republic of Cyprus, which, for reasons of self-justification and prestige, the Turkish side would never have accepted. Ultimately, ‘virgin birth’ was a concession on the part of Clerides to a Secretary General’s suggestion in this regard, made at the Paris meeting of 6 September 2002.91 The obvious reasoning of the Cypriot President was that, without impairing the substance as it was simply a matter of ‘optical’ appearance,92 he allowed the solution process to be set in motion. This is how the Secretary General put the matter at the Paris meeting:

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. . . Since Cyprus will not only have a new constitution and a new name, but also a new flag and a new national anthem, it will, for all practical purposes, look like a new state. Optically speaking, it would be a fresh start for both sides. The continuity of the State, however, would not be an issue, since Cyprus would continue to be a member of the UN, its application to the EU would be followed through, and its treaty obligations would continue.93

7.4.2. Bi-communality – Bi-zonality In Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, ‘the bi-communal and bi-zonal federation will be established freely by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities’ (§ 8). The same notion, though not that clearly worded, permeates the ‘guiding principles’ of Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’, as it also permeates the Annan Plan. It is worth noting, however, that, in the Annan Plan, the subject of all eight ‘main articles’ is not the communities but the citizens of Cyprus, Greek and Turkish Cypriots. All eight articles, worded in the form of a founding declaration in the first=person plural, conclude with the following significant affirmation: ‘We, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots, exercising our inherent constitutive power by our free and democratic, separately expressed common will, adopt this Foundation Agreement.’ This wording is evidently an improvement on both Cuellar’s and Ghali’s ‘Sets of Ideas’, in the latter of which the ‘one territory’ is ‘composed by two equal federated states’ (§ 10), and the ‘one sovereignty which is indivisible emanates equally from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities’ (§ 11). Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ is expressly based on the 1977 and 197994 high-level agreements, which adopt the notions of bi-communality and bi-zonality, and on Security Council Resolutions 649 of 1990, 716 of 1991 and 750 of 1992 (§ 2). Resolution 649 (§ 3) calls for ‘the establishment of a federation that will be bi-communal as regards the constitutional aspects and bi-zonal as regards the territorial aspects’. Resolution 716 endorses the definition of political equality, as will be shown at 7.4.3. Resolution 750 endorses the content given to the notion of bi-zonality by Secretary General Boutros-Ghali (Report to the Security Council of 3 April 1992), which reads as follows: . . . The bi-zonality of the federation is reflected in the fact that each federal state would be administered by one community which would be guaranteed a clear majority of the population and of land ownership in its area. It is also reflected in the fact that the federal government would not be permitted to encroach upon the powers and functions of the federated states, nor could one federated state encroach on the powers and functions of the other. (§ 20)

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Furthermore, the principle of a ‘majority of population and land ownership’ actually governs the ‘Set of Ideas’ chapter on ‘displaced persons’. The issue of limitations on the return of displaced persons is left to the discretional power of the federated states: ‘– thousand displaced persons who opt to return to their former permanent residence will be processed by the federated state concerned each year for – years’ (§ 82). Given that, according to the ‘Set of Ideas’, ‘for the initial eight years, the president and vice president will also be the heads of their respective federated states’– that is, that Denktas might hold both positions all these years – and given his unyielding position on the issue of return, it would not have been difficult to forecast the problems relating to the implementation of the three freedoms (movement, settlement, property). In the Annan Plan, the provisions concerning the return of displaced persons to the Turkish Cypriot constituent state safeguard a ‘clear majority of population and land ownership’, but through clearly stipulated and detailed arrangements so as to preclude the possibility of misinterpretation and, given the European framework, the possibility of reneging on commitments. In concrete terms, the Plan safeguards, through clearly defined timetables, phased return and resettlement of displaced persons up to 18 per cent of the population of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state until the nineteenth year or Turkey’s accession to the EU, whichever is earlier. ‘Thereafter, either constituent state may, with a view to protecting its identity, take safeguard measures to ensure that no less than two thirds of its Cypriot permanent residents speak its official language as their mother tongue is not substantially altered.’95 These limitations will not apply to Greek Cypriot displaced persons from the Karpas villages of Rizokarpaso, Gialousa, Agia Triada and Melanarga, who, within six years of the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement, make use of their unlimited right of return and repossession of their properties that are eligible for reinstatement.96 Parallel to the above provisions, all dispossessed owners who do not opt for compensation will be entitled to one-third of the area and one-third of the value of the total property ownership they choose, while for the other twothirds they will receive full and effective compensation. They are also entitled to ‘reinstatement of a dwelling they have built or in which they have lived for at least ten years and up to one donum of adjacent land even if this is more than one-third of the total value and area of their properties’.97 Repossession of property is not linked to the timetables for resettlement. It commences three years following the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement for vacant properties and five years afterwards in all other cases.98 Finally, all limitations on property ownership in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state are removed after fifteen years or when the gross per capita income in that constituent state reaches 85 per cent of the gross per capita income of the Greek Cypriot constituent state, whichever is earlier.99

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7.4.3. Political equality The concept of political equality in respect of the ‘equal political status of the two communities’ was introduced in the Cuellar plan of 1984 (§ 3). The same wording is also met in Cuellar’s plans of 1985 (§ 3.1) and 1986 (§ 4.1). Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1989, after reaffirming the equal political status, adds that ‘the federal structure will be such as to ensure the effective participation of both communities in all organs of the federal government’.100 In his ‘opening statement’ in relation to the talks between Vassiliou and Denktas in New York (26 Feburary 1990),101 the Secretary General defined political equality as follows: . . . While political equality does not mean equal numerical participation in all federal government branches and administration, it should be reflected inter alia in various ways: in the requirement that the federal constitution of the state of Cyprus be adapted or amended with the concurrence of both communities; in the effective participation of both communities in all organs and decisions of the federal government; in safeguards to ensure that the federal government will not be empowered to adopt any measures against the interests of one community; and in the equality and identical powers and functions of the two federated states.

The above definition was fully endorsed by the UNSC,102 and was quoted thereafter by the new Secretary General, Boutros-Ghali, in his report to the UNSC of 3 April 1992,103 while its content was finally incorporated in the ‘Set of Ideas’.104 This concept of political equality is reintroduced and reformulated, consistently in the same spirit, in the Annan Plan, and permeates all constitutional provisions relating to the participation of the two communities in the federal organs.105 Indicatively, the composition of the federal public service will, according to the Plan, be proportional to the population of the two constituent states, the lowest limit being one-third, while federal police will be drawn in equal numbers from the two constituent states (compare the 1960 regime, in which the participation of the two communities in the public service was in the ratio 70:30, while in the police it was in the ratio 60:40).106 Political equality of the constituent parts is a self-evident concept in all federations and is expressed mainly in numerically equal representation in the Upper House, irrespective of the population of each constituent part of the federation. However, the equality of parts that are unequal in terms of population is remedied by the equality of the citizens as expressed in the proportional representation of the constituent parts in the Lower House. This concept is fully applied in the Annan Plan through the provision that ‘the Chamber of Deputies107 shall be composed in proportion to persons holding the internal

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constituent state citizenship status of each constituent state, provided that each constituent state shall be attributed no less than one quarter of seats’.108 This provision constitutes an improvement in relation to all previous plans as well as to the ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 30) where the ratio in the Lower House was 70:30. Furthermore, political equality is reflected in the effective participation in the federal organs as well as in the decision-making processes at the level of the federal government. In the case of Cyprus, the bi-cameral character of the federation has always caused insurmountable difficulties in the search for a solution. The difficulty consisted in the possibility of continuous deadlocks particularly within the framework of the confrontational conditions and the complete lack of trust until the Helsinki accord. Throughout the intercommunal talks the Turkish side insisted on absolute safeguards to the effect that the Greek Cypriot community might never be in a position to take unilateral decisions at the level of the federal government. On the other hand, the Greek Cypriot side insisted on safeguards ensuring that the Turkish Cypriot community might not be enabled to use the separate majorities and its veto powers to cause continuous deadlocks and thereby a paralysis of the federal government. As a result of such a development, the state could function only at the level of the constituent parts, thus opening the way to secession. Such a fear was not unreasonable, given that Denktas would have both the vetoes and the separate majorities at his disposal, and given his obsession with partition. The Cuellar documents of 1985 and 1986 provided for separate majorities in both the Upper and the Lower Chamber on all ‘major matters’, which were described as covering the ten out of the twelve functions of the federal government. As for the vetoes of the Vice President, their range would have exceeded that covered by the 1960 Constitution.109 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989) provided for separate majorities on matters of ‘vital interest’ to each community, while it defined the vetoes of the President and the Vice President as being those of 1960 plus budgets and taxation, on which the 1960 Constitution provided for separate majorities. Finally, in order to address Greek Cypriot concerns, it added immigration and citizenship to the veto powers.110 Identical to those in the 1989 document are the vetoes in Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, where the separate majorities are confined to the list of the veto powers.111 The Annan Plan mitigates even more the veto powers of either community. The Presidential Council takes decisions by simple majority, provided this majority comprises at least one member from each constituent state.112 One significant factor, which recalls European acquiescent procedures, is expounded in the introductory sentence of this article: the Presidential Council shall strive to reach decisions by consensus. And only where it fails to reach consensus will it resort to voting. Participation in the European decision-making organs would have been a continuous practice in acquiescence. More importantly, the election of members of the Presidential Council from a common bi-communal

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list would have contributed enormously towards avoiding deadlocks. The matter of such a common list, which constitutes the most important unifying element of the Plan, will be elaborated on in Chapter 7.4.5. The same logic that governs the decision-making process in the Executive also governs the respective procedure in the Legislature. Decisions in Parliament will be taken by simple majority ‘including one-quarter of voting Senators from each constituent state’. Special majorities of at least two-fifths of sitting Senators will be needed for certain matters, which are expressly stated and are definitely fewer than in previous UN documents.113 There is evidently substantial improvement in the matter of decision-making processes compared to previous UN proposals, as well as to the ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1992. Moreover, given the concurrence of other factors as well, such as the European framework (more than 60 per cent of matters pertaining to the federal government are decided upon within the broader framework of the European instruments), the election of the Presidential Council from a common list and, above all, the climate of trust that the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas had generated, thus bringing to the surface the common Cypriot interest – given all these factors, all the necessary prerequisites for the normal functioning of the constitutional instruments would have been in place. Even allowing for some margin of error, one might have pointed out that, in the long history of the Cyprus problem, there had never been better preconditions for a political alignment of Greek and Turkish Cypriots than those created by the unique convergence of events in 2002–4.

7.4.4. The unity of the country The safeguarding of the unity of the country, ‘having regard to the bi-communal character of the state’, was the fourth guideline of the Makarios–Denktas Agreement of 1977. Despite that commitment, the Turkish proposals of 1978, 1981 and 1989, while paying lip service to federation, in substance provided for a confederation of two ethnically pure antagonistic states, with separate military forces,114 full sovereignty over their territory, which comprised land, sea (territorial waters and continental shelf), airspace and all land and marine resources.115 In 1998, Denktas turned openly to confederation. He demanded a solution on the basis of existing realities and suggested a confederation of ‘two pre-existing sovereign states’.116 In the Cuellar documents of 1984, 1985 and 1986, the federal republic ‘shall have international personality’ and ‘shall exercise sovereignty in respect of all the territory’,117 but these qualities are not defined as exclusive of the federal republic. There is also reference to ‘one citizenship’, but the issuing of citizenship certificates is not vested in the federal

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government, being left, as residual power, to the federated states. In Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1989, and later, in Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1992), there is ‘one sovereignty which is indivisible and which emanates equally from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities’, ‘one international personality’, ‘one territory composed of two politically equal federated states’ and ‘one citizenship’, which, for the first time, is regulated by federal law and allocated to the powers and functions of the federal government. These same principles are reaffirmed in the Annan Plan.118 The additional citizenship of the Greek or Turkish constituent states introduced in the Plan in no way invalidates or replaces the exclusive citizenship of the UCR. It is simply ‘complementary’ and confined exclusively to ‘internal’ use. In fact, only those who have acquired the citizenship of the UCR are entitled to the internal citizenship of a constituent state.119 What one can observe in all these documents is a sustained effort to achieve a compromise that basically satisfies the notion of an indivisible sovereignty but leaves room, through complicated and, in many respects, vague formulations, for the concept of separate sovereignties at the level of the constituent parts. In the confrontational climate that Turkey created with Greece, and Denktas’s unyielding persistence in forcing recognition of his secessionist state, it was quite reasonable for the Greek Cypriot side to view with utmost concern and suspicion any formulation that allowed the possibility of such interpretations, or any arrangements that might open the way to the legalization of the secessionist state or to the secession of a legal – the day after an agreement – ‘federated state’, in the event that the federal government failed to function. However, after the Helsinki accord had safeguarded a normal EU accession process for Cyprus and opened the way for gradual normalization of Greek–Turkish relations, the European framework became an impenetrable shield of protection for Cyprus against any such danger. Moreover, with a substantial part of national sovereignty being ceded through accession and safeguarded at the same time, within the European institutions, the importance of varying shades or hues of formulation in the issue of sovereignty lost much of its previous importance. In rightly valuing the shield of protection offered by the European framework, President Clerides made a second ‘concession’ at the Paris meeting (September 2002) by accepting the formulation in the Annan Plan that might literally satisfy Denktas’s demand for separate sovereignty – without, however, changing the substance; without leaving room for questioning the indivisible sovereignty of the state of Cyprus, and without compromising the ability of Cyprus to function effectively and speak with one voice in the European institutional organs. What Clerides actually conceded was a formulation according to which ‘within the limits of the constitution, the constituent states sover-

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eignly120 exercise all powers not vested by the constitution in the federal government, organizing themselves freely under their own constitutions’.121 The introductory note ‘within the limits of the constitution’ defines with indisputable clarity the limits of the ‘sovereign’ exercise of power by the constituent states. Beyond this, the unity of the country is further safeguarded by the immediately preceding provision of the constitution, according to which ‘the federal government sovereignly exercises the powers specified in the constitution, which shall ensure that Cyprus can speak and act with one voice internationally and in the European Union, fulfil its obligations as a European Union member state, and protect its integrity, borders, resources and ancient heritage’.122 State sovereignty is also safeguarded through sovereign areas of competence exercised by the federal government over natural and water resources, over the territorial waters and the continental shelf, over the airspace and the FIR, over international air and sea transport, over citizenship (including issuance of passports), over immigration (including asylum, deportation and extradition of aliens) and finally over antiquities.123 It is worth noting that the competences of the federal government in the Annan Plan are broader and more clearly stated than the corresponding competences included in the ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 26).

7.4.5. The ‘single list’ in the election of the Presidential Council The issue of a single electoral list goes back to Makarios’s ‘13 points’ (1963), in which there was a suggestion that the election of the President and the Vice President of the House of Representatives be carried out jointly by all its members without balancing the weight of the votes of each communal group. The argument then was that such a practice ‘will also create conditions which will gradually train the two communities to cooperate in electing persons to political offices’.124 The same proposal was put forward at the intercommunal talks of 1968 and was accepted by Denktas.125 But Denktas rejected an additional Greek Cypriot proposal for the election of the members of the House from a single list of voters, arguing that in this way Greek Cypriots might have the opportunity to elect Turkish Cypriot members of the House who were completely rejected by Turkish Cypriot voters.126 However, Denktas accepted a proposal by the Greek Cypriot side for the election of the President and the Vice President of the Republic from a single electoral list, provided the Vice President would have polled a certain percentage of Turkish Cypriot votes.127 This need for balance was the guiding principle underlying Vassiliou’s proposal (1989) for the election of President – the candidates being Greek or Turkish Cypriots without discrimination – from ‘a common roll’. According to the proposal, if a Greek Cypriot were elected President, the election of the

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Vice President –from among Turkish Cypriot candidates – would have been held again on a common roll, but Greek Cypriot votes would be so weighted that they counted the same as the Turkish Cypriot votes for the election of the President. The reasoning of the proposal is quite interesting: . . . Though it cannot be foreseen that voters will vote independently of community membership at the beginning, this cross-voting across community lines will ensure that any presidential or vice-presidential candidate must seriously take into account both communities’ interests and concerns. In the future it is hoped that the President will be elected independently of community membership, so that nothing will bar a Turkish Cypriot from becoming President of the Republic.128

This proposal was half adopted by Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989), which provided for the election of the President by universal suffrage.129 It was the only UN document until the Annan Plan that proposed election of a federal official from a common roll.130 In the Annan Plan, the Presidential Council will be elected on the basis of a single list by weighted majority of the Senate131 and will be verified by single majority of the Chamber of Deputies.132 The unified election of all the members of the Presidential Council (4:2 members with the right to vote and 2:1 members with no right to vote) from a single list by all the Senators brings to the fore the reasoning behind Vassiliou’s proposal of 1989. First, candidates projecting nationalist positions or promoting ethnic antagonism will a priori be barred from election, as they will not be able to secure the support of the two-fifths of Senators of the other community. Second, those standing a chance of being elected will be those who will be able to convince others of their sensitivity towards the interests and concerns of both communities and about their readiness to defend and promote the common Cypriot interest. Third, the system will promote cooperation among Senators that will transcend ethnic criteria and will focus on political, ideological and social denominations. On such a basis there will be coalitions of politically, socially and ideologically adjacent forces. The single list of such coalitions will have the capability to win the necessary weighted majority of the Senate. The fact that the election of the members of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies will be held on the basis of a proportional system133 will leave room enough for pluralist representation and thus facilitate intercommunal alliances for the election of the Presidential Council. It is a uniquely important constitutional institution that definitely transcends narrow ethnic-communal patriotism and promotes a broader Cypriot patriotism. It further promotes the unity of the country and the people as the election process, the composition and the functioning of the Presidential Council, within the beneficial influences of the European framework, will constitute a

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decisive deterrent to the return to the confrontational climate that held Greek and Turkish Cypriots apart for the entire twentieth century.

7.4.6. The Presidential Council: transition to the post-leader era . . . The Office of the Head of State is vested in a Presidential Council, which shall exercise the executive power. The Council shall have six voting members. Parliament may elect additional, non-voting members. Unless it decides otherwise by special majority, it shall elect three non-voting members.134 All members of the Presidential Council shall be elected by Parliament for a fixed five-year term on a single list by special majority. The list shall specify the voting members.135 The composition of the Presidential Council shall be proportional to the numbers of persons holding the internal constituent state citizenship status of each constituent state, though at least one-third of voting members and one-third of non-voting members must hail from each constituent state.136 The Council shall decide on the rotation of the offices of President and Vice President among its members. Unless the voting members of the Council unanimously decide otherwise, the following arrangements shall apply: (a) two members of the Council, not hailing from the same constituent state, shall be elected by the Council on a single list; and (b) they shall rotate in the exercise of the offices of the President and Vice President every twenty calendar months. The first President of the Council in each term shall be the member of the more populous constituent state.137

The institution of the Presidential Council is at first glance a halfway solution between the Greek Cypriot position on a Greek Cypriot President and a Turkish Cypriot Vice President and the Turkish Cypriot position on rotating presidency. However, it goes far beyond this. The immensely positive method of electing the Presidential Council has already been explored. One additional parameter of considerable importance is the collective character of the executive. Though it may have been inspired by the Swiss model,138 it is closely linked with European collective institutions. Compared to Cyprus’s presidential system, a conspicuously authoritarian one owing to the wide range of powers vested in one person, the collective institution of the Presidential Council within the framework of a federal system is evidently more democratic. Furthermore, this institution addresses some new trends in our postmodern world. At least in the current historical phase, politics have been moving beyond the era of great visions, of romantic ideologies, of great revolutions, of worldwide ideological confrontation. Consequently, to recall the

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Veberian concept of history, great ‘charismatic’ political leaders are no longer a social imperative. Our postmodern world, the beginnings of which might be traced to the 1980s, when the crisis involving great ideologies becomes manifest, has introduced a new notion of political leadership, as well as of the exercise of politics. This shift towards postmodernity is brilliantly exemplified in the case of Greece, where Simitis’s criticism of populism and personal exercise of power and finally his elevation to the premiership, signify Greece’s move into the new era. It was the transition from a great ‘charismatic’ leader who rallied the crowds behind him through his magnetic personality and radical rhetoric and exercised power on the spur of personal inspiration, to a low-profile Prime Minister whose great merit was intense systematic work, who shifted decision making towards collectivity, who introduced think-tanks for the first time in Greek political history. As Simitis led Greece to the ‘post-charisma’ era (the EU had long been living in this epoch), the Presidential Council described in the Annan Plan would lead Cyprus to the ‘post-charisma’, the ‘post-ethnarchic’139 epoch. The glamour that has always been vested in the residents of the Presidential Palace would be out of place with the Presidential Council. With the Cyprus problem solved, with the most serious political issues being referred to the collective procedures of the European collective bodies, Presidential Council members, even the President and Vice President, without ceasing to be carriers of ideas and visions, would deal mainly with social and economic issues and would try, through collective decision making, to improve, in concrete practical terms, their people’s daily lives. It is not accidental, in this connection, that the constituent state constitution proposed by the Greek Cypriot side provided for a presidential system.140 For an aspiring ‘charismatic’ leader, it must have been incomparably more prestigious to become President of the Greek Cypriot constituent state than to become rotating president of the UCR, a mainly ritual President, in actual fact first among equals and least distinguishable within the country from the other members of the Council. This comment is not meant as a hint against Tassos Papadopoulos or his predecessor, Glafkos Clerides. This matter is rather connected with the political culture of the Greek Cypriot community, which is rooted in the ethnarchic and, more specifically, in the Makarios tradition. In the complex, multi-level, swiftly changing reality of the postmodern world, there is no possibility that efficient leadership can be based merely, or mainly, on personal inspiration. Nowadays, the complex decision-making process, which requires substantial expert support and continuous elaboration of data, is more an adaptation of vision to factual reality than the opposite – that is, an obligatory procrustean adaptation of facts to vision, a practice that led to so many distortions and disasters in the twentieth century. As for the

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rotation of the presidency, the new political culture that the collective institution of the Presidential Council would have created and the culture of consensus within the European framework, given the period of peace, stability and cooperation between the Cypriot communities and Turkey, would have generated all necessary preconditions to allow the federal government to function properly and focus on the common interest of the people of Cyprus as a whole. That common interest, having shed irredentist, ethnic-based nationalisms and having been liberated from complexes of prestige or ambition by aspiring ‘charismatic’ leaders, would have focused on the step-by-step improvement of the quality of life in a climate of peace, security and cooperation. There remains individual accountability, which is still a substantial parameter of governance. The assuming by each Council member of particular fields of responsibility in federal government would have balanced collectivity and individual responsibility. Moreover, the interplay of trans-communal political alliances with the unimpeded functioning of the checks and balances of democracy would have been an additional safeguard against distortion at both the collective and the individual level. Even more important, these horizontal alliances, in crossing ethnic dividing lines, would have acted as absorbers of tensions that might possibly have been generated in future owing to the weighted majorities both in the executive and the legislative bodies. However, the need for the positive vote of one-quarter of each wing of the Senate, or of twofifths on certain specific matters, or the need for a positive vote of one member from each wing of the Presidential Council, should be regarded as substantially improved, and certainly more functional arrangements compared with the separate majorities and vetoes of the Zurich constitution. The wide-ranging autonomy of the constituent states in the management of their internal affairs and the fact that the citizen would have had very limited contact with the federal authorities would have drastically reduced causes of possible friction. Finally, the slender central state machine would not have burdened the budget to the point of causing discontent or even complaints on the part of the economically stronger Greek Cypriot community, which, during the first years, would have been levied with disproportionately greater contribution.141

7.4.7. Territory, displaced, properties The return of territory to the area under Greek Cypriot administration, within the framework of the delineation of the component parts of the federation, as well as the return, reinstatement of properties and resettlement of displaced persons in the area under Turkish Cypriot administration, have constituted a crucial aspect of the Cyprus problem throughout the long peacemaking mission

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of the UN Organization. The Makarios–Denktas Agreement (the architect of which was Perez de Cuellar as the Secretary General’s Special Representative) documents, for the first time since 1974, indirect recognition on the part of the Turkish side of the need for the return of territory within the framework of a bi-regional federation.142 The same Agreement also brings forth, again indirectly, in the form of the three basic freedoms (movement, settlement and right to property) the issue of the return of displaced persons and reinstatement of their properties in the area under Turkish Cypriot administration.143 On the basis of this Agreement, the Greek Cypriot side submitted, at the intercommunal talks, proposals on the territorial aspect including a map that provided for 20 per cent of the territory of the Republic to be under Turkish Cypriot administration,144 even though Makarios admitted in private that he was ready to concede 25 per cent within the framework of an overall solution.145 However, the Turkish Cypriot side failed to produce a map during those talks. They did not even submit a proposal on the territorial aspect, confining themselves merely to rejecting the Greek Cypriot proposal. With regard to the implementation of the three freedoms, they recognized that ‘all fundamental rights and liberties shall be observed in principle’ but on condition that ‘such observance [. . .] shall not upset the territorial integrity and population homogeneity of the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus’.146 The Turkish proposals of April 1978 were set out in the same spirit. In addition to the four guidelines of the 1977 Agreement, they introduced the concept of ‘security’ of the Turkish Cypriot federated state. And they put forward such claims in relation to the distribution of natural and economic resources that, according to the criteria of economic viability and productivity, the Turkish Cypriots would have operated at a loss even if they had kept the whole of the Turkish occupied area.147 They refused again to submit a map. They simply spoke of ‘readjustment of the existing line between the Turkish Cypriot and the Greek Cypriot zone’, which included the villages of Kokina, Avlona, Louroudjina, Troulli, Akhna and the area south of Famagusta and Derynia. It was all about ‘straightening the borderline’148 so as to cover the criterion of ‘security’ arbitrarily introduced by Denktas. Moreover, they proposed a joint project involving fresh water transfer from Turkey, at a cost of 150–200 million dollars, which would have increased ‘the productivity of land for both communities’ – the how was not explained – ‘as part of the territorial settlement’.149 The Turkish proposals of 1981 did not even mention the territorial issue. But attached to them was a map prepared by UN officials, who had just shaded the areas subject to readjustment in the 1978 proposals, thus giving visual clue as to the ‘borderline straightening’.150 While Denktas rejected the 29 per cent of territory to be ceded in the Cuellar Draft Agreement of 1985 and insisted on 29+, by which he meant ‘close to 30 per cent’,151 he once again evaded any commitment to territorial

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concessions in the proposals he submitted at the talks with President Vassiliou in January 1989. However, through detailed provisions relating to how the three freedoms ‘can be regulated or restricted’, he actually precluded the implementation of these freedoms by linking them to ‘national security’, ‘public safety’, ‘public order’ and ‘prevention of crime’, and placing them exclusively within the competence of the Turkish federated state. He further made things more difficult by considering the matter of the return of displaced persons as having being arranged through what he termed ‘the Agreement on the voluntary regrouping, in their respective zone on the island, of populations, reached between the two sides at the third round of the intercommunal talks held in Vienna on 2 August 1975’.152 As for the question of ‘property ownership and settlement’, Denktas considered that ‘it should be, once and for all, resolved prior to the establishment of the proposed federation, through compensation and/or exchange of property’.153 Turkey agreed, for the first time, to discuss territorial concessions during 1991’s developments involving Ozal, which Denktas thwarted, in alliance with the Kemalist establishment.154 Nonetheless, the Gobbi map,155 on the basis of which Ozal had accepted to discuss territorial concessions with US President George H. W. Bush, and UN Secretary Perez de Cuellar, in 1991, came back to life as the Ghali map attached to the ‘Set of Ideas’, a year later (August 1992), only to be vehemently rejected by Denktas. The territorial issue resurfaced and became one of the central issues during the crucial discussions that led to the Annan Plan. Closely connected with the extent of the land to be returned was the question of the return of displaced persons and the reinstatement of their properties in the area to remain under Turkish Cypriot administration. Throughout these negotiations, Denktas stubbornly refused to discuss territorial concessions.156 And he had the unreserved backing of the Ecevit government (April 1999–November 2002).157 Denktas proved equally inflexible on the question of the return and resettlement of displaced persons and the reinstatement of their properties in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state. As previously, he posed so many restrictions on resettlement that he actually neutralized the right of return. As to the property claims of the displaced, he insisted that ‘they should be liquidated by a global exchange and compensation scheme and that freedom of movement and residence should be strictly controlled’.158 The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, himself reveals the course he followed in order to address the territorial aspect, always in close connection with the displaced and the property issues, in his report to the UNSC of 1 April 2003. He openly rejects Denktas’s reasoning against which he poses the internationally sanctioned ‘respect for individual property rights’ and, specifically, the relevant decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that ‘recognize the property rights of the Greek Cypriots in the northern part of the

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island’. But, on the other hand, he recognizes that ‘the events in Cyprus happened 30 and 40 years ago’ and that ‘the displaced people (roughly half of the Turkish Cypriots159 and a third of the Greek Cypriots) have had to rebuild their lives and economies during this time’.160 From this complex point of view, the Secretary General adopts an approach that, while providing for arrangements for resettlement of displaced persons and reinstatement of properties, is, as he himself admits, ‘restrictive’ in the implementation of these rights. But, in conjunction with, and in order to mitigate, this restriction, he recognizes that ‘a territorial adjustment should allow a majority of displaced Greek Cypriots to return to their homes under Greek Cypriot administration’.161 In fact, in the areas to be returned according to the map incorporated in the Annan Plan, were living 54 per cent of the Greek Cypriots who had been displaced in 1974.162 The map cedes to the Turkish Cypriot constituent state a percentage of 29.2 per cent163 (compared to 36.4 per cent164 of the occupied areas) and 52 per cent165 of the coastline (compared to 57 per cent of the occupied coastline and 55 per cent in the ‘Set of Ideas’ of 1992). These percentages are reduced by about 1 per cent respectively when one accounts for the British cession of 45 square miles out of a total of 99 representing the sovereign British base areas.166 To the west of Nicosia, according to the Annan Map, the town of Morfou and the following thirty-seven villages would have been returned: Gerolakkos, Agios Vassilios, Skylloura, Agia Marina, Agios Ermolaos, Sysklipos, Agridaki, Larnakas Lapithou, Kontemenos, Asomatos, Myrtou, Kormakitis,167 Karpasia, Kalo Chorio (Kapouti), Kyra, Filia, Masari, Avlona, Katokopia, Argaki, Pano Zodia, Kato Zodia, Nikitas, Prastio (Morfou), Petra, Ayios Yeorgios (Solea), Pentagia, Xeros, Karavostasi, Potamos tou Kambou, Galini, Varisia, Xerovounos, Loutros, Limnitis, Ammadies and Kokkina. To the east of Nicosia, the town of Famagusta and the following fifteen villages would have been returned: Mia Milia, Tymbou, Pyrogi, Asha, Vatili, Lysi, Kondea, Achna, Makrasyka, Kalopsida, Acheritou, Ayios Nikolaos, Gaidouras, Prastio (Ammochostou) and Pyrga.168 Compared with the map of the ‘Set of Ideas’, there are additional returns of the following villages: Agios Ermolaos, Sysklipos, Agridaki, Larnakas Lapithou, Kontemenos, Asomatos, Myrtou, Kormakitis, Karpasia, Kalo Chorio (Kapouti) and Pentagia. To the east of Nicosia there are additional returns of Mia Milia, Tymbou, Gaidouras and Pyrga. But remaining within the Turkish Cypriot constituent state are Angastina and Afania in the Mesaoria Plain, which were returned according to the map attached to the ‘Set of Ideas’.169 Left within the Turkish Cypriot constituent state are also the Karpas villages of Gialousa, Agia Triada, Melanarga and Rizokarpaso, which, in the ‘Set of Ideas’, constituted two ‘islands’ within the Turkish Cypriot federated state,

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but which were both cut off from access to the sea.170 In the Annan Plan these villages are not returned, as in the ‘Set of Ideas’, but their people do return, and, as a matter of fact, under improved conditions. The Plan safeguards their unimpeded return and resettlement as well as the reinstatement of their properties, which extend to both the northern and southern coasts of the peninsula.171 The return of territory, in the Annan Plan, is effected gradually, in fact in six phases, so that there will be time for the resettlement of the Turkish Cypriots who are to abandon the areas under adjustment.172 The first phase is to be implemented within 104 days from the establishment of the UCR (1 May 2004) –that is, by 4 August 2004. The second phase within six months (1 November 2004), the third phase within fifteen months (1 August 2005), the fourth within thirty months (1 November 2006), the fifth within three years (1 May 2007), and the sixth and last phase will be implemented within forty-two months (1 November 2007).173 The return of territory during the first and second phases will cover areas along the buffer zone that have remained uninhabited. From the third to the sixth phases, during which there will be a relocation of populations, six months prior to the implementation of each phase the UN will undertake ‘territorial responsibility’174 for every area under readjustment. In the meantime, all areas under ‘adjustment’ will belong to the Greek Cypriot constituent state from the moment the UCR is established, but the Turkish Cypriot constituent state will have administrative responsibility until the resettlement of the Turkish Cypriots within the timetables specified for each phase. Irrespective of the phased return of the areas ‘subject to territorial adjustment’, all these areas, with no exception, will be ‘legally’ part of the Greek Cypriot constituent state, which becomes ‘the entitled constituent state’, from the day of entry into force of the Foundation Agreement. Simply, the ‘entitled constituent state’ entrusts to the authorities of the other constituent state (the ‘entrusted authorities’) the administrative responsibility of these areas until the end, for each one of them, of the specified timetable within which the arrangements provided for by the Plan are implemented. ‘The entrustment of administration shall end, and the area shall be transferred to the entitled constituent state, in six phases as depicted in the attached map and specified in a further attachment to this Annex.’175 As for the return and resettlement of the displaced in the territory under Turkish Cypriot administration, the Annan Plan provides for the following restrictions: (a) moratorium on return until the end of the fifth year; (b) between the sixth and the ninth year, return and resettlement of up to 6 per cent of the population of a village or municipality; (c) between the tenth and the fourteenth year, return of up to 12 per cent; (d) return of up to 18 per cent until the nineteenth year or Turkey’s accession to the EU, whichever is

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earlier. (e) After this period of time, return and resettlement of displaced persons may account for up to one-third of the population of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state.176 Meantime, all ‘former inhabitants’ over the age of 65 will be entitled to return two years from the establishment of the UCR ‘accompanied by a spouse or sibling’.177 Moreover, the former inhabitants of the Karpas villages – Gialousa, Agia Triada, Melanarga and Rizokarpaso – will be entitled to return, within six years from the establishment of the UCR, and take possession of their homes and properties.178 They will ‘enjoy the right to administer their own cultural, religious, and educational affairs, and to be represented in the constituent state legislature and to be consulted on matters of zoning and planning regarding their villages’.179 ‘In areas subject to territorial adjustment [i.e. the areas to come under Greek Cypriot administration], properties shall be reinstated to dispossessed owners.’180 In its detailed elaboration, this provision of the Annan Plan fully safeguards the right of the dispossessed owner to the reinstatement of his property. Even in cases of significant improvements, the value of which exceeds the value of the property in its original state, the dispossessed owner has priority in the reinstatement of his property. In the worst case, in which he or she is not able to pay the value of the improvement, he has the option of the lease while keeping in full his or her ownership rights.181 The reinstatement of properties to Greek Cypriots in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state and vice versa is an extremely complex matter. And the conditions for its implementation, which make up the most extensive chapter of the Plan, are sieved through a detailed legal scrutiny so as not to leave any loopholes or ambiguities that might be liable to misinterpretations.182 The main reason for the detailed elaboration is, in the first place, connected with the nature of the issue, which is really extremely complex. In the second place, it is connected with the effort, on the one hand, to take into account the rights of the ‘dispossessed owners’, and, on the other hand, to deal effectively with each single case involving ‘current users’ of the affected properties.183 A current user may be entitled to property where he or she has made ‘significant improvement’, provided the value of the improvement exceeds the value of the affected property in its original state, and provided the improvement has been made prior to 31 December 2002.184 A current user may also be entitled to property he or she has been using for at least ten years, provided he or she disclaims property of comparable value in the other constituent state, of which he was dispossessed during the events of 1963–74.185 However, regardless of provisions that safeguard properties for current users who have made significant improvements or who disclaim properties of comparable value in the other constituent state, this does not prejudice the right of dispossessed owners to reinstatement of one-third of the area and the value of their property, which they will choose. Moreover, dispossessed owners of small

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properties are entitled to reinstatement of a house they built or lived in it for at least ten years and up to one donum of adjacent land, regardless of whether it exceeds one-third of their total property. Furthermore, in cases where dispossessed owners are deprived of their properties owing to provisions safeguarding current users, they have the right to exchange their reinstatement entitlement for property of equivalent value in the same village or municipality or in adjacent ones. They also have the right to receive compensation and to buy property of equivalent value or even to sell their reinstatement entitlement to other dispossessed owners in the same municipality or village.186 Dispossessed owners who opt for compensation, as well as owners who opt for reinstatement of the one-third, ‘shall receive full and effective compensation for their property (not reinstated to them) on the basis of value at the time of dispossession adjusted to reflect appreciation of property values in comparable areas’. As for the implementation, ‘compensation shall be paid in the form of guaranteed bonds and appreciation certificates’.187 Compensation bonds, of which the ratio of the nominal value to the total current value of all properties in the portfolio of the Compensation Fund188 will be fixed at 33.3 per cent, may be exchanged or sold on the free market at their current value five years after they were issued.189 Given that, within the framework of the solution, the prospects for Cyprus as a tourist destination and as a second-property location for Europeans would have been far greater compared to the pre-solution period, the value of properties would have risen accordingly. As a result, the value of compensation bonds and appreciation certificates would have followed the rise in the value of properties. Experts in this field consider that, within an environment backed by a solution, the safe legal status, physical security (removal of military barracks and minefields as well as of the danger of armed crisis), swift rise in living standards of Turkish Cypriots and substantial increase in the purchasing capabilities of the Greek Cypriot refugees through property reinstatement and compensation would have been additional factors underlying the increase in land demand and consequently in the rise in the value of properties.190 Without a solution and under conditions of an uncertain legal regime, the value of land property rose, from 2003 to 2006, by 705 per cent in Kyrenia and the vicinity, by 505 per cent in the area north of Nicosia, by 502 per cent in the rural areas of Kyrenia and the northern coasts and by 241 per cent in the area between Famagusta and Bogazi.191 This single fact constitutes in itself a clear indication as to the trends that would have developed within the stable legal environment following a solution and the peaceful growth of a reunited Cyprus. An important element in property reinstatement, which is pointed out by the UN Secretary General himself, is that the Annan Plan ‘largely unlinks residency rights and the issue of reinstatement of property’.192 First, property reinstatement is not linked with resettlement timetables. Three years following

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the establishment of the UCR, properties not possessed by ‘current users’ are reinstated to rightful owners. Five years following the establishment of the UCR, all other properties are reinstated according to the provisions of the Plan.193 Second, and more importantly, property reinstatement is not linked to the limitations in resettlement. It is exercised at an individual level by all rightful owners irrespective of whether or when they return for resettlement. And it is exercised equitably for all displaced persons, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike, as all are entitled to reinstatement of the one-third of their property, on the basis of identical criteria and preconditions. These factors, which emerge unambiguously from relevant provisions of the Plan, are noted and their importance is pointed out by the Secretary General in his report to the UNSC (S/2004/437, 28 May 2004, § 48). Finally, but by no means of less importance, within the framework of adaptation of the terms of accession of the UCR to the EU, all restrictions on the acquisition of property in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state are lifted fifteen years after the establishment of the UCR, or when the gross domestic product per capita in that constituent state reaches 85 per cent of the corresponding level in the Greek Cypriot state, whichever is the earlier.194 It is worth noting that any restrictions applied by the Turkish Cypriot constituent state within the period defined above on the acquisition of property by persons who have not been permanent residents of that state for at least three years ‘shall be based on published, objective, and transparent criteria and shall be applied in a non-discriminatory manner’, and their application will be directly monitored by the European Parliament and the European Council.195 This means that the same criteria on the basis of which authorization might have been given by the Turkish Cypriot constituent state to a non-Cypriot citizen to acquire property would also have been applied in the cases of Cypriot citizens having the internal citizenship of the Greek Cypriot constituent state. Unlike previous UN proposals, the Annan Plan proceeds, for the first time, to a comprehensive and detailed elaboration of proposed arrangements on the territorial issue, displaced persons and properties, in such a way that, with the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement, these arrangements are in practice self-regulating – not, of course automatically, but through administrative acts of independent institutional organs, the Claims Bureau, the Housing Bureau and the Compensation Bureau (later Compensation Fund), all under the jurisdiction of the Property Board.196 The Property Board,197 acting within the framework of detailed provisions of the Plan, will have the power to decide on all matters relating to reinstatement, evacuation and transfer of properties, as well as to compensations, either directly through administrative acts or indirectly through reference to judicial organs regarding individual cases of affected properties. Its decisions will be binding on both the federal government and the constituent states.198

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As to the substance of the provisions on territory, the displaced and properties, the Annan Plan moves roughly within the framework of the Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’ with slight improvement on territory, with elaborated concrete provisions on the displaced, and with substantial improvement on properties. The ‘Set of Ideas’ is confined to a general framework. It does not elaborate on procedures or on timetables of implementation. The reference to a ‘bi-communal committee’ that will ‘arrange for suitable housing of all persons affected by the territorial adjustments’ (§ 75) is not supported by any concrete provisions as to implementation. It recognizes, in principle, ‘the property claims’ of the displaced, and states that they ‘will be dealt with fairly on the basis of a timetable and practical regulations based on the 1977 high-level agreement’ (§ 72). But it does not elaborate on timetables or on the detailed regulations necessary to address the vast multiplicity of cases. It safeguards for ‘current permanent residents of Cyprus who, at the time of displacement, owned their permanent residence in the federated state administered by the other community’ that ‘they may select the option to return’ (§ 79). However, timetables and numbers remain unspecified, and relevant arrangements remain the exclusive competence of the federated state involved (§§ 76, 82), that is, of Denktas, for the Greek Cypriot refugees.199 The ‘Set of Ideas’ does not impose a ceiling on the return of Greek Cypriot displaced persons. However, a ceiling would certainly have emerged in the process of completing timetables and numbers of displaced persons that each federated state would have designated for return every year, since that process was left to be decided on the basis of the 1977 Guideline Agreement, which provided for safeguards of the bi-communal and bi-zonal character of the federation-to-be.200 In the ‘Set of Ideas’, it was left completely to the will of the ‘current occupant’ of a Greek Cypriot-owned property to accept relocation, if he or she happened to be ‘a displaced person’, when in such a case the ‘permanent resident’ would have been compensated or provided with ‘an accommodation of similar value’ (§ 84). By contrast, the Annan Plan, as has already been mentioned, specifically stipulates restrictive preconditions under which a ‘current user’ is justified in retaining an occupied property. Finally, the ‘Set of Ideas’ does not discriminate between property reinstatement and resettlement. Consequently, all those refugees who would not have returned either because they would have opted so to do – and they would have been the vast majority under those conditions – or because of restrictive provisions, would have been left with compensation and would have been permanently alienated from their properties. In the Annan Plan, reinstatement to the displaced persons of one-third of their properties under the provisions analysed above and the right to a second house, and particularly the right to acquisition of property by any Cypriot citizen anywhere in Cyprus after a clearly defined period,201 constitutes a crucially important improvement, which

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definitely terminates derogations from the acquis communautaire on these matters. Given the short distances, it would have been quite easy for Greek Cypriots of Nicosia to have their permanent or second house in the villages of the Kyrenia district and the western or the eastern plain and to continue to work in Nicosia. This used to be common practice before the invasion.

7.4.8. Historical and cultural heritage In accordance with the ‘Set of Ideas’, the management of both religious and ancient monuments is assigned to the federated states. Specifically with regard to antiquities, the absence of any relevant reference in the powers of the federal government cedes competence on this issue, as residual power, to the federated states. As for religious sites, ‘the two federated states will cooperate in the preservation and/or use of historical sites and religious shrines of both faiths to be agreed to during the transitional period’ (§ 23). In the Annan Plan, this provision is substantially improved. All antiquities come under the competence of the federal government, which undertakes, without any restriction, the responsibility for management and operation of all places defined as ‘antiquities’.202 As for the religious shrines, they will all, without exception, be returned, within a period of three years from the establishment of the UCR, to the Church and the Evkaf respectively.203 This is an immensely significant provision, with invaluably positive effects on the spiritual life of people. If at the core of the Cyprus problem, in its present phase at least, one comes across the alienation of people from their historical and cultural environment, reconnection with that environment should be at the core of a solution. In speaking of the Greek Cypriot community, the return to the Church of all churches, monasteries, chapels, burial places and generally all religious sites, would have bound the cut veins of people to their memories, would have joined fellow villagers, both returnees and non-returnees, at the churchyard of their patron saint, would have restored a social network and would have revived in the souls of people the feeling of community. Such reconnections are not insignificant or irrelevant matters in the lives of people. I feel the need to cite a quite telling personal experience I had in this regard with the first liturgy conducted in thirty years in St Mamas Cathedral by the Bishop of Morfou, Neofytos, on 2 September 2004, which was held under conditions of frustration and the reappearance of symptoms of intolerant nationalism. It was a shattering experience. I had no personal memories connecting me with the place. But I felt these memories alive in the faces of the people there who had personal bonds with the holy site. And those memories, like a web, bound the people again after so many years in a community.204 I walked on the ancient ruins of Salamis, Soli and Vouni, and I felt a

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thorn piercing my heart as a result of the intentional concealment of the Greek historical and cultural character of these monuments by tourist guide brochures. Within the framework of the solution, the management of antiquities by the federal government would have restored respect for the historical and cultural heritage, an invaluable multicultural heritage, which is the property of the people of Cyprus as a whole as well as of all the peoples who left their mark on this land.

7.4.9. Individual rights The restrictions imposed by the Annan Plan on the return and resettlement of displaced persons, as well as on the full reinstatement of their properties in the areas not affected by territorial adjustment, constitute a substantive and painful deprivation of individual rights. Beyond the fundamental right to property, the deprivation is painful in so far as it alienates people from a part of their former habitat. However, the feeling of deprivation is relieved through partial return and reinstatement of properties, and reconnection with the religious and historical places. This sets in motion again, within the souls of the people, the feeling of belonging, the feeling of historical and cultural continuity, thus mending the social fabric broken apart by violent displacement – as far as this is possible, admittedly, given the conditions of individualization as a result of globalization and the information society. The fact that, once the issues of the displaced and properties are settled as provided by the Plan, all restrictions on settlement and acquisition of property are ultimately removed205 constitutes full restoration of basic freedoms as well as of the freedom of entrepreneurial activity in any part of Cyprus.206 However, the enjoyment of these freedoms is counterbalanced by another restriction in the field of civic rights, which will be examined down below. Another restriction on individual rights relating to property is the provision in the Annan Plan that commits the Greek Cypriot community as a whole to terminating individual recourses to the ECHR against Turkey and the cancellation of all pending appeals to the above Court concerning deprivation of property as a result of the invasion and occupation of Cyprus territory. The restriction also precludes the right of future individual appeal against the UCR for permanent alienation of part of one’s property through the implementation of relevant provisions of the Annan Plan.207 However, it should be realized in this regard that endorsement of the proposed solution by the parties involved presupposes abandonment of the confrontational period and entry into a new era of peace, friendship and cooperation, with both Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. Insistence on rendering individual justice in its absolute form

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would have poisoned the general political atmosphere and undermined the relationships of mutual understanding and trust between the two communities and their orientation towards the common Cypriot interest, a desperately needed precondition for the proper functioning of the federal institutions and the peaceful joint advance towards the future.208 As for civic rights, the Annan Plan imposes a permanent restriction on the exercise of individual civic rights. This restriction relates to depriving those permanent residents of a constituent state who belong to the other community of the right to vote for the Senators of the aforesaid constituent state. The exercise of the right to vote and be elected to the Senate is based not on place of residence but on the community from which one originates.209 The reasoning behind this restriction relates to the need to preserve the bi-communal character of the state. Given the proportional representation of the electoral system and the theoretical possibility, after nineteen years or Turkey’s accession to the EU, of the Greek Cypriots constituting one-third of the permanent residents of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state, it would have been possible for them to overthrow equal communal representation in the Senate. Such an eventuality would have knock-on effects in the decision-making processes that might have affected even the election of the Presidential Council.210 This restriction – that is, the exercise of electoral rights on the basis of communal criteria – was applied to a much larger extent in the Constitution of 1960. There, all state officials from the municipalities and above were separately elected by Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the basis of strictly communal criteria. In the Annan Plan, this restriction applies only in the election of the members of the Senate. Election of members of the House of Representatives is open to all citizens with internal citizenship of a constituent state. The election of the rest of the institutional organs of each constituent state is open to all permanent residents, regardless of whether they possess its internal citizenship. This last provision certainly covers European citizens from the moment they acquire the status of permanent resident without necessarily having Cypriot citizenship. All the above restrictions on the resettlement of the displaced, as well as in the exercise of political rights in the election of the members of the Senate, have as their common denominator the safeguarding of the continuity of the bi-communal character of the state. A more or less similar reasoning, focusing on the protection of a population-wise weaker community from the possibility of being absorbed by a larger surrounding or adjacent ethnic entity, is to be met in the EU itself in the form either of transitional or even permanent derogations from the acquis communautaire particularly in relation to the acquisition of immovable property. Countries that acceded to the EU on 1 May 2004 secured transitional restrictions for a period of five years in the acquisition of a second house, and of seven to twelve years in the acquisition

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of forest or agricultural land by citizens of member states of the EU who are not permanent residents of any one of the acceding states. Malta maintains permanent restrictions on the acquisition of immovable property by citizens of other member states. In relation to the same issue, permanent restrictions have been imposed on EU citizens including Finland in the case of the Aland Islands in the Baltic, the population of which are mainly of Swedish origin but who inhabit an area within the territory of Finland.211 The same reasoning involving protection of a smaller ethnic entity is applied by the Annan Plan to the Greek Cypriots vis-à-vis Turkey, as Greek Cypriots are a minority in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. It provides for restrictions on the individual rights of Turkish nationals in relation to settlement in Cyprus even after Turkey enters the EU. And it clearly states the aim of such restrictions as being ‘to ensure that the demographic ratio between Cypriot permanent residents speaking either Greek or Turkish as mother tongue is not substantially altered’.212 Apart from the restrictions in the exercise of individual rights examined above, the Annan Plan fully safeguards ‘the human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’ which ‘shall be an integral part of this constitution’.213 The Plan further ensures that ‘the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights shall also be an integral part of this constitution’.214

7.4.10. Security: withdrawal of troops, guarantees The issue of security was a pivotal parameter in the resurgence of the Cyprus crisis after 1960. The Turkish Cypriot leadership, recalling Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, demanded full, uncompromising implementation of the privileges accorded to them by the Zurich constitution. One of the reasons was that any concession to the Greek Cypriots in relation to decision-making processes would have opened the way for the Greek Cypriots to indulge their two major obsessions – that is, degrading them to the status of a minority by creating conditions of majority rule, and thereby setting out on a path of union with Greece. On their side, Greek Cypriots had reasons to fear for their security – justified reasons that, at first glance, had to do more or less with the ‘Geography’ of the Cyprus problem – that is, the feeling on the part of the average Greek Cypriot of an eternally impending threat by a covetous, incomparably more powerful and vastly more populous Turkey. It was the feeling of threat against the very survival of the Greek Cypriots as an ethnic and cultural entity – a feeling that was fed by the fate of the Greeks of Istanbul. These fears opened up a new dimension on the enosis issue following 1960,

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which was justified within the unionist front as due to Denktas’s continuous threats and, after 1963, to Turkey itself threatening to invade Cyprus. It was seriously argued at the time that Cypriot Hellenism could be protected from being absorbed by Turkey only through Cyprus’s incorporation into the larger entity of the Greek state. Such an eventuality, according to abstract unionist reasoning, would counterbalance Turkish superiority in terms of military power, population size and geographic proximity. The error in that reasoning, which its exponents did not understand until the tragedy of 1974, was that enosis, for reasons that have already been explored in previous chapters, was not and could not become a feasible political option. In the aftermath of the invasion, the security issue for the Greek Cypriots focuses on the withdrawal of the Turkish occupation troops and the safeguarding, through the UN, of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus. And, as Turkey sought to justify its invasion in line with the rights accorded to it by the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee,215 Greek Cypriots demanded revision of that Treaty so as to provide for multilateral guarantees within the framework of the UNSC, while, on the other hand, wishing to preclude the right of any of the Guarantor powers for unilateral intervention.216 However, it is worth noting that the Republic of Cyprus never denounced the Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance. There had been public statements during the crisis of 1963–4 denouncing the Treaties but no official representation at the UNSC.217 Throughout the age-long crisis, the Government of Cyprus confined itself to interpreting the relevant provisions of the Treaty of Guarantee in such a way as to preclude the right of unilateral intervention. Makarios apparently feared that an official denunciation of the Treaties might have endangered the legitimacy of the Republic itself, which emanated from the 1960 Treaties. For the Turkish Cypriots, security post-1974 came to mean the safeguarding of the compact geographical space secured for them by the Turkish invasion. As guarantee of such a safeguard, they demanded the permanent military presence of Turkey on Cyprus, with its rights emanating from the Treaties fully upheld. The acceptance of the bi-zonal federation by Makarios, in the 1977 Agreement, on the one hand opened the way for legitimization of the compact area earmarked for the Turkish Cypriot community, and on the other, strengthened the UN effort to achieve, within the framework of an overall solution, withdrawal of the Turkish occupation troops and return of occupied territory. At the same time, acceptance of the bi-communal character of the federation by Makarios accorded the Turkish Cypriot community an equal say in all decision-making bodies within the federation. Thus both compact area and full autonomy and security of the Turkish Cypriots within that area were safeguarded by the aforementioned agreement.

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The Cuellar ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989) deals, in a separate chapter, with issues of Security and Guarantee. All of the substantial provisions of that document are transferred unchanged, but elaborated on and codified, to the Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’ (1992). The term ‘security’ in the 1992 ‘Set of Ideas’, as will happen with the Annan Plan, covers not only the security of the Republic of Cyprus but the security of the federated states as well (§ 52). Demilitarization of the federal republic is stated as an objective (§ 53). But in practical terms it simply seeks a timetable for ‘numerical balance’ and ‘reduction to an agreed level’ of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot troops (§§ 56, 57). Finally, the ‘Set of Ideas’ provides for a nominal ‘federal force’ that will consist of two completely separate units, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot one, stationed in their respective federated states (§ 59). Concerning Turkish troops, the ‘Set of Ideas’ provides for ‘the withdrawal of all non-Cypriot forces not provided for under the Treaty of Alliance’ in a timetable that is left to be defined but with the clear provision that ‘this timetable will be fully implemented prior to the establishment of the federal republic’ (§ 57). The size of the Greek and the Turkish contingents to be stationed in Cyprus on the basis of the Treaty of Alliance remains to be agreed upon. However, it is clearly stated that the two contingents will be of ‘equal size and equipment’ (§ 58). It also brings in the Treaty of Guarantee, which ‘will ensure the independence and territorial integrity of the federal republic and exclude union in whole or in part with any other country and any form of partition or secession; ensure the security of the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot federated states; and ensure against the unilateral change of the new constitutional order of the federal republic by either community’ (§ 55). The Annan Plan provides for complete demilitarization of the UCR in relation to the maintaining of Cypriot military forces.218 But as to foreign troops, it puts forth, unchanged, the relevant provision of the 1960 Treaty of Alliance, which provides for the stationing in Cyprus of a Greek and a Turkish contingent of 950 and 650 soldiers and officers respectively. There will be a phased reduction until the above numbers are met; 6,000 by 2011, 3,000 by 2018 or Turkey’s accession to the EU, whichever is earlier, and subsequently, for an unspecified period, the conventional contingents of 1960.219 However, it is added that, thereafter, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey will review every three years the number of troops to be stationed ‘with the objective of total withdrawal’.220 The review by itself, with total withdrawal as the stated objective, would have continually questioned the permanence of foreign military presence and would have constituted a continuous pressure for final withdrawal. The 1960 Treaty of Guarantee is also reaffirmed but amended, as in the ‘Set of Ideas’, so as to cover ‘in addition to the independence, territorial integrity, security, and constitutional order of the UCR, the territorial integrity, security, and constitutional order of its constituent states’.221

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Those among the Greek Cypriots who rejected the Plan maintained that this amendment of the 1960 Treaty constituted an extension of Turkey’s rights of intervention in Cyprus. However, Toumazos Tselepis refutes such arguments in stating that the amendment ‘has nothing to do with any extension of rights of intervention; it simply extends the object of guarantee (the two federated states) since the territory is exactly the same; it is the territory of the UCR’.222 Tselepis further maintains that the provision in the Annan Plan for the establishment of a Monitoring Committee chaired by a UN representative constitutes a substantial improvement on the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee. This Committee ‘shall monitor the settlement and may make recommendations regarding any development which may endanger their implementation’.223 The Monitoring Committee, being posterior to the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, ‘weakens’, according to Tselepis, Article iv of the Treaty of Guarantee, which provides for deliberations by the three guarantor powers and, in the event that they fail to agree on common action, for the right of unilateral action.224 Beyond that, in the preamble to the Treaty between Cyprus and the guarantor powers related to the new state of affairs in Cyprus, the countries involved declare that they are ‘committed to international law and the principles of the UN Charter’.225 No such commitment existed in the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee.226 Tselepis also elaborates on another aspect of security for the Greek Cypriot community, which relates to fears that Turkey might have reneged at any time on commitments emerging from provisions in the Annan Plan and that it might have rejected their implementation, particularly the return of territory and the withdrawal of troops and settlers. This matter will be discussed in the next chapter, when the course towards the referendum will be examined.

7.4.11. Settlers Turkey’s organized, systematic campaign to colonize the occupied areas of Cyprus with settlers from Anatolia has already been examined.227 The primary political objective of colonization was turkification of the occupied territory. A second objective, connected with the first, was the change in the demographic ratio between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. To the extent that such an objective was achieved, it might have changed basic parameters of a future solution.228 A third, parallel objective was the possibility of political intervention in the election of leadership of the Turkish Cypriots without resort to armed force or to any other form of direct enforcement, so as to provide a safeguard that any leadership ‘elected’ ‘democratically’ by the Turkish Cypriots would have been an obedient tool in serving the broader objectives of Turkey in relation to Cyprus.229 With regard to international law, the colonization of occupied Cyprus terri-

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tory constitutes a clear violation of Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that ‘the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies’.230 The practice of colonization by Turkey, having been documented by thirdparty objective observers,231 might have been denounced as a war crime before international forums. The problem is that, in such forums, when these are not courts in the strict sense, political criteria prevail over principles; whereupon an appeal may end up either in a cover-up or in some form of compromise.232 Indicative in this regard is the fact that, while UN General Assembly resolutions on Cyprus deplore ‘unilateral actions that change the demographic structure of Cyprus’,233 the condemnation is confined to the declaratory part of the resolutions, which do not call for any action to be taken. More significantly, there is no mention at all, nor any kind of verbal condemnation of Turkey for this practice in UNSC resolutions. Even the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an international forum that has gone on record for its protection of human rights, dilutes its wording when it comes to the colonization of occupied Cyprus territory.234 Even when the Parliamentary Assembly examines the Report of Alfons Cuco,235 a report specifically prepared in relation to the colonization of the occupied areas of Cyprus by Turkey, it simply states that ‘from 1975 onwards, Turkish nationals arrived in the northern part of Cyprus where they settled on a long-term basis’, and that ‘the Turkish migrants who, once established on the island, become settlers’ and ‘acquire Cypriot nationality’, play an important role in Turkish Cypriot political life. It points out the encouragement of their permanent settlement by the Turkish Cypriot administration and the ‘discretionary power’ it has to give them citizenship rights. But the Report does not have a word to say about Turkey apart from inviting it ‘to register in its Cyprus Consulate all Turkish citizens residing and arriving in Cyprus’; not a word about the withdrawal of settlers. And the recommendation of the Assembly to the European Population Committee ‘to conduct a census of the island’s population’ merely remains on paper to be borrowed by the UN Secretary General and be proposed in the Annex of the 1992 ‘Set of Ideas’. Successive UN Secretary Generals approach the settlers’ issue in roughly the same spirit. In the Cuellar proposals of 1984, 1985 and 1986, just one word –-and that uncertain: ‘A timetable for the withdrawal of non-Cypriot military troops and elements236 [. . .] will be agreed upon prior to the establishment of the federal transitional government.’237 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989), in the last paragraph of the chapter on ‘security’, notes the following: ‘Matters related to the demographic structure of the federal republic will be considered in the context of the preparation of the overall agreement.’ In Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1992), the same vague terminology: ‘A bi-communal committee will be established to undertake a population census of both commu-

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nities.’238 There is no particular reference to the problem, nor even a hint at the need for a settlement providing for the withdrawal of settlers. The Annan Plan is the first attempt to address the issue of the settlers in a concrete manner, with concrete and unambiguous provisions in relation both to the existing settlers and to the control of future inflow. As for the latter, the Plan suggests concrete measures, which constitute adequately effective safety valves as regards the crucial issue of preservation of the demographic ratio between Greek- and Turkish-speaking people in Cyprus. For a period of nineteen years or until Turkey’s accession to the EU, whichever comes earlier, the UCR may restrict the right of Greek and Turkish nationals to settle in Cyprus if their number amounts to 5 per cent of the total number of the citizens of the Greek Cypriot or the Turkish Cypriot constituent state respectively.239 After this period the 5 per cent restriction is withdrawn but a new, stronger safeguard240 is introduced instead: ‘Thereafter, the UCR, in consultation with the Commission, may take safeguard measures to ensure that the demographic ratio between Cypriot permanent residents speaking either Greek or Turkish as mother tongue is not substantially altered.’241 The big problem was the existing settlers. Here, the Secretary General was faced with an unbridgeable chasm in the positions of the two sides. The Greek Cypriot position during the negotiations of 1999–2002, as the Secretary General presented it in his report to the UNSC (1 April 2003), was that ‘Turks who had migrated to Cyprus since 1974 should not be given citizenship but at best some form of residency rights for humanitarian reasons while most of them should return to their place of origin’ (§ 102). The Greek Cypriot side further maintained, according to the Secretary General’s report, that ‘such people had been brought to Cyprus in contravention of international law, in particular the Geneva Conventions’ (§ 102). The Turkish Cypriot position, as conveyed by the Secretary General in the same report, ‘based on the approach of two preexisting states coming together, demanded blanket recognition of existing citizenship rolls and dual citizenship for the future, that is, the allocation of constituent state citizenship by constituent state authorities which would automatically entail citizenship of the UCR’ (§ 103). . . . In the course of the direct talks [the Secretary General relates], when Mr Denktas assured Mr Clerides in a private meeting that the number of Turks who had been given ‘citizenship’ by the Turkish Cypriot authorities was ‘only about 30,000–35,000’, Mr Clerides proposed that, if that was accurate and a list was provided, all these people should be considered Cypriot citizens and he would not insist on his starting position. Mr Denktas agreed to provide a list to my Special Adviser but never did so, instead little by little revising his estimate to increase the number of people to 60,000, while objecting to the notion that the Turkish Cypriot side should

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have to provide any certainty on the issue since giving citizenship was ‘part of the exercise of his sovereignty’. (§ 104)

The final proposal of the UN Secretary General on the settlers, as this was formulated in the third version of his Plan and passed over, unchanged, into Annan Plan V, provides (a) a name list of up to 45,000 (including wives and children),242 which will be formed on the basis of clearly defined criteria; (b) approximately 11,000 settlers who have married indigenous Turkish Cypriots. These two categories of settlers (total 56,000) are granted citizenship on the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement.243 To the above number is added a number of settlers accounting for up to 10 per cent of the total number of citizens of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state at the time of entry into force of the Foundation Agreement. The settlers in this category, who must have lived in Cyprus for at least five consecutive years, are not granted citizenship immediately. They will be granted permanent residence status by the constituent state involved and will be entitled to apply for citizenship after ‘nine consecutive years of stay in Cyprus, including no less than four years after entry into force of the Foundation Agreement’.244 On the basis of an estimation of the number of the indigenous Turkish Cypriots at 90,000245 plus 56,000 settlers who acquire citizenship at the time of entry into force of the Foundation Agreement, the total Turkish-speaking population of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state on that date will be 146,000. Therefore, the maximum number of settlers of the third category entitled to acquire citizenship four years after the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement may not exceed 15,000. Once we add these to the 56,000 given above, we reach a grand total of settlers at 70,000.246 This total number is also given by Tselepis based on the Plan’s data as well as on reliable data regarding mixed marriages.247 President Papadopoulos himself, in an interview with To Vima, stated, accordingly, that ‘on the basis of the Annan Plan there will remain some 65,000 settlers’.248 All the other settlers who were not entitled by the Plan to stay in Cyprus would have been made to leave. Those among them who had been resident in Cyprus for at least five years were entitled to apply for financial assistance of up to €10,000 per household of four, payable in cash on their arrival in their country of origin.249 The number of settlers to leave would have been about 45,000, if their total number at the time the Plan was first submitted was 115,000, as calculated by the authorities of the Republic of Cyprus.250 This number cannot be decided with precision since, apart from those enrolled as ‘seasonal workers’ (16,277),251 the exact number of ‘illegal immigrants’ was only roughly estimated, as also happens in the government-controlled areas. Researchers in this field estimate them at around 30,000,252 a number that tallies with the estimation of a total of 115,000. Claire Palley, in inflating without documentary evidence the number of

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settlers of mixed marriage to 18,000 and arbitrarily adding a figure of 18,000 mainland Turkish students, despite the clear exception of student status in the Plan,253 raises the total number of settlers entitled to stay, on the basis of Annan Plan III, to 96,000.254 Subsequently, she adds another 10,000, who, she claims, might have come four years after entry into force of the Foundation Agreement (the provision allowing 5 per cent per cent of Turkish nationals), and raises the grand total, in Annan Plan V, to 106,000.255 Finally, by taking out of context and manipulating a statement by Didier Pfirter256 at Bogazici University (17 July 2003) and by quoting him as saying that ‘the Plan does not foresee that anybody will be forced to leave’,257 apart from the hint of deceit by the UN, Palley suggests that in practice no settler would have been made to leave by the Plan.258 In a roughly similar, undocumented manner, Syrigos also inflates the numbers to raise the figure of settlers supposedly provided by the Plan to stay at the total of 108,000.259 However, irrespective of manipulations that aim to inflate the figures, the 70,000 settlers who are actually entitled by the Plan to stay are not an insignificant number. Given the alteration caused to the historical and cultural character of Cyprus, this settlement cannot in any way satisfy the sense of justice felt by any Greek Cypriot, nor is it welcome by the Turkish Cypriots at large. Apart from serious employment problems the Turkish Cypriots have been facing owing to the ‘cheap labour’ recruitment of settlers,260 they have also been faced with serious social unrest caused by the alien cultural values the settlers have been importing into northern Cyprus.261 Nevertheless, if this matter too is approached from a wider angle on the solution and reunification perspective, and in a spirit of a feasible compromise rather than a sense of justice, then it will be differently weighed among the consequences of the war adventure and disaster of 1974. The overall treatment of this matter in the various international forums points towards such a kind of compromise. On the one hand, it is the intrusion of political considerations that largely emanate from power politics. On the other hand, what the various mediators invoke is the lengthy period the settlers have lived in occupied Cyprus, particularly their children, who were born there, thus creating a peculiar category of ‘human rights’; ‘rights’ that will be gaining more and more support as time passes without a solution on Cyprus. Finally, one should observe that, despite the negative factors cited above, the Plan provision for the stay of 70,000 settlers following a solution does not substantially change the pre-1974 ratio of Greek- and Turkish-speaking people in Cyprus,262 given the drastic decrease in the numbers of indigenous Turkish Cypriots as a result of the second wave of colonization.263

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7.4.12. Transitional arrangements In the climate of hostility and absolute distrust created by Denktas’s obsession with recognition of a separate sovereign Turkish Cypriot state, the Greek Cypriot side justifiably feared the establishment of a transitional government after an agreement in principle that would have left important issues to be dealt with and decided upon until the establishment of a federal government. Given the lack of political will for a solution on the part of Turkey, and given the prevaricating and quibbling attitude of Denktas, there was a real danger of continuous obstructionism, or of complete deadlock in the process of settling the pending issues, a development that would have made impossible the establishment, or, if established, the proper functioning of the federal government. Whereupon, under such fluid interim conditions, the two federated states would have functioned on their own, without a central government, without definite agreement on an overall solution, and with the future of the Republic of Cyprus left unclear as an independent, internationally recognized, sovereign state. The awareness of such dangers has had a decisive influence on the attitude of the Greek Cypriot leadership since 1984, when a ‘draft agreement’ for an overall solution, which left substantial issues pending after the establishment of a transitional government, was first submitted by the UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar.264 And such dangers were clearly visible in all UN plans until Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’. Indeed, Boutros-Ghali tried, in his document, to bypass the stumbling block of transitional government. However, the eighteen-month transitional period of his proposal (§ 93), providing for joint management, ‘in the common interest’, of ‘international trade and tourism’ (§ 96), and for joint management of external affairs ‘in consensus with the leaders of the two communities’ and ‘joint delegations in particular to international meetings’ (§ 97), carried exactly the same dangers as the ones identified above in relation to the establishment of a transitional government. Admittedly, the Republic of Cyprus would have continued to function; but the parallel upgrading of the ‘TRNC’ into a regime that had all the qualities of a sovereign state entity was manifest. In the event that the process of implementing the provisions of the agreement were paralyzed, or the joint management failed – an extremely proximate development given the well-known and quite predictable attitude of Denktas as well as the lack of political will for a solution on the part of Turkey – there might have been far-reaching consequences on the crucial issue of recognition of some form of state entity in the ‘TRNC’, which, after all, had long been the ultimate objective of the Turkish side. The Annan Plan, in its fifth and final version, for the first time in the history of the UN Secretary General’s ‘good offices’ in Cyprus, provided for a compre-

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hensive, fully fledged, self-executive solution, with the constitution and the laws of the federal republic, the constitutions of the constituent states and all the constitutional organs of the federation, ready to function immediately following the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement. Apart from the safeguards the Plan offered at the institutional level, it offered a further safeguard for normal transfer to the ‘new state of affairs’ in effectively bypassing the stumbling block of Denktas and putting him out of the game following the referendum, thus pre-empting the possibility that he might sabotage the proceedings. It is worth noting at this point that, in the event that the Plan was not endorsed at the referenda or in the event that any of the Guarantor Powers had failed to ratify the ‘new state of affairs’ by 29 April 2004, the Agreement would have been rendered ‘null and void’ and would have had ‘no legal effect’.265 The Foundation Agreement would have entered into force after its approval at the separate simultaneous referenda and after its ratification by the Guarantor Powers –that is, not prior to 29 April 2004. Whereupon the two transitional Co-Presidents would have jointly signed the accession of the UCR to the EU on 1 May 2004, and would have informed the EU of the cominginto-being of the ‘new state of affairs and the commitment of the UCR to assume all rights and obligations arising from the Treaty of Accession’.266 The bypassing of Denktas in the appointment of the transitional Co-Presidents was a crucial factor of the Plan’s transitional arrangements. The formula was such that, one way or another, the two Co-Presidents to assume power two days after successful referenda would have been the heads of government of each constituent state.267 This arrangement clearly pointed to Tassos Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat. A second important element was the extremely short duration of the transitional period, in fact forty-four days, from 1 May until 13 June 2004, the Euro-election day, when all constitutional organs of both the federal government and the constituent states would have been elected. Furthermore, apart from all the above safeguards, the most significant, which would have acted as a catalyst in the normal transfer to the new permanent constitutional institutions of the UCR, would have been, on the one hand, the European Framework, and on the other, the climate of trust and mutual understanding between the two communities. It is worth recalling in this regard that ‘solution’ and ‘accession’ were the two central demands of the Turkish Cypriots during their uprising against Denktas.268 The fact is that both these demands would have been satisfied and would have mobilized the necessary political will to make the transitional arrangements work. After all, the European framework, within which all major issues would have been decided upon, would have been an effective shield ensuring safe and normal transfer to the United Cyprus Republic in an atmosphere of understanding and consensus.

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Finally, the rapprochement of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, as this had functioned since the opening of the checkpoints one year earlier, focused for the first time on the common Cypriot interest, abandoned hostility and mistrust, and opened the way to a common path towards the future. Within such a framework, the prior ratification of the Agreement by Turkey, the self-executive nature of the solution, the bypassing of Denktas, the European framework and the peaceful rapprochement at the popular level constituted the strongest ever guarantees, not only for a normal transfer to the permanent institutions of the new federal republic, but also for normal developments in the foreseeable future. Even the most suspicious could not but recognize that there had never in the past been such a political convergence of events providing the strongest-ever safeguards and best-ever prerequisites in the form of a common will for the effective implementation of the solution.

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Chapter 8

Towards the Referendum 8.1. Submission of the UN Plan and initial reactions The Plan of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, the outcome of an intensive process in which a negotiating team under the Secretary General’s Special Adviser, Alvaro De Soto and the international community at large had been involved, was submitted to the leaders of the two communities in Cyprus and the governments of the three guarantor powers on 11 November 2002. A month later (12 December 2002), at the Copenhagen EU Summit, final decisions were to be taken on EU enlargement involving the accession of ten new member states, among them the Republic of Cyprus. A decision was also to be taken at the EU Summit on whether a date would be granted to Turkey for the commencement of accession negotiations. The Copenhagen Summit was, in all respects, a key to the whole process. The UN Secretary General asked the leaders of the two communities to reply by 18 November if they accepted negotiation on the basis of his Plan and, at the same time, suggest points in the Plan concerning which they wished to effect changes. The Secretary General also invited the two leaders to Copenhagen on 12 December with the aim, if mutually agreed, of signing an initial agreement on the basic principles of his Plan, prior to the EU Summit decision on enlargement. This meant double pressure on both sides as the accession process of both Turkey and Cyprus was openly conditional on their stand on the UNproposed solution on Cyprus. During a subsequent stage, negotiations on the UN Plan were to be continued and finalized by 28 February 2003. In the meantime security issues were to be agreed upon between Greece and Turkey, while technical working groups were to draft the constitutions of the two constituent states, the laws of the federal republic and a list of international treaties that would be binding on the federation. Where no agreement was possible between the two sides, the Secretary General was to submit final gap-bridging proposals. Following an overall agreement on 28 February 2003, the Plan was to be put before the two communities in simultaneous separate referenda on 30 March 2003, at which people would be called upon to answer whether they accepted

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the solution proposed by the Plan and Cyprus’s EU accession. If both referenda were successful, the ‘new state of affairs’ was to come into being, and a reunited Cyprus would sign the Treaty of Accession to the EU on 16 April 2003 in Athens.1 The timing of the submission of the Plan just one month before the ‘first act’ in the final stage of Cyprus’s accession process,2 in conjunction with highly constraining timeframes, was received by Greek Cypriot party leaderships, those in opposition in particular, with undisguised discomfort and suspicion, leading in certain cases to extremely negative attitudes. The large AKEL party of the Left, which had already embarked on an intense election campaign to bring DIKO leader, Tassos Papadopoulos, to the presidency, viewed the submission of the UN Plan, a priori, as an ‘imperialist conspiracy’ to prevent the Party from coming to power. Days prior to the submission of the Plan, AKEL General Secretary, Dimitris Christofias, and Nikos Katsourides, Party Spokesman and Director of the Party’s daily newspaper Haravgi, had launched a trench warfare campaign against both the timing of the expected submission and the Plan itself. Christofias (2 November 2002) spoke of an ‘ultimatum’ to the Greek Cypriot side in the event of the Plan being submitted prior to the Copenhagen Summit and warned that ‘the plan expected to be submitted will not be in line with UN resolutions, the High-Level Agreements, international law and the acquis communautaire’.3 The following day he warned that ‘we are not going to sacrifice Cyprus for the sake of accession’ and asked that ‘we should convey our firm determination to those who are preparing plans – and plans do exist – that the Greek Cypriot side is not willing to sacrifice the Republic of Cyprus or accept an objectionable solution for the sake of accession’.4 In a new statement the next day, AKEL General Secretary expressed concern over the haste exhibited by unnamed circles towards a solution at that particular time, following twenty-eight years of inertia.5 Two days later, after reaffirming readiness for ‘a painful compromise’, Christofias repeated, in patriotic tone, that ‘we are not going to sell out for the sake of accession’, and warned: ‘Let them not make us respond with a great NO to inadmissible plans.’6 Two days prior to the submission of the Plan, Nikos Katsourides warned that AKEL would not consent to any extension of Clerides’s term of office in order to complete negotiations if the issue was raised.7 The same day, the candidate for the presidency, Tassos Papadopoulos, asked for ‘a fresh popular mandate’ in view of the critical negotiations, and stressed, hinting at Clerides, that ‘a president right at the end of his term of office cannot be an effective negotiator’.8 Nevertheless, the day following the submission of the Plan, despite the fact that Haravgi continued with scaldingly critical articles against the Plan and ‘those in power’ for what ‘they have achieved in relation to the Annan Plan’,9 the General Secretary of AKEL lowered the tone by adapting party

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strategy to the acceptance of the Plan as a ‘basis for negotiation’.10 At the same time, however, he did not abandon criticism of the ‘blackmail’ that the ‘constraining timeframes’ constituted, as well as of the onerous provisions of the Plan, as he viewed them. While such criticism might plausibly be interpreted as meant to strengthen the Greek Cypriot side’s negotiating position (within the conservative spirit of a zero-sum game),11 it did not escape the attention of those who could ‘read between the lines’ of statements by AKEL’s General Secretary and leading cadres (not to mention the noise made by Haravgi), that what they really had in mind were the presidential elections and accession to power.12 The presidential candidate Tassos Papadopoulos also subordinated his public reaction to the Plan to the policy of its acceptance as a ‘basis for negotiation’ and to his and Christofias’s common election strategy, but with intensely negative and occasionally openly suggestive rejectionism.13 However, public statements by leading DIKO cadres, who were close to the Party President, left no doubt as to the prevailing rejectionist trend in the higher echelons of the Party.14 Such manifestations caused justified suspicion as to Papadopoulos’s real intentions, to the extent that political observers generally assessed his final aim as being to ‘kill’ the UN Plan through the negotiating process – a well-known tactic used by Denktas. The very fact that Tassos Papadopoulos accepted the Plan as a ‘basis for negotiation’, ostensibly because ‘the consequences of an outright rejection would cost Cyprus’, but rejected it as the ‘basis for a solution’, clearly pointed towards the above assessment.15 AKEL’s support for DIKO President, Tassos Papadopoulos, for the assumption of the presidency of the Republic, despite the latter’s tough rejectionist attitude – an attitude completely alien to AKEL’s political culture – could not have been a one-dimensional or easy decision. However, possibility of his being elected, in conjunction with AKEL’s return to power – a token of success following two electoral defeats (1993, 1998) – seems to have been a decisive factor in this choice. The political investment the AKEL leadership strove to make in this electoral victory seems also to have prevailed in the charting of their strategy concerning the possibility of coming up against the dramatic developments that, like an avalanche, followed the submission of the UN Plan. The Party leadership proved incapable of properly assessing the tectonic change within the Turkish Cypriot community and Turkey and the reverberations of that change. Consequently, it found itself unprepared to chart a Cyprus solution strategy in the light of that change, and then to subordinate its electoral goals to that broader strategy. As a result, during those dramatic days in which the UN Plan was submitted, AKEL seemed to have been overtaken by developments, and unprepared to face up to them.16 One additional factor, related to AKEL’s attitude during that period, must have been a return of the anti-Europe syndrome through an attempt to ‘verify’

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its ‘warnings’ over the danger of ‘euro-partition’ in what it saw as the ‘cynical blackmail’ that Cyprus’s EU accession brought along with it. Such an attitude, covert and detectable only between the lines of Christofias’s statements, was patently clear in articles written by his close aide Vassos Georgiou.17 This peculiar ‘anti-imperialist nationalism’ hallmarking AKEL’s attitude, which has been referred to earlier18 and which foreshadowed the stand it would finally take in relation to the referendum, would play a decisive role in overturning a fortyyear-long political culture, and imposing on the people of the traditional Left a rejectionist stance towards the UN Plan at the referendum. This same ‘antiimperialist nationalism’ was expressed by the Greek Communist Party General Secretary Aleka Papariga, in the absolute manner in which she rejected the Plan. She recalled that the Cyprus problem ‘had been buried in Helsinki’, gave her support to Dimitris Tsovolas’s ‘Citizens’ Patriotic Movement’ aimed at rejection of the Plan and, in explaining her stance as one that lay within the framework of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’, rejected hints by Leonidas Kyrkos to the effect that ‘the Communist Party of Greece tends to align itself with extreme nationalist circles’ just by saying that ‘nationalism belongs to the bourgeois ideology, not to the communist one’.19 Nationalism had really been generated by bourgeois ideology. However, since the nineteenth century a vast volume of water has flown down the long river of history. A rejectionist of the Plan attitude was also espoused by leading cadres of the ‘old guard’ both in PASOK and New Democracy parties. The Greek Church in particular came out in complete and vociferous alignment with the Church of Cyprus in absolute rejection of the Plan.20 In contrast to the above attitudes, Greek Premier Simitis and Foreign Minister Papandreou took a clearly rational stand towards the Plan, entirely at odds with the emotionally charged ‘patriotic’ rhetoric. In their stand they had the full support by President Stefanopoulos, the acquiescence of opposition leader Karamanlis and the consent of the Cypriot President Clerides, with whom Simitis had had a telephone conversation immediately after the submission of the UN Plan. In an initial reaction to the Plan, the Greek Premier noted that ‘one should not separately assess the importance of each provision of the Plan’. What was more important, he stressed, was ‘the overall balance to which this Plan may ultimately lead through negotiation’. Then, having stressed that Cyprus’s accession to the EU would constitute ‘an effective guarantee of the functionality of the solution’, Simitis called for a common effort ‘to move beyond the walls of the past’ and concluded: ‘A mutually accepted solution along with EU accession [. . .] will ensure the road to Cyprus’s prosperity and development in an environment of peace, security, and cooperation [. . .] in the entire region.’21 ‘I did not consider the Plan an ideal solution,’ he would write three years later. ‘In my view, it constituted a satisfactory compromise provided the state structure-to-be would ensure an unimpeded decision making process

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and would avoid involvement of the two communities in an unending tug of war.’22 Clerides’s initial response moved in the same spirit as that of Simitis, away from ‘oversimplifications’ and ‘maximalist approaches’, envisioning ‘bringing to a permanent close the history of national confrontations and wars and inaugurating a new era of peace’. ‘We shall judge this plan as a whole’, he said, and noted that ‘it is on this basis that it will be assessed, i.e. on whether it serves the interests of the people of Cyprus and opens the way towards breaking the deadlock and reaching a lasting solution’. The focus of the manner in which the Cypriot President would confront developments was given in his concluding statement: ‘I shall not sacrifice the forest for the tree.’23 The most significant figures in the international community gave their full support to the UN Plan. The US Foreign Minister, Colin Powel, following a meeting with the UN Secretary General during which he had discussed the Cyprus problem among other issues, called on the two sides to seize the opportunity offered by the new UN initiative and find a solution to the problem.24 Danish Prime Minister Anders Fong Rasmussen, presiding at the EU at the time, welcomed the UN proposal and expressed the wish for a solution of the Cyprus problem, which he described as ‘one of the stumbling blocks’ on the way to the Copenhagen Summit. He stressed the need for the negotiations on Cyprus to remain within the UN framework, and stated the ‘EU’s preference for the accession of a reunited Cyprus’.25 The day following the submission of the Plan, the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, gave his support to the Plan and called on the interested parties to ‘take up their responsibilities and adopt a constructive approach’.26 More revealing was the statement of the EU Enlargement Commissioner Gunter Verheugen, who remarked that, ‘at a first reading, the Plan provides guarantees to both sides, as well as the safeguards required by the EU in relation to the possibility of the state of Cyprus to fulfil its obligations to the EU’.27 Support for the Plan was also expressed by the government of France through a Foreign Ministry statement,28 by the President of the EU Parliament, Pat Cox,29 and the President of the EU Commission, Romano Prodi.30 Despite wide support abroad, things were not easy for President Clerides at home. First, there was difficult negotiation to be conducted with an unpredictable Denktas, who found himself in a state of siege created by a dramatic turn of events in Turkey that drastically limited his ability to manipulate situations and impose his own positions on the Cyprus problem.31 Second were the difficulties Clerides faced on the domestic front. Despite the façade of unanimity in the National Council in relation to the acceptance of the Plan as a basis for negotiation,32 it was clear from the leaders’ public statements that they did not share a common interpretation of the phrase ‘basis for negotiation’. Moreover, electoral calculations, in the opposition parties in particular,

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complicated matters even more. One final problem was the upheaval within the large party of the Right, DISY, which Clerides himself had founded and which sustained his government. The two distinct trends within the Party, the mainly rural, ‘patriotic’ trend that bore the ‘fighting spirit’ of the EOKA tradition, and the mainly bourgeois right following Clerides’s moderate policies on the Cyprus problem, found themselves in two fiercely opposing camps following the submission of the UN Plan. The right-wing papers Simerini and Alithia, mouthpieces for each of these respective trends, fanned internal strife to the extent that they placed the cohesion of the Party in danger.33 A considerable number of DISY MPs and Party cadres, motivated by a mixture of personal strategies and ‘patriotic’ stereotypes, but also by genuine concern (the latter touching upon the entire population), from the very start, differentiated themselves from the Party’s official stand in relation to the Plan, which was parallel to that of Clerides. They either openly rejected the Plan as a basis for negotiation or asked for so many changes that these would have substantially altered the basis of negotiation. As a tactical manoeuvre, they left Clerides out of their criticism and focused their attacks on ‘vulnerable’ members of the negotiating team. However, the political consequences of their attacks touched upon the core of Clerides’s policy. The MPs who would ultimately detach themselves from DISY (Syllouris, Prodromou, Erotocritou, Taramountas), as well as others, who simply restrained themselves to remain within conventional party discipline, constituted a permanent hotbed that disputed the official party line until the referendum, whereupon they openly aligned with the NO position.34 EDEK (KISOS), whose President Yiannakis Omirou belonged to Simitis’s school of political thought, and which at the time of the Plan’s submission was in election coalition with DISY, presented itself with two opposing lines towards the Annan Plan. A strong nationalist trend that rallied round Honorary President Vassos Lyssarides called for outright rejection of the Plan despite paying lip service to its acceptance as a ‘basis for negotiation’.35 The other trend, expressed by cadres of Simitis’s school that rallied round the Party President, approached the Plan more through the global reasoning of Simitis and Clerides, giving second place to reservations on particular provisions. By accepting the philosophy and the basic parameters of the Plan, these cadres focused on the prospect of a historic compromise through a constructive negotiating process that would improve negative provisions and amend apparent dysfunctions.36 Certainly, it was not easy for Clerides to achieve significant improvements of the Plan on matters where change was considered to be necessary, such as transitional arrangements, timeframes for the withdrawal of troops and the return of refugees, ceilings on the return, withdrawal of settlers, reinstatement of properties or permanent derogations. Given Denktas’s attitude, Clerides would initially have to convince the UN negotiating team and, in the first place,

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the Secretary General, as well as those figures in the international community who might exert influence on developments. He was continuously aware that all these factors, not excepting the Secretary General, functioned less on the basis of justice and more on the basis of what was feasible within the framework of broader parameters and balances. One additional parameter, which made things even more difficult for President Clerides by reducing his room for manoeuvre thoroughly to negotiate a comprehensive solution, was escalating popular reaction against the Plan, and, even more, against what was perceived as ‘coercion’ by foreign powers and an attempt to impose an ‘unjust’ solution, as in the case of Zurich. The way in which the political culture of a ‘patriotic’-maximalist and an ‘anti-imperialist’ nationalism contributed towards the creation of a rejectionist climate in the run-up to the referendum has already been examined.37 A brief account of indicative popular reactions to the Annan Plan verifies the return to the logic of an ‘absolute solution’. Immediate and absolutely rejectionist was the reaction of the people from Kyrenia and the northern coastal region, with the Coordinating Committee of Kyrenia District Municipalities and Communities announcing mass mobilizations against the Plan.38 In a matter of days, more and more refugee organizations and clubs joined their voice to that of the Kyrenia people calling for escalation of mobilization against the Plan.39 Only ten days following the submission of the Plan, a newly founded ‘Pancyprian Citizens’ Movement’ announced the holding of a rally against the Plan on 24 November, in the ‘Eleftheria’ Stadium. The main speaker would be Gerasimos Arsenis, whose name as Defence Minister of Greece had been connected with the Joint Defence Dogma and the S-300 missiles. The NEO and KOP parties stated their intention to participate. In a statement, the Citizens’ Movement noted that ‘the Annan Plan violates UN resolutions, ECHR decisions, and the acquis, while it puts in danger Cyprus’s accession process’.40 Another citizen grouping named ‘Free Thinking Citizens’, which moved in the same spirit as the ‘Citizen Movement’, gathered outside the Presidential Palace in protest against the Plan, and declared that ‘it does not safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms, violates the acquis, puts in serious danger Cyprus’s accession process, and undermines the future of Cyprus’.41 Besides expressed reaction, there was also the reaction of the ‘silent majority’, as this emerged from public-opinion polls that had been carried out since the very first days following the submission of the Plan, while the majority of citizens had only had secondary information on the Plan, almost exclusively through the media, mainly electronic, which exert direct, live influence. Even when it was possible to gain direct access to the Plan, the document’s large volume (138 pages), the complicated layout of arrangements in their exhaustively interconnected details and the difficulty of understanding a text formulated in legal language did not allow an easy ‘go through’ for the ‘uninitiated’ reader, who

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would again turn for guidance to the media, where the rejectionist camp had the main say. In fact, ‘those who disagree are free to speak out’, while ‘the others, i.e. the members of parties which maintain that the Plan may constitute a basis for negotiation cannot, on the one hand, argue in favour of its positive aspects and, on the other, negotiate with the aim of improving it’.42 In view of this comment, made by Foreign Minister Kasoulides, it is quite easy for anyone to imagine the message conveyed to each home by the TV channels. In an opinion poll carried out by Cymar Market Research between 14 and 17 November (the Plan was made accessible to the public on 14 November), 50 per cent said NO to the Plan, 25 per cent said YES and 25 per cent were as yet undecided, while those in the sample who had received higher education and those who enjoyed higher social standards were more positively disposed towards the Plan.43 On 15 November the MEGA and ANT1 TV channels presented polls by Rai Consultants and Evresis Call Center respectively. The first revealed that 62 per cent ‘consider(ed) the proposed solution negative’ and 30 per cent ‘expect(ed) it to turn out as positive’. In contrast, the second poll revealed 54 per cent pros and 41 per cent cons to the question of whether the Annan Plan could be accepted as a basis for negotiation.44 As a basis of negotiation it had already been accepted by President Clerides and the large parties. A poll by Nielsen/Amer for Politis45 showed 52 per cent rejecting the Plan as a solution, 28 per cent accepting it and 20 per cent DK/DA. Asked to make a prediction as to whether the state provided by the Plan would be able to function, 53 per cent stated NO as against 34 per cent who replied YES. However, the fear of violent reactions during the implementation of the solution covered 72 per cent of the sample, and only 20 per cent predicted a normal process. The feeling of insecurity also extended to the phased character of withdrawal of the Turkish troops, a factor that was not counterbalanced by the provision for the increased presence of a UN peacekeeping force. To the question whether the Plan made them feel secure, 55 per cent replied YES and 39 per cent NO. One provision of the Plan that the poll showed to be in conflict with embedded, stereotyped notions was the permanent restriction that put a ceiling on settlement.46 Rejection of this restriction amounted to 79 per cent as against 15 per cent. A second poll by Nielsen/Amer, a week later, showed an increase in the rejection of the Plan to 64 per cent as against 27 per cent who would vote YES in the event of a referendum.47 The opinion-poll findings were not irrelevant to positions taken by leading party cadres, particularly to that of those in opposition, as well as to that of political figures on the ‘rejectionist’ front in Cyprus and Greece, who had immediately undertaken the role of ‘national guardians’.48 However, what should in future be researched in depth, in relation to the course of events running up to the referendum, is the political culture through which the Greek Cypriot community perceived the Annan Plan. This culture, in drawing on the unionist, anti-

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occupation and anti-imperialist ideological stereotypes, and operating through the siege syndrome (the theory of conspiracy), built up a perception mechanism that put the Annan Plan against the model of ‘absolute solution’, with which it certainly could not match. In fact, the perception of ‘absolute solution’ acted as a catalyst in the reception and internalization of the rejectionist messages that bombarded conservative and, in many respects, passive recipients addicted to a state of political inertia. In the process, additional factors, such as current interests of social or regional sections of the population, intrude and exert influence in shaping final positions on the Plan. Such factors will be examined later in this book.

8.2. ‘Coercion’ a feature of the timing The feeling that the timing of the submission of the Plan was intended to act coercively on the Greek Cypriot side in relation to EU accession through the Helsinki ‘tail’ was not completely irrelevant to reality. But there was a considerable distance separating this reality and the theory of ‘imperialist conspiracy’ and ‘cynical blackmail’ aimed at imposing a solution plan through the threat of thwarting EU accession, within such stifling timeframes as not to leave any margins for substantial negotiation. Those political forces and groupings that remained entrenched in this perception showed that they were unable to see the convergence factor in the new reality that faced Cyprus. Nor did they understand that the ‘coercive’ element was a necessary feature of the timing. Their approach, attempted exclusively through the perception of hostile ‘blackmail’, deprived them of the ability to assess, within their real dimensions, all the features of the particular current political reality so as to be enabled to put together the bits of the puzzle and compose the ‘grand picture’. To start with, the really pressing one-month timeframe until Copenhagen49 was the result of two significant factors that were absolutely beyond control of the UN Secretariat. The first was Denktas’s heart operation and the postoperation health problems that kept him away from Cyprus from early October until late December.50 The second, and by far the most important factor, were the general elections in Turkey, in relation to which foreign observers expected with certainty the downfall of the Ecevit–Bahceli reactionary, nationalist coalition and a change in the balance of power to the extent that it would allow hope for a new approach on Cyprus. Moreover, ‘coercion’ did not relate only to Cyprus. It related also to Turkey. It may not have unfolded publicly during the first months, owing to rapid developments in Turkey caused by the advent of the AKP to power while the personal status of Erdogan was still uncertain and as a result of the latter’s declared intention, following the elections, to seek a solution on Cyprus.51 However,

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when, following the deadlock in The Hague, Turkish policy seemed to be reversing to the intransigent positions of the past, and to cover Denktas, the EU sent a clear message to Ankara to the effect that Turkey’s European bid was inextricably linked to Cyprus. And there was a hailstorm of statements and decisions in this direction. Only one day following the unsuccessful meeting at The Hague, Verheugen, building on previous statements by the Commission Spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori,52 sent out a new warning in the same unambiguous manner. He said he could not imagine the EU Commission making a positive proposal on Turkey’s accession process, if the situation in Cyprus remained unchanged until December 2004.53 The following day, speaking before the European Parliament, Verheugen reiterated that a solution on Cyprus was a precondition for Turkey’s European aspirations, and informed the body that he had conveyed that position to the Turkish government.54 In what might have been interpreted as a new ‘coercion’ on the Turkish Cypriot side, Verheugen stated before the Foreign Relations Committee of the European Parliament that he could not understand how there could be better arrangements for the Turkish Cypriots after Cyprus’ accession.55 Later, in a statement to Mehmet Ali Birand for CNN Turk, which was widely publicized, Verheugen went a step further. If a solution on Cyprus was not found by 1 May 2004, Cyprus’s accession date, he said, this would constitute an obstacle to giving a date to Turkey for commencement of accession negotiations. Moreover, the presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus, he added, ‘will mean occupying part of the island, that is, a candidate country is occupying territory of an EU member state’.56 Even the Blair government, which closely followed the United states in supporting Turkey’s EU accession bid, stated in the House of Commons, through Deputy Foreign Secretary Denis McShane, that Turkey’s path to the EU passed through Cyprus.57 A similar position was repeated by McShane a few days later in Berlin during the Europa Forum. At the same forum, Verheugen repeated once again in straightforward manner that it was unthinkable to hold accession negotiations with a country that maintained 30,000 troops on European territory.58 There had already been mention, for the first time in an official EU document, in particular in the Strategy attached to the Reports on Turkey, Bulgaria and Rumania, that absence of a solution on Cyprus would be a serious obstacle to Turkey’s European aspirations.59 There followed the Presidency Conclusions (12–13 December 2003), which, for the first time in a similar document, stipulated that ‘the settlement of the Cyprus problem will greatly facilitate Turkey’s accession aspirations’.60 Even in the paragraph relating to Cyprus, the Presidency Conclusions called on Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot leadership to support the Secretary General’s effort for recommencement of negotiations on the basis of his Plan, while ascertaining the willingness of the EU to accommodate the terms of a settlement into the acquis.61

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The ‘coercion’ was certainly directed towards the Greek Cypriot side as well, but not in the form of ‘cynical blackmail’ for ‘euro-partition’, as viewed by AKEL, nor in the form of a coercive attempt by the ‘enemies’ of Cyprus to impose a crushingly humiliating solution, as viewed by the nationalist circles of Simerini62 and generally by those Greek Cypriots who remained entrenched in the vision of ‘absolute solution’. The ‘coercion’ on the Greek Cypriot side was actually a genuine interest on the part of the EU, an interest that was connected with broader political planning, as well as with the accession of a reunited Cyprus that would have solved its political problem. This interest was expressed in the form of reminders to the governments of Cyprus and Greece of their obligations emanating from the Helsinki Decision, as these obligations were stated in the ‘tail’ of the paragraph on Cyprus – that is, the Council, in taking final decision on the accession of Cyprus, ‘will take account of all relevant factors’.63 On the eve of the Copenhagen Council, the Chairman of the Council, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fong Rasmussen, on a visit to Athens, where he had contacts with his Greek counterpart, Costas Simitis, stated the following: . . . If, ultimately, no solution is reached prior to the Conclusions of the Council, we’ll decide on the basis of what has been agreed upon in Helsinki. I have to point out that the solution of the Cyprus problem will not be a precondition but will simply be a positive factor. As far as we are concerned, we’ll take account of all relevant factors.64

The same reminder had been made, a week earlier, by the Danish Foreign Minister Per Sting Meler during contacts in Athens with Simitis and Papandreou. After expressing the hope that the EU would ‘proceed to Copenhagen with ten new members’, he reminded of the ‘tail’ again: ‘Cyprus will certainly be one of these ten countries. In fact, in 1999, we said that reunification of the island will not be a precondition in taking a final decision, but certainly that all relevant factors will be taken into account.’65 Similar reminders were also issued by the President of the Commission Romano Prodi and the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana following the submission of the UN Plan. ‘It is out of the question for the EU to postpone a decision on the accession of Cyprus,’ Prodi said. However, he hinted at Helsinki, by saying: ‘The achievement of a solution prior to Copenhagen would certainly make the EU happier.’66 In a similar manner, Solana, after expressing support for the UN Plan, pointed out that ‘the two interested parties have now an opportunity’, and ‘they should take up responsibility and adopt a positive approach’.67 As for the notorious Helsinki ‘tail’, it was certainly not accidental; nor was it meant to be ‘blackmail’ in the direction of imposing unjust solutions. The

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Helsinki ‘tail’ was a compromise between the reservations and fears of European leaders over the stand of the Greek Cypriots towards a compromise solution once they had secured accession, and the reassurances by Simitis – with the consent of Clerides – that the Greek Cypriots ‘are consistently after a solution on the basis of UNSC resolutions and UN proposals’.68 Simitis and Papandreou had to wage a hard struggle to convince their EU partners to accept delinking Cyprus’s accession from the condition of prior solution. They pointed out to them, on the one hand, that Cyprus’s being ‘hostage’ to Turkey would further encourage Turkish intransigence and, on the other, that the Greek and Greek Cypriot side would do their utmost in order to achieve a compromise solution. Simitis recapitulates this great achievement in Greek diplomacy as follows: . . . Such arguments created an audience. However, all the people I spoke to invariably asked what the Greek Cypriots would do following accession. Would they try to coerce solutions outside UN framework thus upsetting the smooth functioning of the EU? I cannot forget how insistently this matter was put to me, during such discussions, by Prodi in our meetings in Brussels, by President Chirac, with whom I had a special meeting on this matter, by the Danish Prime Minister Person and Schroeder together with Fischer. They suspected and feared that unconditional accession would be a wrong move which would complicate matters. My answer was clear in all such cases. I had discussed it with President Clerides, who also had had the consent of the whole political leadership. Cypriots, consistently and unwaveringly, aspire towards a solution of the political problem on the basis of UNSC resolutions and UN proposals. In contrast, Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots are against a solution. The will of the Greek Cypriot leadership for a viable solution in conformity with UN resolutions is genuine. And it really was.69

The suspicions and fears of European leaders in relation to the eventual attitude of the Greek Cypriots in the event of accession without prior solution were far from unfounded. Through their diplomatic services in Cyprus, they must have had clear knowledge of the currents and trends that were developing in relation to the solution in the 1990s.70 The Greek Prime Minister himself was deeply concerned about that. Having referred to his close cooperation with President Clerides, the convergence in their analysis and their objectives, and the assignment of roles to Nicosia and Athens, Simitis would confess: ‘But I was always concerned about how certain people in Cyprus approached the problem. Their reactions, as I experienced them, were alien to me. They focused on confrontation with Turkey while underestimating European affairs.’71 With regard to the UN effort, which the Helsinki decision referred to, Simitis reveals that ‘both the EU and the US, long before the completion of the accession process, asked the UN to undertake a new effort aiming at a solution on

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Cyprus’.72 The Decision of Nice (December 2000) again included a special reference to and expressed support for the UN effort for an overall solution on Cyprus and called on all interested parties to contribute towards this effort.73 As for the ‘coercion’ issue in particular, which, in purely political terms, simply constituted an element of the timing, the Greek Premier is enlightening: . . . It was the opportune moment. Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot side, who had so far refused any substantial negotiation, might have been more conducive to a compromise in the face of the danger of Cyprus’s accession. On the other hand, Greece and the Greek Cypriot side would rather accept a necessary and plausible compromise so as not to endanger accession. As far as the EU was concerned, it would achieve enlargement without inheriting an intractable problem which would create difficulties for its smooth functioning and certainly for its relations with Turkey.74

The United states worked in the same direction, thus contributing to the convergence of events in 2002. They were moved by similar as well as additional reasons of their own, which emanated from Holbrooke’s strategy and new planning following the 11 September attack on the United states. Consequently, the culmination of efforts towards the end of 2002 did not come out of the blue. It was the convergence of events that changed reality by bringing in new features and activating forces that until then had been inert. At the core of this convergence was the Copenhagen Council, during which definite decisions would be taken on enlargement. In the periphery were broader regional factors connected with the worsening relations of the West with Islamic fundamentalism as well as instability in the Eurasian region. These last two factors necessitated more than ever the integration of Turkey within the Western political system. Such a development required a solution on Cyprus, normalization of Turkey’s relations with Greece, and the consolidation of conditions of stability and peace, which again required that Turkey settle its differences with Cyprus and Greece. It was precisely this unique timing that sizable political forces in Cyprus, forces that were soon to take the reins of government, proved unable to internalize. and thus they proved unable to chart their policy accordingly. As a result, instead of capturing such timing in a creative spirit and making use of any opportunity to improve on weak points in the Plan, they entrenched themselves in the expedient inertia and the façade of security of the status quo. Thus entrenched, they engaged in shadow fighting against ‘conspiracies’ and ‘blackmails’.

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8.3. The ‘faultless’ stand: from Copenhagen to The Hague Despite its public reactions, which appealed rather to an internal audience, the political leadership showed, in the National Council, that it was aware of the dangers of rejecting the Plan.75 With the exception of single-seat party leaders Koutsou and Perdikis, the National Council endorsed President Clerides’s reply to the Secretary General, in which the Cypriot President accepted the Plan as the basis for negotiation, while asking for clarifications on certain issues and expressing concern at the fact that timeframes were running out and thus also the opportunity for substantial negotiation prior to Copenhagen, a situation for which the Greek Cypriot side bore no responsibility.76 Following the National Council meeting, DIKO President Tassos Papadopoulos defended the body’s decision, by focusing on the ‘cost of a negative reply over negotiation’, which cost, he said, would be great.77 It was precisely this cost that the National Council counted when it convened in Copenhagen, in the presence of Simitis and Papandreou, and reaffirmed participation in negotiations on the basis of the Plan. C. Venizelos writes accordingly: . . . There was no other alternative to this decision. The Greek Cypriot side knew that rejection of negotiation would cause negative reactions among European leaders and put in danger the strategically important decision of the European Council on the accession of Cyprus while its problem remained unsolved. Of course, the National Council’s decision covered only participation in the talks. It did not authorize Clerides to accept an agreement. The Annan Plan, in the form it had been submitted, was not acceptable to the members of the National Council. But once again they put all their hopes in Turkey’s intransigence and the apparent inability of the newly elected Turkish government and Denktas’s impotent representative to hold substantive, resultoriented negotiations.78

Copenhagen Presidency Conclusions gave the green light for Cyprus’s accession, but did not leave it free of the obligation to negotiate on the basis of the Annan Plan, which the European Council adopted. Paragraph 10 of the Conclusions reads accordingly: . . . In accordance with paragraph 3 above, as the accession negotiations have been completed with Cyprus, Cyprus will be admitted as a new Member State to the European Union. Nevertheless, the European Council confirms its strong preference for accession to the European Union by a united Cyprus. In this context it welcomes the commitment of the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots to continue to negotiate with the objective of concluding a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem by 28 February 2003 on

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the basis of the UNSG’s proposals. The European Council believes that those proposals offer a unique opportunity to reach a settlement in the coming weeks and urges the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities to seize this opportunity.79

In the next two paragraphs of the Conclusions on Cyprus, the European Council first recalled ‘its willingness to accommodate the terms of a settlement in the Treaty of Accession (§ 11) and, second, decided that, ‘in the absence of a settlement, the application of the acquis to the northern part of the island shall be suspended until the Council decides unanimously otherwise on the basis of a proposal by the Commission’ (§ 12). In the light of the Copenhagen Conclusions, the UN Secretary General sent a letter to the two parties (18 December 2002) in which he set a new timeframe for agreement by 28 February 2003, and the holding of the referendum on 30 March, in order that a reunited Cyprus signed the Accession Treaty.80 At the same time, he asked: (a) the leaders of the two communities to ‘focus on achieving agreement on the substantive issues’, (b) Greece and Turkey to ‘focus on reaching agreement and finalizing the security aspects of the Plan’ and (c) the technical committees, agreed upon on 4 October at the New York meeting, ‘to be appointed and begin meeting without delay to finalize laws and the list of treaties on the basis of the Plan of 10 December 2002’.81 In his report to the UNSC (1 April 2003), the Secretary General did not consider President Clerides in any respect to be responsible for not reaching an agreement in Copenhagen. As for the ‘non-committal position’ that Clerides had taken, the Secretary General pointed out that, ‘in view of the negative attitude of Denktas, the question whether the Greek Cypriot side would sign became theoretical’ (§ 47). Later in his report, commenting on the attitude of the two sides at the talks that had begun on 15 January, he noted that Denktas had sought changes that altered key concepts of the Plan, while he acknowledged that the changes Clerides had sought ‘were by and large within the parameters of the Plan’. He even added that Clerides had indicated to Denktas that, ‘should they not be able to agree on changes by the end of February, he would be prepared to sign the Plan as it stood’ (§ 49). With regard to security, the Secretary General noted that ‘the Government of Greece approached the Government of Turkey twice to begin talks on security without success’ (§ 50). Finally, referring to the technical committees, he praised the Greek Cypriot side for the significant work it had produced particularly in relation to the laws of the federal republic (§ 51). The ‘faultless’ stand of the Greek Cypriot side, as it emerges from the Secretary General’s report, continued with Clerides’s successor in the Presidency of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos. From the very first contacts he had with De Soto as President elect,82 he ‘underlined the continuity of his policy with that of Clerides, indicating that he did not wish to reopen key concepts in the

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Plan or matters already essentially agreed’. He only ‘raised a number of concerns regarding the workability and implementation of the Plan’.83 During his visit to Cyprus on 26 February 2003, the Secretary General submitted to the two sides the third revised version of his plan and the following day had a joint meeting with Papadopoulos, Clerides and Denktas. He then invited the two leaders, Papadopoulos and Denktas, to join him at a new meeting in The Hague on 10 March 2003. There, he would ask them to submit a reply as to whether they were prepared to put the Plan to separate referenda on 30 March without precluding the possibility that they would discuss and mutually agree on further changes prior to the referenda.84 The following day (28 February 2003), President Papadopoulos submitted in writing to the Secretary General positions he had put forward orally during their meeting and some ‘initial comments’ on the third revised plan of 26 February. In that document, having underlined the ‘paramount importance’ of the ‘workability’ of constitutional arrangements, he warned against the danger of paralysis of the federal government and the parallel operation of the constituent states if the necessary legislation was not in place prior to the entry into force of the agreement. Such a result, he noted, was the objective of Denktas’s delaying tactics in relation to the technical committees and the preparation of the laws of the federal state. In that document, Papadopoulos also stressed the need for the citizens to know the Plan as a whole at the time of the referendum. Later in the same document, he expressed reservations on certain provisions of the Plan, and made suggestions relating to the economy, settlers, the territorial issue (including return of the Karpas), properties, the return of displaced persons, the creation of a First Instance Federal Court and the ultimate withdrawal of Turkish troops. He also raised the matter of agreement between Greece and Turkey within the framework of the Treaty of Alliance prior to the referendum, and reserved his position to forward further observations when he had completed study of the revised plan of 26 February.85 Nevertheless, at The Hague meeting the Cypriot President confined himself to the framework defined by the Secretary General, suggesting only self-evident matters that included filling gaps and the commitment of Greece and Turkey on security issues. The Secretary General, in his report to the UNSC (1 April 2003), confirmed President Papadopoulos’ ‘faultless’ stand at the Hague meeting without leaving any doubt or shadow in relation to substance. It was only later developments that created suspicions about afterthoughts in his attempt to postpone the referenda until after the Accession Treaty. These suspicions will be examined below in conjunction with other facts. Meanwhile the Secretary General noted in his report, paragraph 56: . . . In The Hague, Mr Papadopoulos informed me that he was prepared to commit himself to putting the plan to referendum, as long as the people knew

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what they were being asked to vote on. To that end, he wished to be sure that the gaps regarding federal legislation, as well as constituent state constitutions, would be filled. He underlined the importance of Greece and Turkey agreeing and committing themselves to the security provisions in the plan. Furthermore, he claimed that considerably more time was needed than was available for proper public campaign on the referendum to be carried out. He said that those conditions needed to be fulfilled before a referendum could be held. He said he was prepared not to reopen the substantive provisions of the plan if the other side was prepared to do likewise.

As for the preconditions set out by President Papadopoulos, the Secretary General gave the following assessment: . . . As I have noted above, on 10 March 2003 at The Hague, Mr Papadopoulos agreed conditionally to my request that the plan be submitted to referendum, and he expressed the willingness not to reopen negotiations on the plan itself if Mr Denktas reciprocated in kind. The conditions which Mr Papadopoulos laid down to submit the plan to referendum were stringent. As reported above, I believe that it would have been possible, albeit extremely difficult, to complete the laws and treaties to be attached to the settlement. Turkey raised difficulties of a constitutional nature concerning the insistence of President Papadopoulos that the guarantors should sign the commitments foreseen in the plan before it was submitted to referendum. It would have been necessary to find a way around that. Mr Papadopoulos also argued that one or two months were required between the completion of the negotiations and the referendum; this would have exceeded the timeframe and prevented the signature of the Treaty of Accession by a reunited Cyprus. In the event, Mr Denktas’s rejection of my request to submit the plan to referendum made it pointless to press Mr Papadopoulos on these issues. Had the effort not fallen through, it would have been necessary for Mr Papadopoulos to agree that it is not feasible to script every element in the implementation of the plan, any more than it is possible to do so in any enterprise of state, and that it would have been necessary to hold the referenda no later than 6 April 2003.86

On the whole, the Secretary General presented a positive assessment of President Papadopoulos’s attitude, from the time of the latter’s involvement in the process until the end of the period covered by the former’s report of 1 April 2003. The Secretary General recognized that, although Papadopoulos assumed office at a very late stage, he ‘accepted that continuity existed with his predecessor’, and that, ‘while expressing misgivings concerning the plan [. . .] he vowed to refrain from requesting substantive alterations’, his main concern being to make improvements that would make the plan ‘workable in practice’.

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The Secretary General noted that Papadopoulos ‘did not attach great importance to coming to a settlement in time for a united Cyprus to sign the Treaty of Accession to the EU’. But he seemed to accept at its face value the Cypriot President’s reassurance that ‘the door to a settlement would remain open without any change after that date’.87 Finally, in the concluding chapter of his report ‘The way ahead’, the Secretary General seemed to be convinced of the President’s ‘continued desire to seek a settlement on the basis of (his) plan even after accession to the EU’ (§ 146). This truly ‘faultless’ stand, shown first by Clerides and then by Papadopoulos, allowed Cyprus to pass through the narrow straits of Copenhagen and The Hague without reviving among European leaders the suspicions and fears relating to accession prior to solution that they had expressed to Greek Premier Simitis in the process towards Helsinki. As a result, they did not find it necessary to make use of the Helsinki ‘tail’, despite relevant ‘warning shots’ and direct or indirect hints at it. One last matter, which would later be raised by President Papadopoulos in his effort to release himself from The Hague commitments, at least as far as the internal audience was concerned, is whether he put forward at The Hague additional conditions in order to put the Plan to referendum, in particular, whether he put forward at the Hague meeting the points included in the document he had submitted to the Secretary General on 28 February in Nicosia. The Secretary General’s report, so far the only independent and reliable source, nowhere includes any reference leading to such a conclusion. Nor does it emerge from the context that the President put before the Secretary General at The Hague any other matters or conditions beyond those that have already been referred to – that is, the completion of the federal legislation, the constituent state constitutions and the signing of the agreement on security by Greece and Turkey in accordance with the conditions set by the Plan, conditions that Papadopoulos nowhere seems to have questioned. The only additional matter that, according to the Secretary General’s report, was put forward by President Papadopoulos was the question of a longer time interval between an agreement and the referendum in such a way as to transfer the date of the referendum following the signing of the Treaty of Accession. However, this matter had no relation whatsoever to the provisions of the Plan, nor was it included in the 28 February document. What clearly emerges from the Secretary General’s report is that Tassos Papadopoulos stated at The Hague that he was prepared to accept, as it stood, Annan Plan III, once the gaps had been completed and the security issue had been settled between Greece and Turkey as provided by the Plan. Furthermore, the President himself, on his return from The Hague (11 March 2003), stated that the Greek Cypriot side had answered positively to the question of putting the Plan to referendum once the gaps had been completed and the security issue had been settled.88

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As emerges from what followed the signing of the Treaty of Accession, the acceptance of the Plan by Papadopoulos may have been a tactical move in the light of the almost certain prediction that Denktas’s intransigent attitude would help him escape the test of his preparedness to accept the Plan. However, whether or not this calculation was true, the weight of converging events made the President function within the framework defined by the Copenhagen Conclusions. Given that the Treaty of Accession was still pending, the ‘faultless’ stand that had been considered imperative at Copenhagen was still imperative at The Hague.89

8.4. Turkey–Turkish Cypriots: in search of an outlet The Hague deadlock signalled the beginning of the end of Denktas’s long hegemony over the Turkish Cypriots. Denktas’s dethronement from his ethnarchic pedestal had already been accomplished in the minds of the Turkish Cypriots through the revolutionary process that had begun to unfold in 2000.90 Consequently, the day following 11 March 2003 Turkish Cypriots promptly recognized in Denktas the one guilty of blocking the realization of their dreams. The CTP President Mehmet Ali Talat accused Denktas of being directly responsible for the collapse of the negotiating process and the loss of the opportunity to have the Cyprus problem solved by 16 April 2003, and thereby enter the EU. ‘With the support of powerful circles in Ankara, Denktas managed to influence decision-making centres,’ Talat pointed out, and added: ‘Being unable to take a decision, Turkey decided on the continuation of the status quo; this is suicidal for Turkey, as it will unavoidably affect its EU accession process.’ Finally, after setting out the demand for early elections, Talat concluded in a way that captured the feeling of the Turkish Cypriot community: ‘Therefore, the political climate has to change in the TRNC. And the climate will change when the composition of the Parliament changes and Denktas is no longer there’ (in the role of negotiator).91 Speaking in the same spirit, the TKP President Huseyin Angolemli accused Denktas of being responsible for ‘non-solution’. He also accused Ankara of supporting him, and, in parallel with Talat, he called for early elections.92 The Platforms ‘Common Vision’ and ‘This Country Is Ours’, in a joint statement, declared their refusal to accept the Hague results and their determination to continue their struggle for ‘solution-accession’.93 A few days later, the Platforms announced their decision to conduct a plebiscite among the Turkish Cypriots so as ‘to imprint the will of the people’.94 Turkish Cypriot papers received the news of the Hague collapse with indignation along with the fear that this was the end. Negligible exceptions were the Denktas-aligned nationalist papers Birlik and Volkan. The first called for ‘unity and rallying together’ in the face of the problems, while the second came

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out in a provocative headline against the Chairman of the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ali Erel, accusing him of accepting bribes from the EU in order to get Turkish Cypriots to accept the Annan Plan.95 Indignant reactions from the anti-Denktas press continued for days through editorials and articles and banner headlines carrying statements by De Soto, Verheugen and State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher, who all pointed directly to Denktas and Ankara for the collapse at The Hague.96 Talat and Angolemli also came back the following day with renewed attacks on Denktas and Ankara. On 13 March, Mehmet Ali Talat, during a meeting with the Italian Ambassador, asked him to convey to the UNSC and the EU a proposal of his that the Annan Plan be adopted as a UN official document and attached to Cyprus’s EU Accession Treaty.97 Talat brought this matter up again in a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, in which he suggested an addendum to the Accession Treaty to the effect that ‘the Annan Plan has been accepted as a basis for negotiation aiming at a lasting solution in Cyprus’.98 A similar proposal had been made by Mustafa Akinci, three days earlier. Speaking at a bi-communal gathering at Ledra Palace organized by OPEK, a Greek Cypriot NGO, he suggested that the Plan be attached to the Treaty of Accession through ‘political reference’, since incorporation was not legally possible.99 The message outlining a catastrophic diplomatic defeat was promptly conveyed from The Hague to Turkey itself. The Istanbul NTV channel broadcast from The Hague (11 March 2003) an announcement by the Commission to the effect that, ‘unless the Cyprus problem is solved, Turkey cannot be accepted in the EU’, and that, ‘in that case, it will be considered that Turkey is occupying EU territory’. If the strategy of the nationalist Turks and Denktas in blocking Cyprus’s accession to the EU foundered in Copenhagen, in The Hague, in addition to reinforcement of that defeat, Turkey’s accession process itself was endangered. While Prime Minister elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan100 was utterly bewildered,101 the Chief Editor of the Turkish Daily News, in a signed article, warned Turkey and the ‘TRNC’ about having to face ‘bitter consequences’ following The Hague. With regard to Turkey in particular, he recalled the Copenhagen Conclusions and suggested that Turkey’s path would henceforth be ‘uphill’.102 On the same day, Vatan, in a report on The Hague and the harsh position taken by the Commission, invoked Turkish political circles to predict that Turkish Cypriots would start leaving Cyprus en masse, as had happened with East Germany, and that Turkey would face serious problems in getting a date for EU accession negotiations.103 The following day, Alvaro de Soto, Mehmet Ali Birand’s guest on CNN Turk, openly accused Denktas of being responsible for the collapse at The Hague. He said in particular that Denktas had rejected both the basic principles

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and the philosophy of the Plan, while by contrast Papadopoulos, De Soto said, had not asked for any changes to the Plan and had consented to putting it to referendum should certain prerequisites be fulfilled.104 Mehmet Ali Birand, in criticizing Turkey’s attitude, expressed fears about its European perspective as a result of its stand on Cyprus. He recalled that the EU regarded Turkey as an invader in Cyprus, that its accession process would not move forward unless there was progress on Cyprus, and warned that in December 2004, when a decision was to be taken on the commencement of Turkey’s accession negotiations, Turkey would definitely face the dilemma: either the EU or Cyprus.105 In another article on Cyprus, Birand revealed his thought in the following way: . . . Cyprus is not a key that would open the door to Turkey’s full membership. On the other hand, Cyprus is a key that would keep the door firmly closed to Turkey’s full membership if no solution can be found. It would be highly useful to view the quests for a Cyprus solution in this perspective.106

While pressure on Denktas and de-legitimization of his authority were culminating through popular mobilizations, parties and political figures that opposed him began to organize and coordinate, their ultimate objective being to topple Denktas’s ‘government’ in the elections of 14 December 2003. On the way towards those elections, the political landscape was reshaped. Personalities until then independent of party commitments, spontaneous civil society groupings that emerged through the three-year popular uprising against Denktas, professional and labour trade unions that had stood up for solution and accession, as well as small, non-parliamentary political parties, all rallied together in broader coalitions around the left-of-centre opposition parties CTP and TKP. The CTP was reshaped, in view of the elections, as CTP-BG107 with new forces in its ranks. The TKP became the core of a broader coalition named BDH108 under the leadership of former TKP leader Mustafa Akinci, which would rally in its ranks, in addition to civil society groupings, the small parties ‘United Cyprus’ of Ozker Ozgur and Izzet Izcan and the ‘Patriotic Unity Movement’ of Alpay Durduran.109 To the right of these two coalitions, in an effort to rally bourgeois entrepreneurs against Denktas, the Chairman of the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ali Erel, founded a new party, the CABP (‘Solution and Accession Party’).110 All these opposition parties ‘set out to take control of the Assembly, to oust the ruling coalition, to replace the chief negotiator with one of their own, to resume peace negotiations, to finalize a deal on the basis of the Annan Plan, and to secure accession to the EU of a united Cyprus in May 2004’.111 In the countdown to the ousting of Denktas, the United states, the EU and the UN would play an important role. But more important, though low profile, was the role played by Tayyip Erdogan. An imminent blow to Denktas’s, as

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well as Turkey’s policy was the UN Secretary General’s report to the UNSC (1 April 2003). In describing Denktas’s attitude at The Hague, vis-à-vis that of President Papadopoulos, the Secretary General does not hold back: . . . Mr Denktas informed me that he was not prepared to agree to put the plan to referendum. He said he had fundamental objections to the plan on basic points. He believed that further negotiations were likely to be successful only if they began from a new starting point and if the parties agreed on basic principles. He added that Turkey was in any case not in a position to sign the statement requested of the guarantors. (§ 57) Turkey confirmed its inability to make the commitment that my plan required of the guarantors, citing previously unmentioned constitutional reasons. (§ 58)

In the chapter entitled ‘observations’ the Secretary General’s report was a catapult on Denktas, who ‘bears prime responsibility’for the failure of the latest UN effort, as he ‘declined to engage in negotiation on the basis of give and take’. ‘Mr. Denktas’, the Secretary General went on, ‘did not see the advantages in the proposals I put to the parties, and publicly presented the letter and import of the plan in a way that was at considerable variance from its actual content’. Though he had previously promised to put the plan to referendum and, in the event of positive results, to resign and let somebody else sign the agreement (which ‘had the support of Turkey’), ‘at The Hague [he] rejected my appeal to send the plan to referendum so that his people could decide on it’. ‘Faced with Mr Denktas’s adamant opposition to considering credible ways to meet that deadline, I was left with no alternative but to terminate the process’, the Secretary General concluded.112 Finally, in a style recalling a funeral speech, the Secretary General recapitulates Denktas’s career in a way that shows him incapable of following the course of history: . . . Mr Denktas has been very consistent over the decades in his views on the substance of the Cyprus problem. It is clear that his views are strongly and genuinely held. He does not accept that there has been a sea change from the confrontational atmosphere of the 1960s to the Europe that Cyprus is joining at the outset of the new millennium. He also seems to expect that his ‘realities on the ground’ will one day be legitimized. Unfortunately, a Cyprus settlement can be reached only if both sides are prepared to accept that this requires compromise and that the world has changed in the last 40 years. (§ 135)

In an effort to push the Turkish government towards putting its declarations into practice, the Secretary General places in juxtaposition Ecevit’s ‘uncondi-

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tional support of Denktas’ and Erdogan’s declarations that ‘non-solution is not a solution’, and concludes with a suggestion-based assessment of the situation: . . . I very much hope that this government, which has had to face extremely difficult circumstances immediately upon assuming office, will soon be in a position to throw its support unequivocally behind the search for a settlement, for, without that support, it is difficult to foresee one being reached.

The Secretary General’s report was unanimously adopted by the UNSC in Resolution 1475 of 14 April 2003. The Council ‘gave full support to the Secretary General’s carefully balanced plan of 26 February’, describing it as ‘a unique basis for further negotiations’. Moreover, in a move that went beyond its usual remit, the UNSC ‘expressed regret’, through Resolution 1475, ‘that, owing to the negative approach of the Turkish Cypriot leader, it had not been possible to put the Secretary General’s settlement plan to simultaneous referenda by Turkish and Greek Cypriots’. The decisive shift in the attitude of the international community towards Denktas had already been manifest since the historic rally of 14 January 2003. The Secretary General himself, after greeting the rally as the expression of popular will for reunification of Cyprus, noted that it was up to the people to decide on who their leader would be.113 In a similar manner, the State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher expressed support for the participants in the rally by saying that the massive protests showed that the Turkish Cypriots had realized the vast benefits offered by solution. Furthermore, in response to a comment that the US support of protest demonstrations against Denktas was a slap on his policy, Boucher replied that he did not think the US position was a surprise to Denktas. ‘It is well known’, he added, ‘that the US position is for a peaceful settlement on Cyprus’.114 Political observers had a clear idea as to the direction developments were taking: . . . The veteran Turkish Cypriot leader saw the carpet being pulled from under his feet. For the first time his 50-year-long hegemony over the Turkish Cypriot community was disputed. The contacts foreign mediators, and in particular Tomas Weston, had inaugurated with opposition leaders, as well as repeated statements by his opponents in favor of solution and accession, created a completely new situation’.115

In fact, in the period between the 14 January rally and The Hague, Weston multiplied contacts with opposition leaders. From the United states, Holbrooke appeared again to drive the final nail into Denktas’s coffin. Speaking at Columbia University, he openly called on the Turkish Cypriots to overthrow Denktas.116 The trend towards marginalizing Denktas was so widespread that TKP leader

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Huseyin Angolemli compared Denktas’s case with the parallel questioning of Arafat’s leadership at that time.117 Two months before the elections, Talat had inaugurated a series of contacts abroad with European leaders starting in London with Blair, Straw and McShane.118 A month later, Akinci and Erel went together to Strasbourg and had joint meetings with the President of the European Parliament Pat Cox, the Commissioner for Enlargement Gunter Verheugen and other high-ranking EU officials.119 A week later, Erel was invited to the EuroMediterranean Conference in Palermo (27–28 November 2003).120 As the 14 December elections were approaching, the US Coordinator on Cyprus Tomas Weston made his visits to the area more frequent, his presence more conspicuous and his expectations clearer that the election results might create the possibility of breaching the deadlock.121 His presence in itself, though unobtrusive, at an opposition rally along with Ambassador Michael Klosson sent a powerful message to Denktas.122 As far as the EU was concerned, apart from a considerable quantity of warnings and decisions that directly linked Turkey’s European perspective to a solution on Cyprus,123 it also turned to Denktas with regard to the steps that should be taken. Following the Hague collapse, the Foreign Relations Committee of the European Parliament adopted, with 57 votes in favour, 1 against, and 2 abstentions, Jacques Poos’s Report on Enlargement, which, in relation to Cyprus, held Denktas and his environment responsible for the deadlock and spoke of the disappointment and the indignation of a large segment of Turkish Cypriot civil society and the opposition parties that ‘continue massive demonstrations in favour of the Annan Plan and the EU’.124 A month later (5 June 2003), the plenary session of the European Parliament adopted, with a crushing majority of 216 to 75, Ari Oostlander’s report on Turkey’s application for EU accession, which expressed regret at the Hague collapse and called on the Turkish Cypriot leadership and the Turkish government ‘to take brave steps, in order that a just and workable solution to the Cyprus problem is found on the basis of the UN proposals’. A solution on Cyprus, the EU decision concluded, constituted a substantive condition for Turkey’s European bid to proceed.125 Two weeks later, Verheugen opened the EU door to the Turkish Cypriots, by declaring the EU’s will and preparedness to accept them, but on condition that the Cyprus problem was solved. There was no other alternative to the Annan Plan, he warned, and advised them not to believe that there could be a better solution.126 The messages were meant to be received by those they were addressed to. The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had become fully aware by that time that the attitude of Denktas and his ‘patrons’ in the ‘deep state’ impeded realization of Turkey’s crucial interests, as he assessed these.127 And, as he judged that he could not openly clash with the ‘deep state’, he saw a way out in the election of a new Turkish Cypriot leadership that would follow his lead

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– but only through extremely cautious initiatives in order not to cause reactions. A first covert attempt in the direction of bypassing Denktas through sending the Plan directly to referendum without Denktas’s signature can be traced to the UN Secretary General’s report to the UNSC, which has been cited above. This initial conception, regardless of whose idea it was, was methodically promoted until it was officially introduced in the New York Agreement (February 2004). However, the ‘ethnarchic’ carpet on which Denktas still stepped had first to be removed from under his feet. Against the background of a policy of contradictions, sometimes emotive reactions and regressions, which made a Turkish Cypriot paper write during the Hague crisis that Erdogan had begun to speak like Denktas,128 the researcher may easily pinpoint a manifestly different approach and a gradual distancing of Erdogan from Denktas. One first indication was given by the contacts the Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul held with the Turkish Cypriot political leadership (April 2003). The CTP and TKP leaders Talat and Angolemli, after separate meetings with Gul, said ‘they had the impression’ that Turkey would proceed in the direction of solution on the basis of the Annan Plan.129 One week later, Gul heralded the new approach by declaring perseverance with change but also ‘readiness to take into account the sensitivities of a transitive period’ so as to safeguard consensus.130 Following a meeting with his Greek counterpart, George Papandreou, Gul expressed the wish that ‘negotiations could restart after the elections in the TRNC’.131 A significant political act, which expressed the political will of the Erdogan government to work for a solution in Cyprus, was the acceptance of the ECHR decision (1998) on compensation to Titina Loizidou. It was a substantive initial step in the direction of compromise.132 Moreover, statements by Erdogan that ‘Turkey did not completely reject the Annan Plan’, and that ‘the Cyprus problem could be solved on the basis of the Annan Plan’, pointed in the same direction.133 Later, he took a step further beyond that of Gul in relation to expectations of the 14 December Turkish Cypriot elections. ‘The profile of the new administration that will emerge after the elections’, he said, ‘may determine what can be done during that period’.134 The message given by this statement of Erdogan and by a similar one in Majorca was emphasized in a statement by Tomas Weston in Ankara, in which he added that his government ‘[was] waiting for the outcome of the elections to launch new initiatives’, and stressed the need for the elections to be carried out ‘in a free and fair atmosphere’.135 An additional dimension of the attitude of Erdogan and his government towards Denktas was the maintaining of an equi-distant position vis-à-vis the opposition parties. This was unprecedented in Turkish Cypriot politics and clearly favoured the opposition. Both Erdogan and Gul took meticulous care, whenever they visited occupied Cyprus, also to see opposition leaders separately. They also received them in Ankara on an equal footing.

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Soon after The Hague, Denktas saw ‘Macbeth’s wood’ moving towards him. And, once again, he resorted to his familiar old tricks, on the one hand, of appeasing Turkish Cypriot indignation and, on the other, of blunting the negative climate by giving the impression of supposedly ‘new initiatives’. One week following The Hague, he leaked through a Turkish Cypriot paper a plan according to which, inter alia, he would open the gates to Turkish Cypriots wishing to move south, would allow them to become European citizens through receipt of passports issued by the Republic of Cyprus and would grant them free movement across the checkpoints and engagement in trade through ports and airports of the Republic.136 On 2 April 2003, he issued a letter he had sent to President Papadopoulos, in which he had called for confidence-building measures, including the opening of part of Famagusta and freedom of movement through the checkpoints, on condition the Greek Cypriot side withdrew all restrictions on trade, transports and tourism, as well as cultural and sports participation abroad.137 Seeing that these manoeuvres were not being taken on board by anyone, Denktas announced, on 21 April, the unilateral cancellation of restrictions on the movement of Greek Cypriots in the north, allowing them to pass through checkpoints on production of their passports. In the same announcement, he also allowed free exit of Turkish Cypriots to the south.138 Denktas’s primary aim was most probably to appease Turkish Cypriots. The possibility of employment in the south and internal tourism in the north, as well as the possibility of receiving a European passport, might relieve Turkish Cypriots from pressing economic problems, and might create the feeling of an outlet from isolation. Moreover, Denktas might have hoped that these measures would work, to some degree, as a substitute for the solution. Finally, as this emerged from Denktas’s statements, he evidently invested in shows of hostility, provoked by both sides, which he would then exploit to embed the logic of two nationally cleansed states, which he had persistently argued for.139 But events took a diametrically opposite course. The thousands of daily crossings south and north demolished Denktas’s myth of implacable hatred between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and the impossibility of their peaceful coexistence. Popular feeling recalled the downfall of the Berlin wall and strengthened expectations that Cyprus would at long last be reunified. ‘Mr NO’, a title borrowed by a Turkish Cypriot paper from Hurriyet, which had conveyed it from State Department circles,140 felt all at once at a loss. As elections were approaching, he resorted to the last-ditch defence tactic he had frequently used before whenever he had feared losing elections: the naturalization of Anatolian settlers. He had used this method extensively, mindful of additional objectives as well, since 1985.141 He had no hesitation whatsoever in using it again. In just the last three months prior to the elections, he had given citizenship to and enrolled in the electoral lists a number of settlers

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amounting to nearly 4,000.142 The opposition fiercely denounced this machination, even to Verheugen during their visit to Strasbourg.143 Mustafa Akinci, during his meeting with Erdogan in Nicosia, handed him a dossier with evidence documenting the accusations levelled at Denktas for automatic enrolments in electoral lists.144 The following day, Denktas resorted once again to the old game of ‘patriotic rallying together’ by branding Akinci a traitor who ‘had made a profession out of slandering Turkey and the state at any place’.145 Even TMT-B was recruited to remind Akinci and the rest of his kind of the ‘heroic’ past, through ‘symbolic’ night attacks.146 In one additional act of ingenuity by the Denktas regime, a few days before the elections, unsigned announcements were selectively placed under the doors of settlers informing them that, in the event of a solution, they would be loaded onto ships and sent to Turkey while the properties given to them would be returned to the Greeks.147 In the meantime, after releasing a new ‘solution plan’ of his own, providing for two states and a central ‘umbrella’ state to exercise foreign policy, Denktas directly accused the EU and, indirectly, the opposition parties and organizations of bribery, which, he said, ‘the Turkish Cypriots would not accept if the price to pay would be their honour’.148 Turkish army officers were also recruited in the service of Denktas’s policy. Initially, they came out in public with inflammatory speeches against the proposed solution and particularly against the opposition for being ready to sell out.149 Another aspect of their intervention included the circulation among Turkish Cypriot recruits of a brochure that described Denktas as a ‘mythical hero’ who had saved the Turks of Cyprus,150 and confinement to barracks on election day so that they might thus ‘guide’ voting.151 Moreover, Denktas had the TV channels at his disposal. He controlled the state radio and TV Station ‘BRT’, as well as four other private TV channels. In contrast, the opposition enjoyed stronger support among the local press.152 Printed media may appeal more to politicized citizens of some educational standard, but they are no match for the electronic media, TV in particular, which exert an incomparably more powerful and direct influence. It was not accidental that opinion polls found citizens of higher educational standards aligning themselves with the opposition and supporting solution. One additional ally of Denktas was the conservative trend taken by party patriotism. Despite the opposition’s attempt to turn the elections into a referendum for solution,153 it could not completely uproot traditional party alignments in a party contest such as the 14 December elections. Positions taken by President Papadopoulos, in which he put the opposition in the same basket as Denktas, in relation to their perception of the solution, must have worked indirectly towards party cohesiveness. The impression he gave in particular that there was no solution prospect in the near future made the voter put aside his or her desire for a solution and return to his or her traditional party affiliation. However, the radicalization of the electoral behaviour of indigenous Turkish Cypriots, as

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becomes evident from relevant research, confirms and verifies the revolution by the Turkish Cypriots against Denktas.154 The conditions that have been described together with the factors that worked against the opposition during the pre-election period explain, to some extent, the limiting of the opposition to a marginal victory.155 Nevertheless, even the opposition’s marginal victory and the compromise imposed with the TalatSerdar coalition ‘government’ did not prevent the accession of Talat to the premiership and thence to the position of Turkish Cypriot negotiator in the crucial negotiations at Bürgenstock. This minor victory may not have ‘dethroned’ Denktas from his position as the Turkish Cypriot community’s representative immediately after the elections. But it brought about a diminution of his power to such an extent that he was compelled to ‘submit’ to Erdogan’s ‘road map’ in New York and, at the decisive moment in Bürgenstock, to leave the battlefield.

8.5. Tassos Papadopoulos: reneging on the Hague commitment The Hague deadlock worked as a catalyst within the Turkish Cypriot community and Turkey in the search for a means to a solution. Underpinning this new direction was the removal, or at least the bypassing, of Denktas, as he constituted the main obstacle in achieving a solution on the basis of the Annan Plan. However, within the Greek Cypriot community, The Hague was viewed solely as the successful overcoming of the last hurdle in the EU accession process. And the signing of the Treaty of Accession in Athens, on 16 April 2003, worked as a point of gradual departure from the proposed solution. The architect of this regressive attitude proved to be President Papadopoulos himself. Having locked on to accession through the Accession Treaty, he gradually and almost undetectably developed a plan that aimed at putting the Hague commitment aside. In practical terms, this meant striking off the agenda of future negotiations the President’s commitment undertaken at The Hague to put the Plan to referendum, provided the conditions he had put forward were fulfilled. One possible explanation of the President’s intentions may relate to the logic that, since the Plan had been rejected by Denktas, and since there was still time for negotiation before 1 May 2004, the final deadline for accession of a reunited Cyprus, it was quite reasonable to seek further negotiation in order to redress existing weaknesses in the Plan. Such an effort could not have been considered inadmissible, nor could it have been viewed as backtracking from acceptance of the Plan at The Hague – provided, of course, that the effort was directed towards achieving feasible improvements sustained by the international community, which would have undertaken a substantial role in making them accepted by the other side. The possibility, even the need, for certain changes was

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recognized by both the United states and the EU and it was expressed in a most reliable manner by Weston and Verheugen.156 Indeed, given the diplomatic effort to bypass Denktas and help towards the accession to power of a new leader in the Turkish Cypriot community positively disposed to the proposed solution, such an effort by President Papadopoulos was most likely to succeed. It should be noted in this regard that, even when Greek and Turkish Cypriots voiced their demand that the Plan be sealed through relevant reference in the Accession Treaty, they left open the possibility to ‘balanced amendments’ acceptable to the EU and the UN while Denktas’s intransigent stand blocked further negotiation.157 But bare facts, as these will be set out below, lead one to the conclusion that the Cypriot President’s objectives went far beyond the explanation given above. Both the way in which decommitment from The Hague was handled, and the almost invisible objectives of which the President was evidently in pursuit, led rather towards gradual neutralization and the ultimate burial of the proposed solution if substantive changes to basic provisions were not achieved. Indeed, the President’s haste in making a ‘funeral’ of the Annan Plan, on his return from The Hague, was not accidental. Following expression of warm thanks to the Secretary General and the UN negotiating team for the work they had done, he said that ‘their work will not be in vain and will not be lost, but it will be a useful tool and a useful basis for the future’.158 However, prior to the burial, which he saw as the end of the process, his immediate target was to extricate himself from the YES he had articulated at The Hague. Strands of this strategy might be traced back to the Hague meeting itself. At three points in his report to the UNSC,159 the Secretary General noted the Cypriot President’s obsession with a time interval between agreement and referendum of such a length as to place the referendum after the signing of the Treaty of Accession. The Secretary General noted further that Papadopoulos ‘did not attach great importance to coming to a settlement in time for a united Cyprus to sign the Treaty of Accession’ (§ 139), while giving credit to his affirmation that ‘the door to a settlement would remain open without any change160 after that date’ (§ 139). Had Tassos Papadopoulos genuinely intended to accept the Annan Plan at The Hague, he would not have insisted on such a long period, thus transposing the referendum, and consequently the entry into force of the Agreement, after the Treaty of Accession. And, if he had genuinely believed in the cause of the proposed solution, which necessitated fulfilling the most stringent requirements for its implementation, he should have been aware that his attempt to deprive the Turkish Cypriots of the opportunity to put their signature to the Treaty of Accession was not in any way helpful in this regard. Unless at the back of his mind he calculated that, in the event that the new state was dissolved, the party that had signed the Treaty of Accession would have gained an advantage. However, when you decide

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to proceed with a compromise that involves power sharing, it is of vital importance to make it succeed. And such a target cannot be achieved on the basis of calculations of questionable advantages in the event of dissolution. An additional plausible interpretation of the President’s attitude, which also explains his later behaviour, involves his having calculated the use of the timeframe argument as a ‘second line of defence’ if, contrary to his expectations, Denktas followed him in accepting the Plan. Regardless of his real intentions, such an insistence would certainly have complicated the situation, would probably have pushed Denktas to uncontrolled reaction and would ultimately have led to deadlock. Such an eventuality left Tassos Papadopoulos a hope – a dim hope – of avoiding the charge of being solely responsible for the deadlock. Denktas’s ‘godsend’ NO saved him from such a tribulation. But the Secretary General’s remark that, ‘had the effort not fallen through, it would have been necessary for Mr Papadopoulos to agree that [. . .] it would have been necessary to hold the referenda no later than 6 April 2003’ (§ 140), is eloquent enough as to the pressure that would have been put on the Cypriot President’s ‘second line of defence’ and as to the possible consequences for the Greek Cypriot side had he intransigently insisted on this condition. In any case, he had a convincing alibi at the time in his affirmation to the Secretary General that the door to a settlement would remain open ‘without any change’, even after the signing of the Treaty of Accession. But his attitude following the signing of the Treaty constituted a clear reneging on this commitment. A pre-taste of what would follow was given by the prompt rejection of suggestions by Turkish Cypriot opposition leaders for an annex to the text of the Accession Treaty referring to the Annan Plan as a basis for a solution on Cyprus161 and, more significantly, the behind-the-scenes effort to thwart adoption of the Annan Plan by the UNSC following the Secretary General’s report.162 On the eve of signing the Treaty of Accession, Foreign Minister Iakovou stated that,‘in the light of the new conditions, the Annan Plan has to be amended’ and made concrete reference to ‘virgin birth’, which, he said, could no longer be valid following the signing of the Treaty of Accession.163 A press report that was not denied quoted Iakovou as telling Weston that ‘as a result of Cyprus’, accession some changes should inevitably be made to the Annan Plan’. According to the same report, the government of Cyprus had made it clear to Weston that ‘there [was] no question of the virgin birth of a new state but simply of devolution of the Republic of Cyprus as an EU member state’. The report further claimed that Weston partly adopted the above argument for changes, while clarifying that there could not have been ‘drastic changes’ to the Plan.164 The rejection, in particular, of the new name and the ‘creative ambiguity’ of the ‘virgin birth’ was not a minute change emanating form Cyprus’s EU accession. In fact, this meant outright rejection of the rationale on which the Plan as a whole had been built.165

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Acting within this mindset, President Papadopoulos rejected suggestions that he send a letter to the Secretary General and ask for resumption of negotiations aiming at a solution on the basis of the Annan Plan.166 He said he was prepared for negotiations on the basis of the Annan Plan, ‘but which needs to be amended’, and recalled that ‘our side has from the outset set some conditions’.167 In reply to persistent questions by reporters on the letter issue, the Government Spokesman kept repeating that the President insisted on having ‘negotiations on the substance’.168 Moreover, he opposed a ‘unilateral commitment of our side at this stage to accepting the Annan Plan as it stands today’ because ‘this weakens our position’. ‘What the Secretary General demands’, he added, ‘is acceptance of his Plan as it is without discussion of any substantial issues, and its putting to referendum’.169 ‘Negotiations on the substance’ clearly aimed at substantive changes. And the Spokesman certainly did not mean the necessary procedural changes as a result of the signing of the Treaty of Accession. Both Ambassador Klosson and Tomas Weston spoke in favour of such necessary changes. But they both clarified, thus sending a clear message to Papadopoulos, that ‘this does not mean the Annan Plan is open to drastic changes’.170- A turning point in the strategy of escape from The Hague was President Papadopoulos’s interview with To Vima (11 May 2003).171 Initially, he denied that he had accepted the Plan at The Hague and rejected the ‘faultless’ stand he had demonstrated between his election and The Hague: . . . Prior to Copenhagen, they said: We shall either accept the Annan Plan in its present form or there will be no accession of Cyprus to the EU. I was not one of them. Despite their predictions, we have met no obstacle in entering the EU without having accepted the Plan as it is; and I am saying this while fully aware of what this means. The EU was not hesitant in accepting us because we had not accepted the Annan Plan.172

It has to be noted, however, that the President met no obstacle in Athens because he had already accepted the Annan Plan at The Hague as it actually was. It was only after having signed the Treaty of Accession that he returned to the initial general position of accepting the Plan simply as a basis for negotiation. This was the reason, he further explained in the interview, why he rejected suggestions that he call on the Secretary General to try again; because the Secretary General ‘insists that his Plan be accepted as it is’. He then put the rhetorical question: ‘Therefore, why should we accept the Annan Plan in its present form, now that our position has been strengthened?’173 And, while he admitted that any changes to the Plan should not touch upon its ‘philosophy’ but should simply render it ‘functional’, he rejected core provisions of the Plan, such as the Presidential Council and weighted majorities, which he identified with veto powers. Moreover, he rejected human-rights restrictions

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such as ‘the right to property and ‘the right of democratic election of Parliament’. Asked whether ‘in order to have changes that favour your side, there should be parallel changes that favour the Turks’, he retorted: ‘I have never accepted this theory’, and concluded: ‘The Plan is not balanced.’174 In an interview with Fileleftheros, published on the same day as that in To Vima, President Papadopoulos spoke again of the need of changes to the Plan.175 He spoke of ‘signs that broad circles within the European Commission are not happy with certain provisions of the Plan as they consider them to constitute unacceptable derogations from the acquis communautaire’. He also expressed the hope that ‘our negotiating power will be increased’ and that ‘these derogations will be lifted within the framework of the negotiations’. However, facts do not corroborate the ‘signs’ that the President saw, nor his hopes of strengthening Cyprus’s negotiating position. Here we are certainly talking of political strengthening, which is closely connected with power balances in the region. Such balances did not change with the signing of the Treaty of Accession. The need for the Plan to ‘be improved and amended under the new conditions in order that a viable and functional solution might be achieved’ was also stressed by the President in a speech at the Employers and Industrialists Federation (14 May 2003).176 The following day a reporter asked the Government Spokesman whether ‘foreign mediators might become suspicious of our intentions owing to recent statements by government officials on the Annan Plan’, given that ‘in The Hague we accepted its basic provisions but now we are saying – I have in mind the President’s interview with To Vima, the Foreign Minister’s statements at the CBC, as well as statements of yours – that quite a lot of the Plan’s substantive provisions have to be amended’. The Spokesman’s reply was, more or less, an attempt to square the circle! It was a desperate attempt to cover contradictions, although it only managed to deepen confusion.177 The same climate of confusion arose as a result of further statements by the President during the presentation of Ambassadors’ credentials, which monotonously repeated the generalized formula of ‘a viable and functional solution’ that ‘should comply with UN resolutions, international legality and the acquis’. 178 However, it was evident that President Papadopoulos could not convince any influential player within the international community of the sweeping changes he apparently had in mind when he insistently repeated his acceptance of the Plan as a ‘basis for negotiation’ but not as a ‘basis for solution’.179 Reference has already been made to the position of the United states, as this was expressed by the Special State Department Coordinator on Cyprus Tomas Weston and the US Ambassador Michael Klosson. As for the Secretary General’s position, he was adamant – and the President was fully aware of this180 – that he was not prepared to discuss basic provisions of his Plan, a Plan that had been unanimously adopted by the UNSC.181 As for the EU, its position had

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been made amply clear both in statements by its top officials and in decisions by its institutional bodies, which have already been referred to, that it considered the Annan Plan satisfactory. The EU had further declared its willingness to accommodate existing arrangements, as well as others that might be agreed upon by the parties involved, into the acquis communautaire. As an additional response to the Cypriot President’s interviews came an interview by the EU Ambassador Adriaan van der Meer, which dispelled myths concerning the European attitude.182 The Ambassador called for a return to the UN process ‘on the basis of the conditions set out by the Secretary General in his report which were adopted by the UNSC in Resolution 1475’. ‘For us, as the EU’, he added, ‘this is the only way forward’. To the question of whether the state proposed in the UN Plan could effectively function within the EU, the EU Ambassador was adamant: ‘The answer is an adamant YES; as the Plan fulfils our minimum requirements. Cyprus will be able to speak with one voice in the EU organs.’ ‘I firmly believe’, he concluded, ‘that the Annan Plan can safeguard the smooth functioning of Cyprus within the EU as a member state.’ Tassos Papadopoulos, aware that he could not find allies in the three pivotal centres of decision making (the United states, the UN and the EU) for the changes he had in mind, turned to a fourth ally, time. Since, in his opinion, which he would first publicly expound in his declaration of 7 April 2004, the proposed solution was worse than the status quo, he reverted to his theory held in previous decades according to which the maintenance of the status quo was the ‘second best solution’.183 Admittedly, full documentation of this hypothesis in relation to Papadopoulos’s mindset during this period cannot be made.184 However, this hypothesis adequately explains the almost complete standstill that characterized the President’s attitude between The Hague and December 2003. The only plausible explanation, corroborated by the evidence cited above, is that his sole aim was to avoid by all means the return of the Annan Plan either in its proposed form or in a form that admitted only minor changes. As for his rejection, following the Treaty of Accession, of the suggestion that he ask the Secretary General for a new round of negotiations, it might plausibly be maintained that the other side might certainly not have reciprocated. But his reneging on what had reportedly been agreed with Greek Premier Simitis, during the latter’s visit to Cyprus following the Treaty of Accession, cannot be explained otherwise than by a strategy based on unwillingness to proceed. In particular, the two leaders had reportedly agreed to form a joint team of experts whose remit was to explore the needs and possibilities of changes to the Annan Plan, to prioritize these changes, to document the need for these changes and to prepare concrete proposals to be placed on the negotiation table when talks resumed.185 This joint team produced no joint work, despite the fact that the Greek experts had elaborated separately on a series of issues in relation to changes to be proposed. Inexplicably enough, the Cypriot

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side, while avoiding any contacts with Greece, which definitely possessed the European experience, assigned American academics a study on the incompatibility of provisions in the Annan Plan with the acquis communautaire.186 Papandreou’s visit to Nicosia (10 September 2003) set in motion the process of elaborating on the changes to be proposed, so that, during the talks between Simitis and Papadopoulos in Athens (16 September 2003), political decisions might be taken on priority issues.187 However, despite the façade of unanimity in Athens, ‘no progress was made in codifying the list of changes, in setting priorities, and in undertaking an organized campaign in search of allies’.188 While Simitis and Papadopoulos were concluding their talks in Athens, De Soto, Weston, Maurer and Hannay were at Harvard as participants in a discussion on Cyprus. All four put forward the framework of changes that could be supported by the United states, the UN and the EU. These changes could be summarized as follows: changes regarding dates, the shortening of timeframes for free movement and settlement (because of experience following the opening of checkpoints) and reduction in the length of the transitional period (this being connected with the bypassing of Denktas). ‘There are no margins for changes which might disturb the balances of the Plan,’ all four mediators maintained, while recalling the Cypriot President’s commitment at The Hague ‘not to reopen any substantive issue relating to the Plan’.189 Despite these warning signals, however, President Papadopoulos seemed determined to proceed with his strategy, which he ultimately ‘enforced’ on Simitis during their talks in Athens on 25–6 November 2003.190 Faced with a difficult pre-election period, and further foreseeing the consequences of an open breach between Greece and Cyprus, the Greek government had no other option but to concede to the Cypriot President the privilege of making decisions on Cyprus through seeking refuge in the Karamanlis dogma: ‘Cyprus decides and Greece backs its decisions.’ The President’s last visit to Athens had been preceded by an interview he had with Politis, in which he had pre-empted discussion through the adopting of hard-line positions, culminating in the overt declaration that he ‘would never sign at The Hague’, even if Denktas had accepted the Plan.191 Having until then managed, through inertia and delaying tactics, and Denktas’s contribution in the same direction, to avoid a return of the Annan Plan either as it was or with the minor changes the UN were prepared to accept, Tassos Papadopoulos apparently felt confident enough to send out to all a clear message announcing complete escape from The Hague. In parallel, the piecingtogether of a strategy of rejection must have been at work in the President’s mind. He would certainly have been happier if, with the help of Denktas, he had managed to bury the Annan Plan without being forced to reject it.

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8.6. Piecing together a strategy of rejection The strategy of rejection of the Annan Plan was certainly not a personal caprice on the part of Tassos Papadopoulos. Nor was this strategy devoid of rational thinking. Its basic theoretical premiss, repeatedly voiced by Papadopoulos in the past, was that, as long as Turkey insisted on continuing its aggression against Cyprus, it was not possible to reach a negotiated settlement that would be better than the status quo. A solution within such a framework, he repeatedly argued, would make the Turks ‘absolute masters in the North and partners in the South’. Whereupon, according to this line of thought, the status quo was ‘the second best solution’, and, in any case, better than a settlement that, on the same analysis, would legalize the fait accompli of invasion and occupation. To the extent that a proposed solution legalized, through our signature, the fait accompli of the invasion, it was unacceptable, and should therefore be rejected. And it was precisely the element of legalization of the fait accompli of the invasion that the President saw in the Annan Plan: . . . Acceptance of the Annan Plan in its present form does not constitute an initiative. On the contrary, it constitutes acceptance of the fait accompli of invasion and occupation. We have no right to make such an acceptance. We have no right to become accomplices in the dissolution of the Republic of Cyprus. We have no right to surrender the legality of our legal state.192

This was his reply, given in a speech on 15 July 2003, the anniversary of the 1974 coup, to those who persistently called on him to undertake an initiative for the resumption of negotiations. In the face of a storm of reaction to the above statement, the Government Spokesman desperately tried to ascertain the willingness of the Greek Cypriot side for ‘negotiations on the substance’ aimed at ‘improvements and amendments for the benefit of both communities in order that the Plan might conform with the acquis communautaire’. In further elaborating, the Spokesman affirmed that ‘the basic acceptance of the philosophy of the Annan Plan simply means acceptance of the agreed basis of a solution of bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’.193 It was thereby revealed that acceptance of the ‘philosophy’ of the Annan Plan, to which the President had repeatedly paid lip service, actually stripped the Plan of its basic provisions, leaving a void of content and vague reference to ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’, to which lip service was paid even by those who were suggesting outright rejection of the Plan. Two more points in the President’s 15 July speech need further elaboration. The first is the absolute position regarding his refusal to accept a solution that implied acceptance of the fait accompli of the invasion. The compromise provided by the Annan Plan in fact includes principles that are tantamount to

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acceptance of certain fait accompli of the invasion. Such principles include the ‘bi-zonality’ and the ‘bi-communality’ of the federation, and even the federation itself, the alienation of citizens from part and, in some cases, the whole of their properties, restrictions on the exercise of individual rights to return and resettlement, and existence of large numbers of settlers who remain, particularly in relation to the number of Turkish Cypriots. However, the basic parameters of the proposed solution, such as federation along with its bi-zonal and bi-communal character, had been accepted by Makarios in 1977 for reasons that have already been explored.194 Alienation from properties and restrictions on individual rights regarding settlement and election of federal organs emanate in many respects from the ‘guiding principles’ of the Four Guideline Agreement of 1977, in particular from ‘bi-zonality’ and ‘bi-communality’. Consequently, the crux of the matter does not lie in the acceptance or rejection of certain fait accompli of the invasion, but in the question of where one places the borderline for compromise. And there is not a golden mean. This is because the limits of the feasible are so interrelated to multilevel combinations and balances and possibilities of political intervention, as well as to the interpolation of the human factor, that they escape a static, universally accepted and verifiable reality. This brings us to the second comment, focusing on the sense of duty – that is, the moral dimension inbuilt in the President’s approach: ‘We have no right to make such an acceptance.’ To the notion of duty as an absolute moral imperative, the President would return in his speech on the national day of the Republic: . . . I do not know, and I am not in a position to assess, whether our objective in terms of improvements to the Annan Plan can be achieved, so that it might become more functional and henceforth more viable. But it is our duty to try. Our people and history will pass severe judgement on us if we do not try, if we do not show consistency and determination, if we do not rally all our power, and if we do not obtain all out support from our people and Greece in this our effort.195

In another speech, on the anniversary of 28 October 1940, the date on which Greece had said NO to fascism, he further elaborated on the concept of duty, as an absolute moral imperative: . . . It is high time we come face to face with history. It is high time we reposition, in its right dimensions, our duty towards our historical heritage as well as towards future generations. On this occasion, we reaffirm our irrevocable decision not to accept consolidation and legalization of the fait accompli of the invasion, which will draw borders, will establish ethnically cleansed areas in Cyprus, and will write off

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the human rights and basic freedoms of our people. We shall continue our effort to trace the fate of our missing and we shall do our utmost to safeguard the inalienable right of the refugees to return to their ancestral lands.196

Apart from the overtones of an ethnarchic role that these passages signal through recourse to the ‘fighting spirit’ of Makarios’s heritage, they recall the weberian notion of the ‘ethic of conviction’ according to which the pursuit of absolute objectives, morally and emotionally charged, outweighs rational examination and realistic exploration of the possible consequences of a particular political choice. One major parameter of this approach by the President was the conviction that there was no substantive change in Turkey’s policy on Cyprus. It was a shallow, prejudiced conviction that ignored radical social and economic changes effected in Turkey since the 1980s, as it ignored the fact that these changes had undermined the monopoly of power by the Kemalist establishment and had created new axes of power through the emergence of a small yet dynamic entrepreneurial class. It was an approach that ignored the fact that Turkey’s paramount interests made the solution of the Cyprus problem an imperative. Papadopoulos’s failure to comprehend the new complex reality in Turkey was the result of the lack of knowledge through systematic processing of information that a ‘think tank’ might have afforded him.197 The President’s perception of Turkey’s policy was shaped mainly through monitoring of statements by Turkish officials,198 which, in appealing each time to a particular audience and serving certain temporary objectives, were in no way sufficient to inform an overall perception of the forces that moved history in Turkey. This narrow-minded approach deprived him of the ability to make reliable predictions as to the direction Turkey might take on a number of major issues interconnected with Cyprus. His shallow and static perception of Turkey did not allow him to realize that the convergence of developments made it imperative for Turkey to seek a solution on Cyprus. As a result, he failed to chart his policy accordingly. In his declaration of 7 April 2004, his line of thought leading to the rejection of the UN Plan focused on the following dogmatic conviction: . . . On taking up my duties, I was given an internationally recognized state. I am not going to give back ‘a community’ without a say internationally, and in search of a guardian. And all this in exchange for empty and misleading aspirations, in exchange for the groundless illusion that Turkey will keep her promises. 199

It was obvious that the President denied Turkey the political will for a solution on Cyprus. This was evident in his refusal to admit that his judgements

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on Turkey’s intentions were belied by actual facts both in New York and in Bürgenstock. ‘Throughout my talks with President Papadopoulos’, Weston recalls, ‘I always had the impression that he had never believed that something different was happening in Turkey. [. . .] I think he could not comprehend that Turkey was undergoing a process of unprecedented dynamic developments which created opportunities for a settlement.’200 . . . I tried at length to persuade President Papadopoulos [Weston continues] to make use of the advantage of what I considered a clear change in the political dynamics. Part of these dynamics was the fact that Turkey wanted a solution. It had the will for it. In part my disappointment was that he could not see what was happening; he could not see that Denktas was rejected by Turkey and that he had been put aside. 201

The same approach had been observed in Foreign Minister Iakovou by the Greek Ambassador Christos Panagopoulos, who briefed his government accordingly in a telegram dated 8 January 2004: . . . The long expected change in the Turkish attitude, if it is corroborated, is not received here as a genuine expression of political will for a solution on Cyprus, but rather as a tactical manoeuvre by Ankara to bypass, without the paying of any penalty, any pressure exercised in relation to Cyprus. 202

Even after the meeting at Davos (24 January 2004) between the Turkish Premier and the Secretary General, at which Erdogan opened the way for the resumption of result-oriented negotiations and stated that ‘Turkey will be one step ahead of the Greek side’,203 Iakovou ‘insisted, during meetings with foreign diplomats, on describing the shift in Turkey’s policy on Cyprus as “tactical manoeuvres” and “moves intended to create impressions”.’204 The static conception of Turkey by Tassos Papadopoulos was also transferred to his approach to developments within the Turkish Cypriot community. He did not manage to follow, nor did he give the necessary attention to the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas. Nor did he seem to have realized that all such Turkish Cypriot opposition forces, which had been out in the streets for three years against the Denktas regime, were his potential allies in a compromise settlement. Otherwise, he would have sought out channels of communication and would have tried to come to terms with them. The embarrassment exhibited in the way he dealt with the opening of the checkpoints and his defensive legalistic approach, which limited a political development of huge dimensions to a case of showing passports,205 were demonstrative of the failure of the President, and the National Council as a whole, to decode the dynamic of the rapid developments and intervene decisively in

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order to utilize the new data. A comment by George Kaskanis illustrated the volume and the intensity of the challenge: . . . In the face of these developments, the winner will be the one who has a concrete policy to put forth; the one who, through radical initiatives proportionate to the situation, will open up new avenues. [. . .] Certainly, there is always another path: that of creating the preconditions for entrenchment of each side in the positions it has maintained so far. No doubt, Denktas is of this mindset. What about us? 206

Later, this same defensive legalistic approach by the President was to determine his negative position towards monitoring the crucial 14 December Turkish Cypriot elections by international observers.208 The problem was that all these opposition forces accepted the Annan Plan as a basis for a solution and openly declared their intention immediately to promote a solution on the basis of the UN Plan once they had won the elections. This position of theirs caused great embarrassment to the President, who must have seen in Denktas his real ally!208 After all, it was Denktas’s unyieldingly rejectionist attitude that had saved Tassos Papadopoulos at The Hague. But now, if the opposition won the elections and realized its declared intention to appoint a new negotiator, he would no longer have the cover that Denktas’s NOs had offered him. Of course, he could not openly take a position in favour of Denktas. But he could do a lot substantially to strengthen the current against Denktas if he genuinely wished for a compromise on the basis of the Annan Plan. To the President’s challenge: ‘I want to hear of anyone who could enumerate for me the initiatives we can take towards a solution, apart from calling for talks’,209 Ahmet Cavit An responded: ‘He can make the people [the Turkish Cypriots] believe that their future lies in their participation in a common state with the Greek Cypriots.’ Ahmet An proceeded further with concrete suggestions: (a) he might appoint a Commissioner for Turkish Cypriot affairs; (b) he might form a policy-planning Committee and have Turkish Cypriots participate in it; (c) He might invest money in translations into Greek and Turkish of respective works so that the common culture of the two communities might be projected; (d) he might utilize CBC productions for the Turkish Cypriots so as to project their distinct culture and thus encounter Denktas’s policy of turkification; (e) he might take practical measures so that Turkish Cypriots were viewed as equal citizens at all government levels and participate, where possible, in charting policies.210 Ahmet Cavit An was not ‘anybody’. He had suffered unmitigated persecution by the Denktas regime. He was the Turkish Cypriot who had indicted Turkey to the ECHR for violating his individual right to have contacts with the

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free areas of Cyprus.211 Ahmet An’s suggestions are simply indicative of the wide range of initiatives that President Papadopoulos might have taken. Such human initiatives would not only have not been a substitute for solution, but would have generated the necessary political climate for the undertaking of new political initiatives. The atmosphere of trust that George Papandreou established through his direct personal contacts with Turkish Cypriots, during working visits to Cyprus (September 2003, February 2004), did in fact light up the path. But Tassos Papadopoulos, though on his own initiative he had secret meetings with the son of Rauf, Serdar Denktas, both prior to and after Bürgenstock, aiming most probably at the postponement – and through this the cancellation – of the referenda,212 exhibited provocative indifference to establishing channels of direct contact and coming to an understanding with the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot opposition. Had he had a genuine solution strategy on the basis of the Annan Plan through compromise, coming to terms with Turkish Cypriot opposition forces would have been a key prerequisite.213 Preparing the ground for the Greek Foreign Minister’s contacts, Greek Euro MP Myrsini Zorba (PASOK) spent whole days in contacts with Turkish Cypriot opposition leaders and gave, in practical terms, the type of initiatives that transcended ‘psychological barriers’ and created the climate required for a coming-together.214 The Turkish Cypriot journalist Hasan Kahvecioglu, who had played an active role in the uprising against Denktas, pointed out the ‘negative feelings’ transmitted by statements and comments by the President on the Annan Plan, and added: ‘I would not like to suggest to Mr Papadopoulos what he should and what he should not say. But, as a Turkish Cypriot who considers Denktas chiefly responsible for the deadlock on Cyprus, I have to observe that Papadopoulos’s statements play fiddle to the no-solution forces.’215 No doubt, the President’s positions on the Annan Plan, such as those in his 15 July speech and the interview with Politis, conveyed to the Turkish Cypriots the message that, even if they removed from Denktas the role of the negotiator, Tassos Papadopoulos would reject the proposed solution, and would thus thwart the prospect of a solution. Such a message seriously undermined the opposition’s campaign to turn the 14 December elections into a ‘referendum for solution-accession’, and led the voters to shift back to their party alignments. Such a development unquestionably favoured the Denktas conservative establishment.216 Beyond that, statements by the President that placed on the same footing Erdogan and the generals,217 as well as Denktas and the opposition,218 alienated the President from his potential allies in the Turkish Cypriot opposition for a joint effort to reach a compromise settlement. Even worse, the President did not show the least sensitivity towards the manner in which the Turkish Cypriot opposition perceived his attitude. Speaking to reporters on his return

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from Greece (27 November 2003), he said the following ‘in response to a reference to claims by Turkish Cypriot papers that some statements by the President of the Republic are presents to Denktas’: ‘I do not think I am obliged to chart the correct policy of our side in accordance with the wishes of any one on the Turkish Cypriot side.’219 Such contemptuous handling could certainly not pass unanswered. Mustafa Akinci, commenting on the President’s statement, questioned his willingness to negotiate on the basis of the Annan Plan. While in The Hague, he added, Papadopoulos could hide behind Denktas’s intransigence; in the event of an opposition victory, he will have to show his real intentions.220 Papadopoulos himself admitted that De Soto, Weston and the Ambassadors of the United states and Britain had spoken to him about the impression that ‘I and the Greek Cypriot community “feel happy” with the status quo and its maintenance’, that ‘in reality we do not want a solution and find refuge in the present deadlock and the preservation of the status quo’, that ‘following the predicted victory of Talat in the forthcoming elections, there would follow a test as to the sincerity of our intentions in relation to the solution’.221 The President used this confession to support his claim that criticism of him by the opposition and a segment of the press had originated in the decision-making centres of those embassies. ‘Precisely the same argument, even the same wording, had been adopted by the opposition, a segment of the press and the media,’ he said.222 It was a fake argument. If foreign embassies were in a position to interpret his policy and make judgements on his intentions, local political parties, political reporters and commentators were in the same or even a better position to do it on their own. From the moment the President’s incipient strategy of rejection gave out its first signals, corresponding reactions should have been expected. Verheugen, speaking at the European Parliament, sent the following message to Papadopoulos: ‘Turkey should not bear all the responsibility for the solution on Cyprus. Turkey is but one of the factors in the equation.’223 In parallel, the Secretary General, in his report to the UNSC (12 November 2003), expressed regret that the preconditions he had set in his previous report of 1 April had not been fulfilled, but avoided any reference to responsibilities for the deadlock as he had done in his previous report.224 Questioned on this matter, the President promptly replied leaving all stunned: ‘And who said that we accept the Secretary General’s report’!225 The fact that all parties involved accepted the logic of changes to the Plan, irrespective of the depth and width each gave to them, made the President feel free of his YES in The Hague. Nevertheless, since no one left him any margins for manoeuvre for the drastic changes he apparently had in mind, he must have realized that he would have no other option than rejection at the end of the road. His only hope to escape the cost of such a decision would be again the ‘ally’ named Rauf Denktas! In that event, instead of finding himself in the

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desperate position of rejecting the Plan, he would achieve, at no personal cost, the definite burial of the Plan. With all his eggs in this basket of hope, he went to the New York meeting, on 10 February 2004. But there, a ‘cold shower’ lay ahead.

8.7. New York’s ‘cold shower’ and the decision to reject The countdown to what Tassos Papadopoulos had striven for nine months to avoid – that is, the return of the Annan Plan and a timeframe for solution and referendum prior to 1 May 2004 – began with his own letter to the Secretary General dated 17 December 2003. Under pressure of developments following the Turkish Cypriot elections of 14 December, under pressure of commitments made by himself,226 under indirect advice from the EU227 and direct suggestion by Weston,228 he asked the Secretary General to take action for the ‘immediate resumption of negotiations aimed at achieving a more functional and more viable solution on Cyprus within the parameters of [his] Plan so that a reunited Cyprus might effectively participate in the EU’.229 From the context of statements by Christofias during this period, it emerges that AKEL favoured this initiative. There is no evidence, however, as to whether it had made concrete suggestions to the President along these lines. In fact, the letter constituted a concession to a higher external need, a tactical move before Erdogan and Talat might take the initiative into their own hands.230 Furthermore, it is apparent from the phrases ‘more functional’, ‘more viable’ and ‘effective participation’ that he, most probably, intended to use them as a ‘second line of defence’ and, at the same time, as starting points upon which to build his substantive reservations to the Plan. This also explains the statement by the Government Spokesman two days later, when he told reporters about the letter, that the Secretary General’s condition to set a date for the referenda along with the resumption of negotiations ‘is a condition that puts the truck ahead of the horse’. The Spokesman added that we should wait and see how we proceed before we accept the setting of a date for the referenda.231 This interpretation also explains the anger caused to the President by the Secretary General’s reply (8 Jan. 2004),232 in particular by its concluding paragraph, in which he reiterated the preconditions for the resumption of negotiation that he had set out in paragraph 148 of his report to the UNSC on 1 April 2003. The preconditions set out in the Secretary General’s report (§ 148) were ‘unequivocal preparedness’ on the part of the leaders of both sides, backed by both motherlands, to commit themselves ‘(a) to finalize the plan without reopening its basic principles or essential trade-offs by a specific date with UN assistance, and (b) to put it to separate simultaneous referenda as provided for in the plan on a date certain soon thereafter.’233

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At his meeting with Papadopoulos in Brussels (29 January 2004), the Secretary General conveyed to the President the message of Davos, in particular Erdogan’s political will to proceed towards a settlement on the basis of the UN Plan. On this matter, the President had already been informed by the Assistant Secretary General through Cyprus’s Permanent Representative at the UN that Erdogan had also given his consent to ‘arbitration’, while expressing the wish that ‘the text to be put to referenda be prior agreed by the leaders of the two sides’.234 The Secretary General also made clear to the President his conditions for undertaking a new initiative, which consisted in acceptance of his plan as a basis for negotiation, commitment on the referenda and consent to his bridging the gaps in the event of remaining differences (‘arbitration’).235 ‘We are ready to participate,’ replied President Papadopoulos.236 However, speaking to reporters following the meeting, he affirmed acceptance of the referendum but on condition ‘that first negotiations start and see that they proceed properly and that the two sides exhibit the necessary spirit’.237 And the following day, having met Prodi, to whom he had given the same affirmation, he evaded a question as to whether he accepted ‘arbitration’ by the Secretary General.238 Again the ‘second line of defence’; along with the reassurance – as in The Hague – that, ‘even if Cyprus is not reunified until 1 May, [. . .] we shall not abandon our effort’.239 A brief analysis of the situation, as it was being shaped in Washington, New York, London and Brussels, as well as in Ankara and Saray Square in Nicosia, necessarily concluded that the Secretary General’s conditions for a new initiative could not have been other than those included in his letter to the parties involved, the day following his meeting with US President George W. Bush (4 February 2004). Moreover, the fact that a copy of his letter to Denktas was also sent to ‘Prime Minister’ Mehmet Ali Talat, at Erdogan’s behest,240 as well as the fact that, prior to sending his letter, the Secretary General had seen all leaders involved apart from Denktas, with whom he evaded even telephone communication, was ‘the first clear signal sent by Erdogan to Denktas that, if necessary, negotiations would proceed without him’.241 However, according to an evaluation by press reporters who had closely followed the whole process, ‘this signal was never received in Nicosia and Athens; all hid behind Clerides’s prediction that Denktas would once again prove himself an “ally” and blow everything into the air’.242 While there is doubt with regard to Athens, it is unknown whether Clerides had contributed so much to the above assessment of the situation. But the question still remains concerning the fact that, after one year in office during which sweeping changes had taken place, President Papadopoulos still planned his strategy on Cyprus on the basis of Denktas’s behaviour at The Hague. There is conclusive evidence in this regard by people who closely monitored developments from The Hague

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to New York.243 And there is no doubt about the President’s failure to decode and process the signals of that complex, swiftly changing reality. In his letter of 4 February 2004, the Secretary General called on the leaders of the two communities to proceed to New York on 10 February if they accepted the conditions he set out for the resumption, the forward process and the conclusion of the talks. And his conditions were adamant: immediate resumption of talks on the basis and within the parameters of his plan, conclusion of talks at the latest by 25 March, by when work should have been completed on the constitutions of the constituent states and the laws of the federation, and the security issues should have been agreed upon between Greece and Turkey. If there still remained gaps in the agreement at 31 March, because of differences existing between the sides, the Secretary General would make proposals in order to complete the text. On the basis of the completed text, the three guarantor powers would inform the Secretary General in writing about their verification of the Agreement by 9 April. Finally, the completed text of the Agreement would be put to separate simultaneous referenda on 21 April 2004.244 The President’s ‘indignation’ on reading the letter245 would have been inexplicable outside the context of the analysis made above in relation to his rejection strategy. The letter not only narrowed the margins of negotiation, but actually deprived him of the possibility of postponing solution until after accession, when, being in a stronger position, as he believed, he would be able to negotiate a new solution (the question of whom he would negotiate with and who his allies would be still remained unanswered). His only hope, in which he invested everything, was that Denktas, in behaving in his usual manner, would blow the whole process into the air.246 But such a hope was completely unrealistic at that time. Gul’s affirmation to Karamanlis and Anastasiades in Brussels, prior to New York, that ‘Denktas will either proceed to New York or be replaced’,247 as well as the signals to Denktas himself that ‘Talat would replace him in the event he did not comply with the Turkish Premier’s conditions for the New York talks’,248 did not leave Papadopoulos the alibi of misinformation or ignorance. Revealing of the strategy with which Papadopoulos proceeded to the meeting was his insistence from the very first meeting with De Soto that Denktas be asked in his presence whether he accepted the Annan Plan as a basis for negotiation despite De Soto’s expressed fear that commencement of the talks on this matter might irritate Denktas to the point of destroying the process.249 Demonstrative of the same strategy was also Papadopoulos’s insistent refusal in New York to accept ‘arbitration’ unless there was agreement on changes regarding basic issues: ‘If and when we agree on the basics, let the Secretary General complete the minor issues that will remain’.250 Having Denktas walk along his path, to the point of giving the impression of a joint agenda, Papadopoulos actually rejected putting the Plan to referenda unless there was

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an agreement on the changes he and Denktas were after. Given the incompatibility of most positions expounded in the documents they had submitted to the Secretary General,251 such an agreement was, from the outset, impossible. Prodi, Solana, Blair and Pat Cox contacted him by telephone to accept the process suggested in the Secretary General’s letter of 4 February. Papadopoulos was inconvincible. He still invested hope in his ‘ally’, Denktas. Meantime, believing he had been trapped, he directed his anger against Weston, whom he considered responsible for the letter of 17 December 2003 and demanded that he intervene for the removal of the Secretary General’s conditions. ‘I’m not sure’, Weston recalls, ‘that until now he was aware of the opportunity of a breakthrough’. Weston elaborates further: ‘He did not want to make moves that might have kept the Turkish Cypriots positive towards an agreement. He could have done so much to become a political figure for all Cypriots. Instead of this, however, he chose another path.’252 The following day, 11 February, saw the ‘cold-shower’ experience. Denktas submitted a document sent to him from Ankara, in which he accepted ‘arbitration’ and the referenda and further suggested a four-part meeting to include Greece and Turkey.253 That very moment saw the President’s plans and aspirations for burying the Plan through Denktas collapse. He had gone to New York with this certainty, without having elaborated on alternative scenarios. Now, he had no other option. Following exhausting all-night negotiation, he accepted the final proposal formulated by De Soto, which incorporated some of his demands as well: the four-part meeting to be under the auspices of the Secretary General, the participation of the EU to be safeguarded and the ‘arbitration’ to be within the parameters of the Plan.254 The proposal, given in the form of a press statement by the Secretary General, contained the following provisions: • Negotiation would resume in Nicosia (19 February 2004), under the auspices of the UN Secretary General, aimed at achieving a comprehensive settlement on the basis of the Annan Plan, which would be put to separate simultaneous referenda before 1 May 2004. • In the absence of an agreement between the parties on changes to the Plan by 22 March, the Secretary General ‘would convene a meeting of the two sides – with the participation of Greece and Turkey in order to lend their collaboration – in a concentrated effort to agree on a finalized text by 29 March’. • In the event of continuing deadlock, the Secretary General would use his discretion to finalize the text to be submitted to referenda on the basis of his plan. • The guarantor powers would signify their commitment to the process and to meeting their obligations under it.

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The EU would promise ‘to accommodate a settlement and offer technical assistance by the European Commission [. . .] in the course of the negotiations’.255 Members of the Greek Mission in New York did not exclude the possibility of Tassos Papadopoulos accepting the UN proposal and ‘winking’ at Denktas, while thinking ‘at the back of his mind [that] he had the chance decisively to intervene in the ultimate outcome of the referendum’.256 In any case, it is worth exploring in some depth the matters of timeframe for the referendum, the fourpart meeting and, finally, the controversial issue of ‘arbitration’ and the President’s reaction to this. From the outset, given that the Greek Cypriot side was in urgent need of a solution, it should have sought timeframes; because it was Denktas who had always employed reneging and delaying tactics, so as to turn the status quo into the ultimate solution, through consolidation of the fait accompli of the invasion. If the Cyprus problem had not been solved since 1974, it was not because of the complexity of arrangements needed but because of the lack of political will on the part of Turkey and Denktas for an overall settlement. And it was precisely the same lack of political will that impeded the sustained UN effort in the period immediately following the Helsinki accord to reach a settlement. Therefore, it had been apparent since the Annan Plan had been submitted on 11 November 2002 that one particular aim of the timeframes, among others that have already been referred to, was that of pre-empting Denktas’s delaying tactics. The issue of arbitration by the Secretary General was closely connected with the reasoning behind timeframes. In the Secretary General’s concept as well as in common practice, his mediating–arbitrating role constituted the only remaining ‘mechanism of disentanglement’ in the event of failure of the negotiators to reach a settlement within a given timeframe. ‘Without a mechanism of disentanglement, you will enter again into never ending talks, as in the past,’ the Secretary General pointed out to the two leaders in New York.257 Moreover, this was not the first time the Secretary General had exercised an arbitrating role within the framework of the good offices mission assigned to him by the UNSC. All proposals submitted by successive UN Secretary Generals, from Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ to the Annan Plan, constituted precisely the exercising of a mediating–arbitrating role by the UN Secretary General.258 Having given exhaustive timeframes to the two sides within which to reach an overall agreement through direct or proximity talks under his auspices, he proceeded to submit a mediating proposal of his own when he realized the two sides had failed to bridge the gaps separating their positions. The manner in which successive Secretary Generals acted in exercising their mediating–arbitrating role has already been explored. If anything needs to be added here, it is that all five versions successively submitted by Kofi Annan were products of mediation–

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arbitration in the face of unbridgeable gaps in the positions of the two sides in order that agreement might be reached for a comprehensive settlement. This is how the Secretary General himself describes his mediating–arbitrating role, in his report to the UNSC of 1 April 2003: . . . My Special Adviser helped to guide the discussions and by mid-2002 he was making concrete suggestions to assist the parties to build bridges. I refrained, however, from making a written substantive input until 11 November 2002, when, no breakthrough having been achieved, and believing that no other course of action remained open if the opportunity was to be seized, I put forward a document which I believed constituted a sound basis for agreement on a comprehensive settlement. (§ 12)

It was clear that Kofi Annan’s mediating effort, as any other previous effort in this regard, would at some point exhaust the limits of negotiation and time would come for arbitration – that is, his final proposal in the form of ‘either take it or leave it’. The leaders of the two communities had ample time to reach an agreement so as to avoid final arbitration – provided both of them had the political will for a mutually acceptable compromise. Moreover, the Secretary General’s condition that his final proposal be submitted to referenda irrespective of its acceptance by the two leaders was clear to all that it aimed at bypassing Denktas. Admittedly, it was difficult for the majority of the people to comprehend a complex legal text such as the Plan was. But the referendum was the only practical way, first, to bypass Denktas’s stubborn intransigence, and, second, to have the Plan legitimized in the minds of the people concerned.259 As for the direct participation of Greece and Turkey in the negotiating process in the form of a four-part meeting, both the Greek and Greek Cypriot side had historical obsessions that went as far back as the London Tripartite Conference of 1959. Greece had additional reservations in the fear of having the Cyprus problem linked to the Greek–Turkish disputes at the negotiating table. This fear must have been the main reason behind Simitis’s prompt negative reaction to Erdogan’s proposal for a four-part conference on Cyprus made on 9 April 2003 in Belgrade and repeated on 16 October the same year in Brussels. However, at this particular juncture, Erdogan’s and Gul’s declared political will to proceed towards solution and the corresponding established political will of Simitis and Papandreou, which was also shared by opposition leader Karamanlis, would exert a catalytic influence on the solution process. Finally, we should explore the possibility of Tassos Papadopoulos being trapped by the Americans and the Secretary General in New York in the sense of a secret commitment to the Turkish Premier that the content of arbitration would be such as to satisfy Turkish positions, thus pushing the Greek Cypriot side to rejection and thereby to conflict with the international community and

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isolation. However, as any hypothesis on this scenario should be supported by facts, dating from the New York meeting until the final act in Bürgenstock, it will be left to be explored in the following chapter, by which point the basic facts will have been established.260 The statement made by President Papadopoulos on his return from New York, cohesive and excellently constructed, calculated in its every single word, took the form of a declaration to the people. The call to the people to be on the alert ‘as nothing has finished yet’, the reaffirmation of persistence in the objectives being set ‘so as to achieve the improvements we have been striving for’, the invocation of ‘unity and unanimity’, the placing of trust in ‘the righteousness of our demands’ and ‘the correctness of the changes we are striving for’ conveyed to the people the message of a critical situation that the leader and ‘his people’ were called upon to confront. The ethnarchic tone, imperceptible in the beginning, becomes more articulate in the concluding paragraph, where the feeling of tension and anxiety is intensified as condensed shots stimulate defence reflexes against ominous forthcoming developments: . . . I want the people of Cyprus to trust that we shall not allow either the tight framework involved in the procedure or the procedure itself to lead us to incorrect decisions or make us sacrifice substance on the altar of procedure. I also want the people to trust that our only concern will always be to achieve improvement of the Annan Plan and a solution that will serve the people of Cyprus as a whole, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike. This is the responsibility and the role we are undertaking. I want the people of Cyprus firmly to believe that our only concern is their interest, which we shall never sacrifice to any expediency and under any pressure.261

A similar ethnarchic intervention was made by Papadopoulos in a statement following a meeting with Denktas: . . . My only concern is the interest of Cyprus Hellenism. Therefore, I shall not be carried away by alien interventions or pressures nor by anything else outside the line I consider that serves the interest of the people of Cyprus as a whole and in particular of the Greek Cypriots.262

Finally, on his departure to Bürgenstock he declared: ‘All [people] should trust that I shall not sacrifice the rights, the security and the fate of Cyprus Hellenism on the altar of either timeframes or pressures.’263 Both the style and the wording of these declarations are typical of statements by Makarios in the period of 1964–74. In the light of the developments that followed, one might trace, in this ‘minor’ declaration, the seeds of the historic declaration of 7 April 2004. On his way

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back from New York, the President must have taken his decisions and charted his strategy. An element of crucial importance from that time onwards was implementation – which, in the course of events would once again bring Denktas back to the stage. Certainly not on the Hague model. This could not be played again. The focal point of the new strategy must have been for both to play the same fiddle with parallel objectives to generate a climate of rejection in both communities, since it was at community level that the Plan’s fate was to be decided in the end. A double NO to the Plan at the referenda from both Greek and Turkish Cypriots would be a victory for both leaders. Despite the fact that the victory of the one would play into the hands of the victory of the other in a ‘zero-sum’ game, leading the two communities further apart, this scenario still served the respective leaders’ personal strategies.264 For Rauf Denktas, ultimate rejection of the Plan would transfer any new solution-oriented initiative to a very late future linked to possible accession of Turkey to the EU. Until then there would be further consolidation of the fait accompli of the invasion and particularly of the turkification of northern Cyprus. As continued isolation would push Turkish Cypriots to further emigration, he might bring in more and more Anatolian settlers, resorting once again to what he used to say: ‘Turk leaves, another Turk comes.’ For Tassos Papadopoulos, parallel rejection of the Plan by both communities would first constitute a resounding failure of the UN and personal defeat of Kofi Annan and even more of Alvaro de Soto, with whom he was already on a collision course. The fall-out from such a defeat would cover the responsibilities of the two Cypriot leaders, who would evade any personal cost. Secondly, Papadopoulos saw in the burial of the Plan the continuation of the status quo as the ‘second-best solution’, until the strengthening of Cyprus through EU accession, as he believed, would allow a solution better than the one offered by the Annan Plan. These competing strategies, which jointly aimed at the burial of the Annan Plan through the referenda, were evident from the very first days following the commencement of negotiations in Nicosia (19 February 2004). In an unprecedented novelty of ‘public negotiation’, the two leaders made extensive statements following every session of the talks, each one giving his own version of the proceedings through their incompatible approaches. Rauf Denktas expressed his opinions in an inflammatory style, and through long digressions recalling the past; on the one hand, insisting on hard-line positions for permanent derogations, a drastic reduction in the return of refugees and reinstatement of properties, separate majorities in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, a permanent safeguard for the 24 Turkish Cypriot representatives in the Senate and long transitional periods; on the other hand, bringing back to surface the syndrome of threat through the manner in which he presented the positions of the Greek Cypriot side recalling his version of 1963 and even

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the fate of Cretan Turks. His obvious aim, which he did not try to conceal, was to make ‘his people’ understand the issues at stake in relation to the Annan Plan, as well as the real intentions of the Greek Cypriots, and thus issue a NO verdict at the referendum.265 Papadopoulos followed Denktas in making statements on the talks following every meeting. His statements avoided Denktas’s emotive style, were controlled, premeditated and brief. But in substance they did not differ from those of Denktas in relation to the climate of tension, mistrust and antagonism that they generated within the Greek Cypriot community.266 This climate, combined with leaks to the Greek Cypriot press to the effect that De Soto and foreign mediators gave cover to and even aligned with Denktas,267 brought the conspiracy syndrome back to the fore, thus generating a negative popular predisposition against the Plan. President Papadopoulos was particularly persistent in questioning the change in Turkey’s approach to the solution and in presenting its attitude just as an intrigue aimed at improving its image in the EU. Moreover, he presented Denktas’s positions as being wholly outside the framework of the Plan, a claim that did not match reality. For example, Denktas’s demand for a drastic reduction in the return of refugees and reinstatement of properties was admittedly a hard-line position even within the context of bi-zonality. But it was not outside the framework of the Plan such that it should be deleted from the agenda. This position was simply opposed to the Greek Cypriot position for reduction and final abolition of all restrictions on this matter. The same could be said about Denktas’s demand to safeguard twenty-four senators on ethnic (communal) basis. This demand related to the bi-communal character of the federation and the equal representation of the communities in the Senate, a balance that would be overthrown if Greek Cypriots made full use of the right to return as provided by the Plan. Nor was the demand for accommodation of derogations into primary EU law outside the framework of the Plan. Derogations existed in the Plan. And Denktas wanted to ensure that they would not be abolished by Greek Cypriots through legal actions within the EU.268 Outside the parameters of the Plan were, for instance, Denktas’s demands for a new protocol of the Treaty of Accession, for the recognition of the existence and non-abolition of the ‘TRNC’, his refusal to submit a constitution of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state compatible with the provisions of the Plan, his insistence on the sovereignty of the constituent states over the natural resources, the air space and the territorial waters. However, such matters were not incorporated in De Soto’s agenda either in Nicosia or in Bürgenstock. The changes President Papadopoulos demanded during the Nicosia talks cannot be established with certainty. His public statements were confined to general formulations on changes that would safeguard ‘workability’ and ‘viability’ in order that Cyprus might properly function within the EU. He

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stated the great importance he gave to the issue of security relating to the troops as well as to safeguards for the implementation of the solution, and he insisted on the verification, prior to entry into force, of any agreement to be achieved. Whatever the case, he did not seem to be very interested in giving a clear picture of the Greek Cypriot positions during this period. His principal objective, as happened respectively with Denktas, was to show Turkish intransigence through a selective projection of Denktas’s intransigent positions.269 A clearer picture of the positions of the two sides, and generally of their attitude during this phase of negotiations, is given in brief by the Secretary General’s report to the UNSC (28 May 2004).270 The Secretary General stressed the emphasis of the Greek Cypriot side on ‘workability’ and of the Turkish Cypriot side on ‘bi-zonality’ (§ 17). He pointed out that a number of changes suggested by the Turkish Cypriot side ‘would have substantially altered key parameters of the Plan’. Thereupon, he affirmed, his Special Adviser, in drawing agendas for negotiation, ‘left aside Turkish Cypriot demands which were clearly outside the parameters of the plan’ (§ 19). As for the Greek Cypriot side’s stand, the Secretary General emphasized, as negative factors, the submission of lengthy documents for each change it suggested,271 and its refusal to submit a brief comprehensive document as well as to prioritize its demands, as De Soto had asked both sides to do. In contrast, he credited the Turkish Cypriot side with presenting a brief document (in which he stressed the demands outside the plan framework) as well as in giving its priorities (§ 19). He further attributed to the Greek Cypriot side insistence on full satisfaction of its demands and refusal to be involved in discussion with the Turkish Cypriot side by claiming that Turkish Cypriot positions were outside the framework of the plan (§ 22). The Secretary General marked out as a factor that negatively influenced the talks ‘the regular public disclosure of the contents of the negotiations, usually with a negative spin, either by Greek Cypriot leakage, or by the daily oral briefings of Mr Denktas to the press, ostensibly for the Turkish Cypriot public’ (§ 23). President Papadopoulos, in replying to the Secretary General, while refuting allegations of a negative attitude and countering De Soto, whom he accused of writing a hostile report and of unacceptable conduct during the talks (an additional indication of their confrontational relations), did not refute the Secretary General’s allegation of his refusal to submit a brief document and to prioritize.272 Given the confrontational climate in which the report was written, which culminated in Bürgenstock and continued with the CBC’s refusal of De Soto’s request for a live TV interview in view of the referendum,273 one cannot preclude the involvement of emotional charge in the intensely negative picture of Tassos Papadopoulos in the Secretary General’s report. But, if one accounts for the equally negative picture of Denktas in the report of 1 April 2003, through references, in both reports, to facts demonstrative of the attitude of the

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two leaders, one should not draw hasty conclusions regarding intentional distortion. Moreover, until research fully establishes all that happened during this phase of the talks, the evidence available does not refute basic facts as related in the Secretary General’s report. The above-cited findings of the research into the overall conduct of the two leaders during this period lead to the conclusion that they entered the negotiating process either to achieve the maximalist objectives they had had in mind from the beginning, which was an unattainable aim, as their objectives were absolutely incompatible, or to thwart a solution on the basis of the Annan Plan. And, since their second choice was the only feasible possibility, it seems that both charted a strategy leading to a double NO to the Plan in the referenda. This interpretation explains Papadopoulos’s discomfort at Denktas’s decision not to proceed to Bürgenstock. He asked for ‘reliable negotiators’ and pointed out that ‘the UN Secretary General has invited the leaders and not their authorized representatives to the talks, “who will be prepared there and then to take binding decisions”’.274 Denktas said he was staying behind to work for the rejection of the Plan by the Turkish Cypriot community. However, it was obvious that, had Talat275 accepted the Plan in Bürgenstock based on the urging and support of the Turkish government, Denktas would most probably have lost the game. As a result, Tassos Papadopoulos would also have lost the opportunity for a double NO. However, this new obstacle did not make the President change his plans. He proceeded to Bürgenstock, having taken the decision to reject the Plan and carrying along the already broken relations with the UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser Alvaro de Soto. This last development would assume dramatic dimensions at Bürgenstock.276

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Chapter 9

The

NO

Vote of 24 April 2004

9.1. The convergence of events and the possibility of political symbiosis The referendum of 24 April 2004 constitutes a historic landmark in the modern history of Cyprus. The build-up to this moment had taken an entire century. The resounding NO to the proposed solution by 76 per cent of the Greek Cypriots at the referendum was much more than a negative response to a particular solution plan. It was a complex process, deeply interrelated with the perception of the solution at the citizen level – that is, how Greek Cypriot citizens perceived political symbiosis with the Turkish Cypriots and walking along with them towards a common future. The use of the determiner ‘political’ for ‘symbiosis’ has been considered necessary in order to distinguish ‘political symbiosis’ from the folkloric notion of ‘peaceful coexistence’ within the framework of traditional rural society. Political symbiosis, under conditions that envisioned a common future, which has to be sought initially at the level of the elites of the two communities, had actually never existed, apart from short interludes that had been pushed aside by mainstream historiography. During the Ottoman domination, the Muslim elite was the privileged ruling class that lived partially on feudal (tsiflik) estates, but primarily on the resources and the social prestige amassed by means of its privileged position in the administration. The Christian elite, comprising Church prelates along with a close circle of rich Christian families that gave the Dragoman, also had a substantial share in the administration, and enjoyed privileges and resources that accompanied such participation. But its political role was clearly subordinate. Demonstrative evidence in this regard was the fate of Dragoman Hadjigeorgakis Cornesios and Archbishop Kyprianos.1 The gradual decline in the privileged position of the Muslim Turkish Cypriot elite during British rule, and the corresponding rise of the Christian Greek Cypriot elite through its increasing share in the administration, might

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have led to political symbiosis, provided there had been a common political vision with regard to the future of Cyprus and compatible objectives regarding interim administration. However, the diverging and mutually incompatible nationalisms that developed within the two communities, which have already been explored, did not allow the growth of a compromising spirit that might engender participatory, consensus-oriented, political processes. Moreover, through diffusion of the nationalist spirit into the middle and lower social strata, the two opposing nationalisms pushed the two communities towards a protracted political confrontation that lasted throughout the twentieth century. Nevertheless, this course of events should not be seen as having a deterministic character. The radical changes, since the 1990s, in the local, regional and international environment, which have also been explored, rendered conspicuous the dead-end paths traversed by the two opposing nationalisms, and their failure to offer solutions to the major political problem that held the two communities apart. Moreover, these changes uncovered a common Cypriot interest interrelated with Cyprus’s EU accession process, and generated a strong challenge to the two communities to seek a solution by drawing on the European paradigm of continuous negotiation and compromise. The thwarting of a solution by Denktas in Copenhagen and The Hague was, for the Turkish Cypriot community, a turning point heralding a postDenktas era. It meant a new search for a solution on Cyprus that embraced the common Cypriot interest. However, the historic challenge for a political coming-together of Greek and Turkish Cypriots did not have the same effect in the Greek Cypriot community. While the opening of the checkpoints brought about a convulsive rapprochement that threw down psychological walls and established unprecedented, warm, personal contact, there was no ‘spillover’ effect into the political field, which might have opened the way towards political understanding. The Greek Cypriot community, having found itself at the time shifting between the challenge of the new reality and the culture of ‘absolute solution’, which had become mainstream ideology in the 1990s, proved incapable of responding to the challenge of history. Developments might certainly have taken a different path had there been an inspired political leadership sensitive to messages emanating from increased convergence of political events, a leadership prepared to face the challenge, to assume responsibility and to intervene creatively in the shaping of the new shifting reality. Instead, the leaderships of political parties with historical and ideological connections conducive to a positive response were left to be carried away by the conservative strategy of inertia expressed by Tassos Papadopoulos, still captive to his old theory of opting for the status quo as the ‘second-best solution’ had it not been for the ‘absolute solution’, which it definitely would not.

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9.2. Papadopoulos’s refusal to negotiate at Bürgenstock Acting within the relevant New York Agreement provisions, the Secretary General convened the four-part meeting, scheduled for 24–9 March 2004, in Bürgenstock, a resort complex on the outskirts of Luzerne, Switzerland. Participants at that meeting were to be the leaders of the two communities, Tassos Papadopoulos and Mehmet Ali Talat, the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Turkey, Petros Molyviatis and Abdullah Gul, and, in its final phase, the Prime Ministers themselves, Costas Karamanlis and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Present at Bürgenstock were also to be the Commissioner for Enlargement, Gunter Verheugen, the US Special Coordinator on Cyprus, Tomas Weston, and representatives of Britain and Russia. Finally, in the role of promoter of the whole effort, was to be the Secretary General’s Special Adviser, Alvaro de Soto. It was to be an international conference, in all respects. There had never in the past been such an involvement of the international community with Cyprus. However, Tassos Papadopoulos did not seem to appreciate the grand scale of the effort; nor did he seem to be aware of the convergence of events, in one word, of the timing. He did not even seem to appreciate the significance of the four-part character of the meeting, within the framework of which Cyprus would, for the first time, have the opportunity to have face-to-face talks with Turkey. It is worth noting in this regard that Turkey had persistently refused to sit at the same table as Cyprus since 1974. According to a Cypriot diplomat, Papadopoulos was actually dragged to Bürgenstock, justifying his unwillingness on the theoretical, narrowly procedural, argument that ‘we cannot proceed to the next step before having completed the previous one’.2 Corroboration of this evidence is the discomfort with which the presidential environment received Karamanlis’s immediate positive response to the Secretary General’s invitation. They actually interpreted it as pre-empting the Cypriot President’s decision.3 From the very first day at Bürgenstock, President Papadopoulos acted in a way that revealed his ultimate objectives. He turned down a suggestion by De Soto that a commemorative photograph of the four delegations be taken, on the grounds that, ‘not only would this have given an incorrect impression as to the status of Messrs Talat and Serdar Denktas, but it would also have been misleading as to the status of Greece and Turkey at the meeting’.4 During the evening of the same day he considered it more important to discuss, in the National Council, the status of Talat at the talks than to respond immediately to a request by De Soto for a meeting of the two.5 During the meeting, which was finally held after hours of delay, and was marred by a tense atmosphere, Papadopoulos rejected the opening of the talks that would involve a meeting of all four delegations, as was provided for by the New York Agreement,

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and quite arbitrarily interpreted the role of Greece and Turkey as merely ‘advisory’. As to this rejection, as well as the rejection of a commemorative photograph, the President ‘told the members of the National Council that Turkey, who was part of the problem by occupying Cyprus territory, was seeking to throw off this responsibility by dragging Greece into a negotiating process solely in the capacity of guarantor powers and mother countries’.6 The Greek Foreign Minister explained to De Soto that ‘it was extremely difficult for Papadopoulos to appear with Talat as the validity of Denktas’s authorization of the illegal “Prime Minister” as the official negotiator of the Turkish Cypriot community had been questioned’. Apart from the contradiction of this argument with previous relevant statements by Papadopoulos in Cyprus,7 it was obvious that he approached the whole process in a narrow-minded legalistic manner. Furthermore, it soon became apparent that he was bent on continuing, with even greater intensity, his personal vendetta with the UN Special Adviser. The mere fact that the UN Secretary General’s Special Adviser, and mediator at that negotiation, was to play a substantial role in the finalizing of the solution plan by the Secretary General should have been enough for the President to exert every effort in the direction of establishing those interpersonal relations that would contribute to better understanding.8 By causing tension himself, the President chose the worst method to serve the interests of Cyprus during that crucial negotiation. He did the same by entrenching himself in legalistic arguments in order to evade substantive negotiation when a unique sense of timing called for this. In practical terms, it could not have been a higher priority for the President to fight against the supposed ‘upgrading’ of Talat or the downgrading of Turkey’s aggression at that historic moment, than to address, in a result-oriented manner, the most tangible prospect of a solution that had ever existed since 1964. As if all the above were not enough, at his first meeting with De Soto, Papadopoulos rejected (as he had done previously in Nicosia) a suggestion that he submit a consolidated list of demands with his priorities vis-à-vis the changes he wished to be effected to the Plan, so as to facilitate negotiation. ‘At our first meeting, he [De Soto] asked me to prioritize the demands that our side had submitted during the Nicosia talks,’ he recalls. ‘I replied’, he continues, ‘that all our demands were reasonable and balanced, and there was no question of prioritization’.9 When, two days later, he finally submitted the consolidated list asked of him, the Secretary General notes in his report, this ‘ran to 44 pages’, and ‘at no stage was there any indication of priorities among these demands’.10 Claire Palley, in defending the President’s refusal to prioritize and in trying to explain his reasoning, claims that ‘priorities would have opened Pandora’s box’, allowing the Secretary General, while satisfying Greek Cypriot priorities,

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to satisfy Turkish Cypriot demands, ‘whereas these demands were nearly all beyond the Plan’s parameters’.11 However, contrary to such claim, the negotiating process would really have been facilitated had each side, as well as the mediator, known the basic priorities and concerns of the other side. Moreover, were the two sides not to reach an agreement, which was highly probable, the Secretary General would have been certain to proceed with the final phase of bridging the differences. And since he would not have been able fully to satisfy the demands of each side, prioritization by the President would rather commit the Secretary General not to ignore demands of the highest priority for the Greek Cypriot side. A further gap in the negotiating process was caused by the President’s absence from Bürgenstock for two whole days, during which he was in Brussels for the EU Council as an observer. ‘Cyprus should in no case be absent from EU Councils because of the talks. Such derogation would constitute abandonment of the rights we have and would create a dangerous precedent,’ he had declared on his departure for Bürgenstock.12 It would have been detrimental to attempt to ascertain whether he could have delegated representation to the Foreign Minister or stayed less time in Brussels. What emerges from his above-cited argument is, once more, his formalistic approach, and his failure to appreciate the unique historic significance of that negotiation. Even when he returned from Brussels, he turned down an invitation for a social lunch with the other delegations, because of ‘fatigue’!13 The Greek Foreign Minister, even the Prime Minister himself when he arrived at Bürgenstock , were left to be dragged into promoting the Cypriot President’s agenda, in the subsidiary and awkward role of merely trying to justify Papadopoulos’s attitude before third parties. Molyviatis’s effort with De Soto has already been referred to. On reading through the lines of the separate discussions the veteran Greek diplomat had with Gul and Weston, one fully realizes the awkward position in which he found himself as he clumsily attempted to defend the Cypriot President’s rejection of the four-part meeting or of prioritization. One also realizes their inexplicable – in the event that there had been no prior commitments – and inert attitude.14 As both of the above statesmen carried with them the inheritance of Zurich and London, the Prime Minister through his uncle, the Foreign Minister through his presence as an aide of Constantinos Karamanlis at the London Conference, they were both possessed by what might have been termed ‘the Zurich syndrome’. The nephew was ostensibly unwilling to act, after forty-five years, in a manner reminiscent of how the Zurich Agreement was ‘imposed’ on Makarios at the London Conference. ‘We are not going to repeat the same mistake,’ Molyviatis commented, recalling Zurich and London, during a private discussion he had with Greek reporters at Bürgenstock on 27 March.15 ‘Just try to understand my position; I cannot clash with the Cypriot President,

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Karamanlis replied by way of an apology to a Greek Cypriot politician who had asked him to assume a more active role.16 ‘I will not do anything unless I have instructions from Tassos; and Tassos has not given me any instructions; and he will not do so,’ he is quoted as having said to DISY leader Anastasiades when urged to speak to Verheugen on the Karpas issue.17 In his talk with Greek reporters referred to above, Molyviatis had made a comment that might have simply been a prediction, but that explains his behaviour as well as that of Karamanlis if they had in fact been aware of Papadopoulos’s ultimate objectives. ‘The matter is not what will happen until the referendum; the problem is how the outcome of the referendum will be dealt with on 25 April,’ Molyviatis said.18 The day following Bürgenstock, Karamanlis was criticized by PASOK for ‘awkward neutrality’, ‘failure to take initiatives’ and ‘failure to ensure more active involvement by the EU’.19 And when the Cyprus problem was discussed in the Greek Parliament, PASOK President George Papandreou, avoiding direct criticism on Bürgenstock, argued against the logic of ‘Cyprus decides and Greece backs its decisions’ as ‘a convenient no cost policy whereby Greece evades its obligations with regard to Cyprus’.20 At a time when Erdogan was moving heaven and earth in Brussels and Bürgenstock, Karamanlis’s inertness in order to avoid a clash with Papadopoulos or to avoid reviving reminiscences of Zurich is but a distinctly poor comparison.21 As emerges from existing evidence, during the eight days of the Bürgenstock process no official direct negotiations between the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot side were held, nor any four-part negotiation, as this had been rejected by Papadopoulos. However, there was continuous deliberation with the parties by both De Soto and Kofi Annan, in a sustained effort to bridge differences. There was also, throughout the process, the possibility, which had been provided for by the organizers through accommodation arrangements (all were under a common roof and shared the same dining room), for direct contacts and deliberations, as well as for free exchange of views and ideas at an individual level. It was typical of conflict resolution practice, whereby the establishment of direct personal contact and the informal deliberative exchange of views generate the necessary atmosphere for reaching compromise and consensus. But Papadopoulos does not seem to have tried to make use of this possibility. ‘I never saw Mr Papadopoulos talking with any Turkish Cypriot though we all had meals together and the place was conducive to personal encounters,’ Weston recalls.22 Nor have we found, within the framework of this research, evidence of any contact by Tassos Papadopoulos with members of the Turkish Cypriot or Turkish delegations, apart from more than one private meeting he had with Serdar Denktas, which has been referred to.23 Admittedly, further research will be needed, when archival material and more personal evidence by those on the stage become available, fully to estab-

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lish the facts.24 Nevertheless, the evidence that has been cited above, in relation to Papadopoulos’s role at Bürgenstock, adequately supports the hypothesis that he went to Bürgenstock determined to reject the UN Plan, rightly foreseeing that he could not achieve the sweeping changes he had in mind. This hypothesis also explains his overall behaviour and particularly his boycott of the negotiation process that had been agreed upon in New York. Having already decided the path he was going to take, he had no reason whatsoever to seek substantive negotiation, since the minor – in his view – improvements that he might achieve would simply weaken the argument for outright rejection. The above hypothesis further explains his refusal to prioritize his demands as well as his rejection of the four-part negotiation. Moreover, his perception of the Bürgenstock process through the logic that no agreement would be reached nor an acceptable bridging of the differences by the Secretary General, and consequently that the following day would mean return to the status quo, explains his rejection of any proposal that might have been interpreted as upgrading Talat’s status (as in his rejection of four-part meetings and of commemorative photographs). It remains to be explored whether De Soto also aimed at non-negotiation in order that, through final arbitration, he might enforce the Plan as it was or with minor changes that would, in any case, favour the Turkish side. Tassos Papadopoulos, rejecting criticism for his unwillingness to negotiate, speaks of a ‘shameless lie’ by De Soto, whom he accuses of being responsible for non-negotiation, as he and his negotiating team ‘had decided from the start that the final formulation of the Plan would be shaped by them through arbitration’.25 Faced with the depressingly poor results of direct talks in Nicosia, De Soto seems to have oriented towards two other alternative options. The first, predictably more effective, would be the meeting of all four delegations at the same table, as was roughly provided for by the New York Agreement. Whereas Talat, with Serdar lurking next to him, might not dare to take on the responsibility for contentious decisions in bilateral negotiation, the presence of Gul, and later of Erdogan himself, would bypass such problems, as they were to have the main say in such cases. On the other hand, the presence of Karamanlis and Molyviatis, with the declared intention of continuing along the line of their predecessors on Cyprus and Greek–Turkish relations, a line to which Karamanlis had consented while in opposition, might generate the necessary dynamic to mitigate Papadopoulos’s inflexibility, and narrow the gap that had separated the positions of the two sides in the previous phase of talks in Nicosia. The fact that De Soto had taken the initiative with regard to the meeting with Papadopoulos from the moment the latter arrived at Bürgenstock, to put before him this model of negotiation, was demonstrative

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of his intention to secure result-oriented talks. The prompt rejection of his proposal by Papadopoulos led De Soto to his second option, that of indirect negotiation, a practice that left ample room for deliberation, and that he had used during the last week of the Nicosia talks. But this method presupposed that the sides would put at his disposal their priorities on the basis of which he might deliberate. However, Tassos Papadopoulos blocked this path as well by bluntly refusing to prioritize.26 De Soto might certainly have provided a last chance for face-to-face negotiation between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot side, once his second alternative had also been rejected. A meeting he arranged between the two leaders was ultimately cancelled, Papadopoulos said later, because Talat preferred to wait for Erdogan’s arrival and talk with him first.27 In any case, no one prevented Papadopoulos from having, either in private or in the hotel lounges, informal exploratory deliberations with Turkish Cypriot and Turkish delegates, and certainly with Talat, stimulating discussion on contentious issues and tracking reactions and intentions. As far as De Soto was concerned, in accounting for his justified reservations on the basis of his experience with the previous phase of direct talks, his attitude is still unclear with regard to the third alternative of bilateral face-to-face talks. It cannot be precluded a priori that a new effort in this regard would again have the nil results it had had in Nicosia. Papadopoulos’s refusal to give priorities certainly made things difficult in relation to the matters to be placed high on the agenda, particularly as time was running out. But here, too, substantive differences in the positions of the two sides on major issues were known. And De Soto might have focused such talks precisely on these areas in a last effort to bring the sides closer to an agreement. Papadopoulos’s inflexible stance on four-part negotiation and prioritization, and further tension in the already tense relations between the two men, may have negatively influenced De Soto’s attitude. Other factors may also have interpolated; these, however, cannot be perceived through the available evidence. Nonetheless, there is an unbridgeable gap between this critical approach and the theory of a non-negotiation conspiracy by De Soto so as to enforce predetermined provisions through arbitration in such a manner as to elicit a YES by the Turkish side, leaving Turkey free of the ‘weight’ of Cyprus, while leaving no other option than a NO to the Plan by President Papadopoulos and the Greek Cypriot community.28 The planning of the conference by itself, in such a way as to facilitate continuous informal negotiation, a significant dimension in conflict-resolution methodology, is clearly demonstrative of a strategy of result-oriented negotiation, which, given the particular location, did not leave much room for conspiratorial moves. Moreover, bare facts do suggest that De Soto went to Bürgenstock with a negotiation strategy: a four-part negotiation as provided

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for by the New York Agreement, since all other alternatives had failed;29 negotiation leading to agreement so as to avoid arbitration, which, as De Soto and the rest involved knew very well, would negatively influence the referenda.30 The thwarting of his plans by Papadopoulos and the additional refusal of the latter to submit his priorities drastically restricted De Soto’s options for result-oriented negotiation within the pressing timeframes of the conference. If the Camp David and Dayton agreements elevated Kissinger and Holbrooke to the status of renowned international mediators, an agreement at Bürgenstock leading to the solution of the most intractable problem, the ‘mediator’s graveyard’, would have given De Soto such glory that no reasonable observer would construct theories to the effect that he himself had conspired for the failure of this negotiation, a failure that would reflect first and foremost on his own prestige as a mediator.

9.3. The Annan Plan and the theory of a UN ‘trap’ The evidence that has been explored in relation to Papadopoulos’s strategy of non-negotiation might also enlighten the reader with regard to the theory that the Cypriot President was trapped in New York by the UN Secretary General – that is, that prior to New York the Secretary General had committed himself to the Turkish Prime Minister in Davos fully to satisfy Turkish demands when finalizing his plan through ‘arbitration’, without considering the possibility of this pushing President Papadopoulos and the Greek Cypriots finally to rejecting his plan at the referendum. According to the logic of the conspiracy theory, Turkey would thus ‘both have the cake and eat it’ – that is, Turkey would have the door opened to its accession process without being called upon to give anything on Cyprus.31 Irrespective of whether this approach might have related to a genuine concern by the President, it functioned as a convenient vehicle for rejection of the Plan by both the President and the Greek Cypriots. Exponents of this theory, including President Papadopoulos, intentionally misrepresented the Annan Plan as devastatingly hostile to Greek Cypriot interests and concerns so as to make it fit the notion of conspiracy and entrapment, thus stimulating corresponding reflexes among the people. However, for the detached observer and more so for the researcher, now that the curtain has been brought down on the referendum, both the Plan’s provisions separately and the Plan as a whole, seen within the European and regional framework in which it would have worked, present a distinctly divergent picture. The crucial argument, on which the conspiracy and entrapment theory was built, was what was presented as the full satisfaction of an eleven-point brief document submitted in Bürgenstock by the Turkish Permanent Under-Secretary

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at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Ugur Ziyal.32 The following presentation and elaboration on the points of the Ziyal document, through which it will become clear whether there really had been satisfaction of all Turkish demands, compares relevant provisions of Annan Plan V with respective ones in Annan Plan III, which Papadopoulos had accepted in The Hague under the preconditions that have already been referred to, one year earlier.33 It should also be noted that Turkish demands, as set out in the Ziyal document, were substantially reduced compared with the demands the Turkish Cypriot side had put forward during the talks in Nicosia. Moreover, some of these demands had already been satisfied in Annan III and were simply posed again for reasons that will soon be explained. Thus, I set out below the Ziyal document, point by point. 1. The percentage of Greek Cypriots returning to the North should be reduced from 21 per cent to 18 per cent. This percentage is the least we can accept. This demand was actually accepted in Annan V, only to be immediately neutralized by an additional provision that raised the ceiling of return to 33 per cent nineteen years after the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement or following Turkey’s accession to the EU, whichever was the earlier. The Greek Cypriots who would return on the basis of this provision would fully exercise their political rights in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state except for the election to the Senate. With regard to this election, they would exercise their voting rights in the Greek Cypriot constituent state. According to another provision in the ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, fifteen years after the entry into force of the Agreement or when the gross per capita income of the Turkish Cypriots reached a level of 85 per cent of that of the Greek Cypriots, all restrictions on settlement in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state would be removed. Simply stated, those who would exceed the ceiling of 33 per cent would not be eligible to internal citizenship of that constituent state, and would exercise their voting rights for both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies in the Greek Cypriot constituent state. It is worth noting in this regard that the ceiling of 21 per cent, in Annan Plan III, was permanent. 2. The Turkish Cypriot proposal regarding the property issue (1/3) should be accepted. Annan Plan III provided for reinstatement of properties up to 10 per cent of the overall area of each constituent state, the restriction not relating to each citizen separately.34 For the rest of their properties, lawful owners had the options of either selling, taking compensation or leasing for no less than twenty years.35 As it could not be foreseen how many Greek Cypriots would opt for sale or compensation and how many for long lease, the Turkish side preferred, through ceding to each displaced person up to one-third of his or her property, to safeguard for the Turkish Cypriot community a clear majority

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in the constituent state under its administration, in terms of both population and property ownership. The Turkish side was apparently indifferent to the advantage Turkish Cypriots gained by the 10 per cent ceiling, which allowed them reinstatement of all properties entitled for reinstatement36 in the south. Most probably, its main concern was to ensure that the Turkish Cypriot community remained concentrated in the north. According to Annan V, reinstatement to each displaced person of up to one-third of his or her properties raised the property reinstatement ceiling to 18 per cent of the overall area of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state compared to the 10 per cent of Annan III.37 The unpredictable factor of how many Greek Cypriots would, on the basis of Annan III arrangements, opt for compensation or long lease – a choice they would have to make from the beginning, most probably taking into account both the prospect of return and immediate economic needs – certainly remained.38 3. Bi-communal/bi-national configurations, such as 24 Turkish Cypriot and 24 Greek Cypriot Senators, should be properly reflected in the Plan. The logic behind this demand, as well as the genuine Turkish Cypriot concern in this regard, has already been explored.39 The relevant provision in Annan III referred to equal participation of the constituent states in the Senate. But, had the constituent states used the discretional power of issuing internal citizenship certificates, this would most probably have led to further complications. According to reliable information the author received from people who played a role in the negotiation process, it had, at an earlier stage, been foreseen that this demand would ultimately be satisfied. And, in the light of this prediction, advice had been given to the Greek Cypriot side to seek from the outset proportionate gains in exchange. However, there had been no move in this direction. 4. The restriction of 5 per cent to be applied to Turkish citizens to establish residence in Cyprus, even after Turkey’s accession to the EU, should be lifted. The 5 per cent restriction, which, in Annan III, had been intended as permanent, was in fact lifted in Annan V. Nineteen years after the entry into force of the Agreement or following Turkey’s EU accession, whichever was the earlier, the above 5 per cent restriction would be lifted. But a new, more effective safeguard was given in exchange. The Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession gave the UCR the right to take safeguard measures, in consultation with the EU Commission, ‘to ensure that the demographic ratio between Cypriot permanent residents speaking either Greek or Turkish as a mother tongue is not substantially altered’.40 Toumazos Tselepis, elaborating in detail on this issue, maintains that the new provision in Annan V was a much more effective safeguard than the 5 per cent, which had the potential of permanently rolling on.41

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5. Inclusion in the Plan of the understanding of neither side claiming jurisdiction nor authority over the other side. This understanding, self-evident within the framework of federation, permeates all versions of the Plan without the slightest change or even shifting of emphasis in Annan V. Even the wording in Article 2, § 3, of the Foundation Agreement remained the same as in Annan III: ‘The federal government and the constituent states shall fully respect and not infringe upon the powers and functions of each other.’ 6. The European Union should take proper action for the adoption of the settlement as the primary law of the Union. This was a matter within the exclusive competence of the EU, which declared from the beginning its readiness to accommodate the terms of an agreement to the acquis communautaire.42 Moreover, there was a relevant reference in the protocol that was to be attached to the Treaty of Accession.43 One month prior to Bürgenstock, the EU Ambassador to Cyprus, Adriaan van der Meer, had stated that the EU was prepared to accommodate derogations to the acquis in order that this might not be an obstacle to a solution on Cyprus.44 Verheugen himself at Bürgenstock, being aware that he would ultimately satisfy this Turkish demand, urged the Greek Cypriot side to ask for the Karpas in exchange. But President Papadopoulos, who had demanded return of the Karpas in the proposals he had submitted in Nicosia, refused to accept any discussion of the above Turkish demand under any circumstances.45 The reasoning behind this Turkish demand, as well as the preparedness on the part of the EU to satisfy it, was to pre-empt Greek Cypriot appeals, at a later stage, to the Court of the European Communities against solution arrangements that would constitute derogations from the acquis. The EU rightly judged that, in the event of such a development, the two communities would thus be plunged into renewed confrontation with unpredictable repercussions. Provisions for terminating appeals to courts outside Cyprus, regarding liability or compensation arising from acts prior to the agreement, also existed in Annan III, which provided for all such appeals to ‘be dealt with by the constituent state from which the claimant hails’.46 Moreover, Annan III clearly stipulated that the UCR and the Constituent states jointly ‘request the European Court of Human Rights to strike out any proceedings currently before it concerning affected property’.47 7. The individual applications of Greek Cypriots to the ECHR, including the ones on the loss of use, should not be encouraged. Then, the United Cyprus Republic should be the sole responsible addressee for these cases. From the elaboration above on point 6, it is amply clear that Turkish concerns in this regard had already been addressed in Annan Plan III. Nothing new needed to be added in Annan V. 8. Our expectations regarding the security and guarantee should be fully met.

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Most of the demands on security that the Turkish side had put forward, during the Nicosia talks (February–March 2004) were ignored in Annan V. Denktas insisted, inter alia, that the withdrawal of Turkish troops begin fortyfive months after entry into force of the Agreement, instead of twenty-nine months, as provided for by the Plan. He also insisted that the 6,000 Turkish soldiers remain permanently in Cyprus. He further demanded a commitment to the effect that the UN peacekeeping force cooperate with the constituent states so as to protect bi-zonality in practice.48 None of these demands was accepted. Moreover, the provision in Annan V for the UN peacekeeping force undertaking ‘territorial responsibility’ of the areas under adjustment constituted an additional substantial factor in the direction of safeguarding implementation of territorial arrangements. This provision was in all respects nearer to Greek Cypriot than Turkish positions. As for the Treaty of Guarantee of 1960, it continued to remain in force in both Annan III and V with exactly the same wording, covering the territorial integrity, security and constitutional order in both the UCR and the constituent states. There was a slight amendment of the 1960 text to ensure guarantee of the constituent states in addition to that of the UCR. Even the wording was exactly the same in both Annan III and V. As to whether this constituted an extension of Turkey’s right of intervention, there has already been reference to Toumazos Tselepis’s view that no such interpretation could be valid. Moreover, Tselepis maintains that the provision in both Annan III and V for the creation of a ‘Monitoring Committee’ chaired by the UN constituted substantial improvement of the 1960 Treaty.49 9. Preservation of Greek and Turkish military presence on the Island even after accession of Turkey to the European Union. (The contingents provided by the Treaty of Alliance should be maintained.) From the outset, Turkey’s confinement to invoking the Treaty of Alliance, which, along with the Treaty of Guarantee, the Republic of Cyprus had never denounced, constituted a substantive shift in the Turkish attitude. Throughout the negotiating period, the Turkish side had insisted on a strong military presence of Turkey in Cyprus. The ultimate confinement of Turkish demands to the stationing of the conventional 650-strong contingent as against the 950strong Greek counterpart could not be seriously considered as posing a threat to Cyprus. Annan Plan III provided for the stationing of equal 6,000-strong Greek and Turkish contingents until Turkey’s accession to the EU, when all troops would completely withdraw. But, if Turkey did not ultimately achieve full accession, the 6,000 would remain, while it is doubtful whether Greece could afford to keep such a force in Cyprus on a long-term basis. In any case, the additional provision in Annan V (Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Alliance, Article 4), which called on Cyprus, Greece and Turkey to ‘review this protocol and, in particular, the permissible number of troops to be stationed

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under the Treaty of Alliance [. . .] every three years with the objective of total withdrawal’, left the possibility open – in fact it would have worked as direct, recurring pressure in this direction – for complete withdrawal at some point in the future. As for the dispute that erupted a few days prior to the referendum regarding the controversial right of unilateral intervention provided for in the Treaty of Guarantee, it should simply be recalled that Turkey had been waiting for ten whole years until the 1974 coup gave it the necessary legal and political pretexts to intervene. It would be schizophrenic for anyone to think that the Greek Cypriot community might act again in the direction of overthrowing the new conventions, as it did with the 1960 treaties. It would also be completely unrealistic to imagine a recurrence of the pre-1974 situation in Cyprus within the framework of the solution, the new climate of trust at the citizen level and political symbiosis at the leadership level, the gradual normalization of Greek–Turkish disputes that would certainly follow a solution and, above all, the European environment, within which a reunited Cyprus would function as a member of the European family of nations. Within such an environment, the Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance would certainly have become inert. In the light of developments that the solution would set in motion, President Papadopoulos’s claim that Turkey might use the 650-strong contingent as a bridgehead for a future intervention in Cyprus50 remains completely theoretical. It would be the ever-constant geographic proximity and Turkey’s military capability that would make it possible for Turkey to intervene militarily in Cyprus and not a 650-strong contingent – but even then, only if, and when, necessary political preconditions were created. The reason for the Turkish government’s insistence on a military presence, inexplicable under the circumstances described above, has to be sought in the conditions that must have been set by the Generals in the NSC, who continued to perceive the Cyprus problem through anachronistic notions of Lebensraum politics. It is worth noting in this regard that Turkey’s President, Ahmet Sezer, and the Chief of Staff, General Ozkok, indirectly accused Prime Minister Erdogan of moving beyond the framework set by the NSC in accepting the Annan Plan in Bürgenstock. Erdogan defended his handling by replying that ‘no one has ever managed to achieve one’s objectives by 100 per cent, in a process of international negotiation’.51 10 (11). Turkish Cypriot citizens originating from Anatolia should not be discriminated against within the framework of a comprehensive settlement. To the extent that this formulation might have been interpreted as generalized demand for all settlers indiscriminately to remain, such a demand was clearly rejected in Annan V. Of a total figure of 115,000–120,000 settlers given at the time by Cyprus government authorities,52 65,000–70,000 would be entitled to stay according to the Plan.53 The rest would be forced to leave

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Cyprus.54 Apart from this evidence, what actually counts in this regard is the fact that the Plan provisions on the settlers had been transferred from Annan III to V without the slightest change, despite Turkish insistence that they should all remain,55 and despite Greek Cypriot insistence that they should all leave apart from those covered by ‘human criteria’.56 Erdogan’s ‘win’ strategy: An overall assessment of Erdogan’s negotiating strategy, as this unfolds in the Ziyal document, might lead to the conclusion that he proceeded to Bürgenstock with the intention of achieving the maximum but determined not to forfeit the solution prospect. Within the framework of this strategy, he judged that it was of crucial importance to avoid a clash with the Secretary General. With regard to substance, this meant that he should moderate his demands.57 As far as public image was concerned, it was imperative that the final settlement was presented in such a way as to show that basic Turkish demands were satisfied. Moving towards this end through the Ziyal document, he first moderated Turkish demands, and then asked, in generalized diplomatic wording, for items that either were already given in Annan III, or were partially or even wholly feasible. He even asked for clarification of existing provisions in such a way as to be able to present clarification as satisfaction. He should by all means return to Ankara as a ‘winner’.58 He should return having freed Turkey from the burden of Cyprus, having managed to fulfil his declared political will for a solution, and having ensured satisfaction on basic aspects of the solution. Armed with this communication strategy, Erdogan made his presence felt at the conference room in a sparkling appearance, by itself telling he had won. He stated that Turkey had worked for the solution; he presented the positions his side had put forward (the Ziyal document) and rounded up by saying that his government had successfully defended these positions and that its objectives had been achieved. He made it clear that ‘Turkey is ready to positively respond to UN requests’ and that his government ‘will support a YES vote to the Plan among the Turkish Cypriots’. ‘We began this effort in goodwill and we have reached the end,’ he finally concluded.59 It was, in all respects, a masterly and winning performance.60 Papadopoulos’s ‘defeat’ strategy: In full contrast to Erdogan’s, Papadopoulos’s strategy of rejection and non-negotiation at Bürgenstock was a priori a strategy of defeat. Enclaved into commitments he had imposed on himself, in an approach that precluded the mathematical probability that any problem might arise in the course of implementation, and entrenched in the logic of ‘absolute solution’, Papadopoulos failed to decode the message sent out by the historic convergence of events. He proved unable to comprehend that, beyond the necessary legal framework, the most important guarantee underpinning the implementation and smooth functioning of any solution was the political prerequisites the timing had generated. Captive to this logic at Bürgenstock and, through this, precluding the possibility of substantial contri-

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bution by the Greek Prime Minister, Papadopoulos predetermined – one might have recalled Sophoclean tragedy – the impossibility of achieving his ideal goals and, consequently, conflict and defeat. He avoided appearing in the conference room, and left Bürgenstock without making any statements.61 Karamanlis appeared at the conference room immediately after Erdogan, ‘obviously weary and in a mood that was in contrast to that of Erdogan,’ C. Venizelos writes. Those of us who kept night vigil before our TV sets anxiously waiting the outcome saw, in Karamanlis’s expression, the defeat of both Cyprus and Greece. ‘Unfortunately, it was not possible to reach an agreed solution,’ he stated coldly and added: ‘It is up to the people of Cyprus to decide. I trust a decision will be taken prudently, in a calm state of mind and with farsightedness.’62 Nevertheless, despite the message of defeat transmitted from Bürgenstock and in contrast to the theory of entrapment, the final formulation of the UN Secretary General’s proposal, as this was set out in Annan Plan V, constitutes substantial improvement in the direction of the basic concerns of the Greek Cypriot side. Given the desperately negative atmosphere in the personal relations of the Cypriot President with the UN mediator, one might plausibly infer that a better human relationship and, more importantly, a conciliatory and creative approach at Bürgenstock accompanied by proper utilization of Greece’s – and Turkey’s – presence, might most probably have given more beneficial results. In any case, the President did injustice to himself, as Tselepis pointedly remarked,63 in his effort to eliminate what he had achieved through hard negotiation in Nicosia and particularly through a fixation on the workability and safeguards for the implementation of the solution. Notwithstanding accusations levelled at the UN negotiating team and the Secretariat, one should not ignore the contribution made in this regard by these people and the UN Secretary General himself. In fact, Annan Plan V was, to a large degree, the end result of a sustained effort by the UN, in conjunction with all other factors involved, to put UN principles to the test of practical feasibility against the background of multiple interests and delicate international and regional balances, which, for the first time since the 1974 invasion, converged towards a viable settlement in Cyprus. Annan Plan V was the outcome of a compromise leading to the reunification of Cyprus and the safeguarding of its independence and sovereignty, while at the same time ensuring, in the new state of affairs, the continuity of the Republic of Cyprus. Finally, and of equal importance, it was a compromise that took seriously into account what in the established terminology of successive UN Secretary Generals were termed the ‘legitimate interests and concerns’ of the two communities in Cyprus.64 These were the concerns that guided the Secretary General’s overall approach, and not the supposed conspiracy to trap the President of Cyprus into either accepting legalization

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of the fait accompli of the invasion65 or being pushed to a heroic rejection, even though this would entail voiding the potential reunification of Cyprus. This assessment is verified by the improvements to Annan Plan III, particularly on matters relating to genuine concerns expressed by the Greek Cypriot community with regard to the workability and safeguarding of the implementation of the solution. These improvements, which are mentioned by the Secretary General in his report to the UNSC of 28 May 2004,66 and which are verified by comparative study of Annan III and V, might be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Increase in the number of the members of the Presidential Council from six to nine with the addition of two Greek Cypriot and one Turkish Cypriot members with no right to vote but with full and equal participation in the Body.67 2. In lieu of a system of rotation of all members of the Council in the Presidency, as provided for in Annan III, the election of a President and Vice President who would rotate in the Presidency every twenty months, beginning with the Greek Cypriot representative, thus giving him two terms as against one term for his Turkish Cypriot counterpart in the Presidential Council.68 3. Drastic reduction in the length of the transitional period from thirty to two months. In fact, following the 13 June elections of all constitutional organs of the federation and the constituent states, all elected organs would assume office on 1 July 2004.69 4. Amendments in the structure and functioning of the Central Bank through the introduction of more functional arrangements.70 5. Establishment of a First Instance Federal Court, as insistently demanded by President Papadopoulos.71 6. Completion of the establishment of the federal laws based almost entirely on drafts prepared by the Greek Cypriot side, as well as of the list of international treaties in order that the federal government might be able to function fully and uninterruptedly from the very first day. 7. Improvements in the functioning of the economy that had been agreed upon at the level of the Technical Committees.72 8. Full and irrevocable legal commitment on the part of the guarantor powers, through domestic procedures of verification as appropriate, prior to entry into force of the Foundation Agreement,73 and an additional provision whereby, should any Guarantor Power fail to sign the Agreement by 29 April 2004, ‘it shall be null and void, and have no legal effect’.74 9. Deployment of the UN peacekeeping force to undertake ‘territorial responsibility’ in the areas under territorial adjustment.75

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10. Ensured withdrawal of occupation troops, and provision for the stationing of the conventional Greek and Turkish contingents provided by the 1960 Treaty of Alliance.76 11. Reinstatement to each displaced person of the one-third of his or her property or of other property of equal value in the event that his or her property is retained by the ‘current user’ under preconditions that have been explored.77 12. Removal of all restrictions in relation to a second home, as well as of restrictions (permanent in Annan III) on acquiring property fifteen years after entry into force of the Foundation Agreement or when the gross per capita income of Turkish Cypriots reached 85 per cent of that of Greek Cypriots.78 13. Improvement of the provisions for the safeguarding of population ratio.79 Despite controversial, if not manifestly counterproductive, handling by President Papadopoulos, there had been substantial improvements in the final Annan Plan V, as compared with Annan Plan III. This single fact in itself bears substantial historical evidence that the UN Secretary General, far from being an accomplice in a conspiracy against Cyprus, worked within the framework and the constants that have already been explored, as well as within the international and regional balances that the timing had generated. These improvements by themselves adequately demonstrate the invalidity of the theory of conspiracy and entrapment. At the same time, they bring to the fore the accountability of President Papadopoulos for his failure to ensure, through creative and constructive involvement in the negotiating process, an even more improved final proposal by the UN Secretary General. The following extracts from the Secretary General’s statement at the Bürgenstock talks closing ceremony, after the Secretary General had submitted his final Plan, are demonstrative both of his personal assessment of the Plan and of the way he had worked throughout the negotiating process: . . . The revised plan has a property scheme that is simpler, fairer and more certain. It has a more workable system of government. It has better safeguards for the constituent states. It has transitional arrangements that I am confident can and will work. And it has been improved from the financial and economic point of view. It is not a question of keeping score of goals and own goals, of winners and losers. Rather we have tried to accommodate the expressed concerns of both sides, so as to create a win-win situation. I believe that we have succeeded. But the time has come for you, the leaders, and for voters in both communities, to assess what is before them as an overall package in the run-up to the referenda.

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As the people of Cyprus, north and south, debate and consider their future over the next three and a half weeks, they will be looking to you, their leaders, for guidance. You have undertaken the responsibility of organizing referenda. You have a responsibility to inform the people about the plan on which they will be asked to say yes or no, so that each voter can make up his or her own mind. This plan is inevitably a compromise. It does not satisfy every one’s demands. But I believe it meets the core interests, and addresses the key concerns, of people on both sides. Let me be clear. The choice is not between this settlement plan and some other magical or mythical solution. In reality, at this stage, the choice is between this settlement and no settlement. [. . .] There have been too many missed opportunities in the past. For the sake of all of you and your people, I urge you not to make the same mistake again. Let us seize this chance for peace in a United Cyprus Republic.80

Commissioner Verheugen went directly from Luzerne to the European Parliament. He stated that he had managed to abolish permanent derogations in the proposed solution. He explained that, although there had been a substantial bridging of the gap in Bürgenstock, not all participants were ready to sign. He called upon the leaderships of the two sides to do their utmost to convince their people that the Annan Plan was the best for all, and concluded: ‘There is no other choice. We have to choose between either the Plan or nothing.’81 Later on, that same day, while speaking at a press conference in Strasbourg, he referred to his role at Bürgenstock, noting that his aim had been to adapt provisions of the settlement to the regime of the acquis communautaire and also to facilitate the process, which, he said, he had achieved. He reiterated his success in having all permanent derogations abolished, and stressed the significance of abolishing the permanent derogation on acquisition of property. Furthermore, in focusing on the ‘grand picture’, he elaborated on the wider scope through which the EU was approaching the case of Cyprus: . . . A solution on Cyprus will have broader positive influence in one of the most troubled regions of the world. It will be a proof that, after so many years, two communities with different religions may unite through peaceful negotiation. Moreover, a positive outcome of the effort towards solution will change Turkey’s image in the West and will help it achieve its objectives.

Finally, he called on the leaders in Cyprus to demonstrate leadership qualities, and warned once again that the choice was between solution and nothing. In replying to a question on how the Greek Cypriot leadership could work for the acceptance of the Plan, since it had refused to sign it, Verheugen said

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the following, which will, later in this chapter, be recalled to explain his anger with Papadopoulos for having ‘deceived’ him: . . . President Papadopoulos told me he had to return to Cyprus to deliberate with Parliament and parties as the process [to the referendum] should be democratically legitimized. This is what he told me and I believe him. He has achieved a lot, he is not returning empty-handed. 82

9.4. The run-up to the

NO

vote at the referendum

9.4.1. Setting the stage for the declaration On receiving the Secretary General’s Plan, President Papadopoulos gave his first reaction in a statement he made on his return to Cyprus. Although he avoided taking a clear position on the substance, saying he would later ‘set out before the people his positions and views’, the content and style of that statement foreshadowed the 7 April declaration. He said, inter alia: . . . I am well aware of, and share, the anguish and the feelings of the people of Cyprus who for days have been following with hope and concern the developments in the negotiations in Switzerland. The anguish and concern are justified because developments will be decisive not only for the existence and survival of the Republic of Cyprus, but also for the future of our country and coming generations. We went to Switzerland with the best of intentions and the political will to reach a compromise which, although painful, would be of historic importance and honourable. We went to Switzerland with consensus proposals that would safeguard and form the basis of a viable and workable solution to the Cyprus problem, a solution that would secure peace and the end of the invasion and also ensure the benefits and prosperity both for the Greek Cypriots and for the Turkish Cypriots. We have tried with sincerity, honesty, and firmness, to ensure the minimum but very important aim, i.e. the reunification of our country and our people. But despite the goodwill and the political will we have displayed, it was not possible to reach an agreement [. . .] Before my departure for Switzerland from this same rostrum, I pledged that I would not sacrifice the rights of our people, regardless of pressures and timeframes that served expediencies of foreigners. Today I can assure our people that I have honoured the commitment I undertook. The National Council and I, fully conscious of our responsibility and duty towards history and our people, made every effort and exhausted all permissible room for consensus so as to reach a solution that would allow Greek Cypriots and

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Turkish Cypriots to live peacefully and in conditions of security and share the benefits that would result from the accession of a united Cyprus to the EU. Unfortunately our effort was not successful. The Turkish Cypriot side not only continued its negative stance and insisted on its negative positions throughout the talks, but Turkey added 11 new additional demands aimed at serving mainly, through Cyprus, her aims and interests. These demands, through the procedure adopted by the Secretary General in using his discretion to finalize the text, were met either fully or to some extent.83

The people’s ‘anguish’ and ‘concern’, on which the President would build his NO campaign against the Plan, had already been stirred to fever pitch from Bürgenstock. We had all been witnesses to a masterly effected information campaign, during the previous few days in particular, which had pushed us to the edge of the abyss. It involved continuous bombardment through news that drew the gloomy picture of an American–British conspiracy, to which Verheugen was party and whose executive organs were De Soto and the Secretary General himself. It was the ‘bombshell’ concerning the 9,500 pages of the Plan, with traps hidden in every single line that the President had, in less than forty-eight hours, to uncover, decode and reply to.84 Of course, those organizing the campaign knew that, apart from the particular changes from Annan III to Annan V, the latter being 182 pages in length, the volume of 9,500 pages comprised: the federal laws that had been almost exclusively prepared by the Greek Cypriot negotiating team (their preparation had begun during Clerides’s term under Alekos Markides), and the list of more than 1,000 international treaties signed by the Republic of Cyprus, and some 60 treaties between the ‘TRNC’ and Turkey.85 Moreover, it was a demonization of the Ziyal document and a myth about the full satisfaction of Turkish demands that made Cyprus a protectorate of Turkey. It was an act of intimidation against people by means of the EU Primary Law that Verheugen had given Erdogan, which degraded Cyprus to a status of subordination – it was, finally, a resuscitation of the 1964 theory of conspiracy, and subsequently of the defence reactions that, mingled with fear, insecurity and suspicion, would be drawn on in the NO campaign towards the referendum.86 The combination of a conspiracy syndrome with the culture of ‘absolute solution’ that underlay popular conscience would be utilized to the full, while all means would be employed in the NO campaign. The former would rekindle and intensify fear of the new and uncertain. The latter would foster hope of the absolute, the ‘European’ solution, which the ‘everlasting enemies’ of Cyprus were attempting to thwart through the Annan Plan! Tassos Papadopoulos, having masterminded this climate throughout the talks in Nicosia and Bürgenstock, had nothing to add but merely needed to continue to feed it. After all, this method seemed to be quite effective. Quite

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demonstrative, in this regard, was the rise in the number of those favouring rejection during the talks in Nicosia, as shown in the findings of opinion polls of that period.87 During the volatile situation following the New York Agreement, fear of a marginal victory of a YES vote led MPs from all the parties on the rejectionist front, but also DISY MPs, Prodromou and Erotokritou, insistently to project, through the media, a novel theory, according to which, in order for a YES vote to be valid, a two-thirds majority had to be secured.88 They even came to the point of submitting a bill in the House of Representatives, which, however, was not put before Parliament for discussion, because of reaction by DISY and AKEL, and also because of second thoughts entertained by DIKO, which may have calculated that such an act might negatively influence the President’s image abroad.89 As for the President, he must certainly have been aware that such machinations would only ridicule both himself and Cyprus abroad. And it was apparently for this reason that a proposal by DIKO’s Deputy President, Nikos Cleanthous, that the referendum not be carried out because of the Turkish attitude during the talks was silently put aside.90

9.4.2. The President’s declaration of 7 April 2004 The President’s goal, as this would become clear from his declaration to the people on 7 April 2004,91 was now a resounding popular NO to the UN Plan at the referendum. Such a result would, to some extent, justify his own rejection while, on the other hand, blunting negative reaction against Cyprus by the international community and, more significantly, by the European Union: ‘I hope that our foreign friends will respect the people and the Republic of Cyprus.’ This expectation runs throughout the entire text of Papadopoulos’s declaration: ‘Personally I accepted this procedure’, he noted, ‘as long as the people of Cyprus would have the final word on the Secretary General’s arbitration decision through their direct and personal vote at a referendum’. And he wanted this final word to be ‘a resounding NO’. On matters of substance, the President attempted to kill the Plan by misrepresenting improvements in Annan V as not satisfying ‘the minimum demands that we submitted’. Moreover, he represented fundamental provisions of the Plan as crushingly unjust to the extent that, were the Plan to be accepted, it would perpetuate occupation, division, displacement, colonization and usurpation of properties. It would further, according to the President’s interpretation, endanger economic stability, the existence of the Republic of Cyprus, and the physical and national survival of Cyprus Hellenism. ‘On taking up my duties, I was given an internationally recognized state,’ he declared and added: ‘I am not going to give back a “community” without a say internationally and in search of a guardian. And all this in exchange for empty and

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misleading aspirations, in exchange for the groundless illusion that Turkey will keep her promises.’92 Furthermore, he misleadingly claimed that ‘the functional weaknesses of the Plan [would] endanger, inter alia, the smooth performance and participation of Cyprus with one voice in the European Union’, while ‘we could very easily be led to “neutralization” of accession’ or ‘loss of the benefits of accession or the facing of obstacles in Cyprus’s participation in the Economic and Monetary Union and other European institutions’. ‘In other words,’ he added, ‘the Annan Plan does not abolish de facto division, but on the contrary, legalizes and deepens it’. In the same misleading manner, he presented the obvious outcome of a solution – that is, the exit of Turkish Cypriots from isolation, their becoming European citizens and their participation in the federal state – in order to claim that ‘the Turkish Cypriot community gains all basic demands it made from the first day of the implementation of the solution’ and concealed the basic fact that the rise in their standard of living was calculated by the UN to require about fifteen years to reach 85 per cent of that of Greek Cypriots. In contrast to the ‘immediate’ benefits for the Turkish Cypriots, the President claimed, ‘we buy hope and all we get in return is a hoped for goodwill of the Turkish side to keep the agreement’. He even resorted to Cyprus’s stock-exchange crash (2000) to imply that the property bonds would have the same fate. And, even more, he intimidated people through the unsubstantial claim that compensation ‘in the final analysis will be paid by the legal owners themselves’.93 This distorting presentation of the Annan Plan served Papadopoulos’s communication strategy in two ways. First, it stirred up fear, an instinctive fear of change in relation to something new and uncertain, towards something hostile as being a product of foreign-led conspiracy. Second, it fostered hope, an unrealistic, vague hope of ‘absolute solution’, which would result almost automatically following Cyprus’s EU accession. The frequent invocations to morality and justice, the ethnarchic references to ‘dramatic hours’, ‘age-long history’, ‘destiny’ and ‘forthcoming generations’, the direct link to Makarios through the use of Makarios’s wording when addressing the people (‘Hellenic people of Cyprus’), the use, in the final declaratory part of the speech, of a style recalling Makarios’s ‘fighting spirit’ and, finally, the tear that convinced thousands of the genuine nature of the President’s feelings, all these, combined with fear and hope, removed the citizen from the field of reality in which rational thinking and the ‘ethic of responsibility’ lay, and elevated him or her to a vague subliminal sphere of emotions, in the realm of the ‘ethic of conviction’. His completely alien-tothe-facts statement ‘I was given a state [. . .] I am not going to give back a community’ was the powder keg that, once ignited, spread the fire of rejection, through TV sets, to unsuspecting, confused, emotionally charged citizens. And as these latter constituted the vast majority, it was to this majority

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that the declaration appealed. By creating this popular climate, the President also aimed at bringing round to his own political line those party leaderships within the government coalition whose political analysis led to acceptance of the Plan, but that, in their final decision, would also take into account party cohesion and share in government.

9.4.3. AKEL’s move towards rejection The assessment, in this connection, made by AKEL General Secretary Demetris Christofias at his Party Congress (14 April 2004) was not irrelevant to the President’s 7 April declaration, although it leaves room for an additional interpretation that will be explored later on in this section. Christofias said that, ‘even if AKEL decides YES, it will not be able to reverse popular feeling until the referendum’, and added that ‘the feeling generated among the people leads to rejection of the Plan even as a basis for negotiation, thus strengthening nationalism-chauvinism and undermining the prospect of improvements to the Plan on matters touching upon security and implementation’. He directed his fire, for this climate, in general at ‘rejection enthusiasts’ who ‘have exploited the vacuum that the reserved attitude by our party and other political forces created,94 so as to project in the darkest of colours negative aspects of the Plan’, through ‘exaggeration’, ‘distortion’, ‘misinformation’ and the creation of an atmosphere of tension in which ‘different opinion is quite easily branded as treason’.95 Nonetheless, he did not hesitate to criticize the President in person for the latter’s all-out attack on the Plan: ‘Irrespective of the President’s intentions’, he said, ‘his emotionally charged declaration, many positions of which we disagree with, made the situation worse’. And further: ‘AKEL does not share the President’s judgements in relation to the Plan, and particularly his judgement that the Plan “does not abolish the de facto division but, on the contrary, legalizes and deepens it”’.96 Christofias was reported to have made extensive criticism of the President’s declaration in his speech at the closed session of the Party’s Central Committee, which was not released to the press.97 AKEL’s ultimate alignment with President Papadopoulos’s rejectionist stand constitutes a paradox that will be completely explained only after historical research has sifted through the minutes of its two-day Central Committee session, and when the whole range of behind-the-scenes developments in this regard have unfolded. The facts, in the order in which they occurred, are the following. On the eve of the President’s declaration (6 April 2004), the Party Political Bureau took the decision to suggest to the Central Committee a YES vote at the referendum. The Central Committee convened two days after the declaration and before it pondered the draft decision by the Political Bureau, the presidential declaration, the repercussions that its final decision would

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have within the Turkish Cypriot community, as well as the possibility of withdrawing from the government, and the campaign for a YES vote at the referendum in the event that it decided to suggest acceptance of the Plan to the people. An extraordinary meeting of the Political Bureau, concerning which nothing was released, had preceded the Central Committee meeting. The Central Committee, following a two-day long, absolutely closed meeting (9– 10 April 2004), took a decision liable to verification by a countrywide Party Congress, scheduled for 14 April. The basic points of the Central Committee decision were as follows.98 The Central Committee of AKEL: • having taken into consideration ‘the international power balances, the international community and its stand (on Cyprus), and the stand of the EU member states and Greece in particular’; • having considered the people of Cyprus, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and the feeling of insecurity by Greek Cypriots ‘irrespective of whether this is caused by the protracted presence of occupation troops or whether it is spread by certain circles’; • having noted the fact that ‘the Annan Plan has recently been presented before the people in a manner that emphasized its negative points and downgraded its positive ones’; • having pointed out that ‘its positive elements, in the event of acceptance, might, in spite of dangers, create a hopeful prospect for peaceful coexistence of Greek and Turkish Cypriots’; • having reiterated that AKEL ‘does not share the assessment by the President of the Republic in relation to Annan Plan provisions and particularly his judgement that the Plan “does not abolish de facto division, but on the contrary, legalizes and deepens it”’; • having arrived at the conclusion that ‘the feeling generated among the people leads to rejection of the Plan even as a basis for negotiation, thus strengthening nationalism-chauvinism and undermining the prospect of improvements to the Plan on matters touching upon security and implementation’; • calls on the UN and the international community at large ‘to take action for the postponement of the referenda for several months, in order that an objective presentation of the Plan was possible, as well as renegotiation on the basis referred to above (security and guarantee for implementation), and completion of existing gaps, so that the Plan might be endorsed by the large majority of the people, Greek and Turkish Cypriots’; • ‘In the event that the above problems are not addressed, AKEL will be forced not to support endorsement of the Plan at the referendum.’

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No second reading is necessary to show the contradictions in the decision of AKEL’s Central Committee. While all positions in its declaratory section converged towards acceptance of the Plan, the decision actually, unexpectedly and inexplicably, suggested rejection. It was amply clear that the suggestion for postponement of the referenda would not be accepted by Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. It was an important issue for them that a reunited Cyprus in the form of the United Cyprus Republic entered the EU. There were also technical matters relating to the Act of Adaptation of the Conditions of Accession and all acts that would be jointly carried out by the federal government of Cyprus. Moreover, the delicate internal balances in Turkey that allowed Erdogan’s YES might be reversed as a result of reneging by the Greek Cypriots, which would give the ‘deep state’ the necessary pretexts. Such a reversal would most probably have chain consequences in the Turkish Cypriots’ positive stand towards the Plan. Moreover, according to what Talat had explained to Christofias and Anastasiades during meetings the day before AKEL’s Congress, Turkey had additional reasons to reject postponement because, had the Greek Cypriots said NO to the Plan, Turkey would both have the cake and eat it.99 Finally, it was self-evident that Turkey would not agree to renegotiate matters relating to ‘security’, which were imprinted in reconfirmation of the 1960 Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance. One additional weak point in the justification of the decision was that it was based on the climate of rejection among the people. Here precisely was the role of political leadership: to take the initiative, on the basis of its political analysis, and to try to reverse the negative climate and lead the people towards the selected goal. In fact, Christofias was in a better position to try and achieve this goal than the leaders of DISY and EDEK, Anastasiades and Omirou, because AKEL was the only party in which the range of acceptance of the Plan under certain conditions gave a majority vote to YES. This was the situation in relation to Annan III, at a time when acceptance of the Plan, in the form it had been submitted and while the President was engaged in tough negotiation with Denktas in an atmosphere of tension and suspicion, was branded as undermining the President’s effort.100 Moreover, AKEL was the only party in which the vast majority of high-ranking cadres with a countrywide appeal was prepared to support a final position in favour of YES and effectively carry out the campaign to give the Plan its passage. One of the most renowned AKEL cadres, Minister of Communications and Works in Papadopoulos’s government, Kikis Kazamias, had already resigned his post (13 April 2004) in disagreement both with the President’s position as expressed in the 7 April declaration and with the manner in which the President had ‘ostracized’ the opposite opinion.101 The very fact that the Congress gave the Central Committee’s proposition – even accounting for Christofias’s dramatic appeal – only 64.8 per cent endorsement constituted an unprecedented ques-

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tioning of the political line decided by the leadership. The Writers’ Union President Christos Hadjipapas, who had been a close aide and friend of Christofias when the latter was President of AKEL’s Youth Organization EDON, in an ‘open letter to Demetris Christofias by a friend’, reminded the AKEL leader of the joint struggle for cooperation of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and pointed out that ‘while history is desperately knocking at our door [. . .] we are closing our ears’.102 In the event that AKEL decided on a YES to the Plan, Christofias had only two problems to face, which, in any case, were irrelevant to the crucial issue on which the Party was called upon to decide. One was withdrawal from the government and subsequent loss of relevant privileges. The other was related to the handling of the parallel path with DISY, whose leadership, in putting veteran Clerides to the fore, was clearly heading for a YES decision. The parallel path of the bourgeois moderate Right, aligned with Clerides, and of AKEL on the political line relating to the Cyprus problem, their common perception of the solution following 1974,103 as well as the complexities due to their conflictual electoral goals,104 have already been explored. Despite divergences that were due to electoral calculations, ideological boundaries and foreign-policy orientations, the timing of 2002–4 generated once again a convergence of AKEL and the Clerides-aligned bourgeois Right in their preparedness to accept the historic compromise and join the Turkish Cypriots in a reunited Cyprus. AKEL’s failure to foresee in time the prospect of solution when events were converging in that direction, along with its failure properly to assess developments in Turkey and within the Turkish Cypriot community, allowed the domestic goals of winning the 2003 elections to prevail over long-term political decisions relating to solution. This was the main reason behind AKEL’s discomfort at the submission of the Plan in the middle of the election campaign.105 Moreover, AKEL’s failure clearly to make out the ‘grand chessboard’ and properly to interpret regional and international developments, strengthened within its ranks the suspicion of a foreign-led conspiracy to thwart its coming to power, and pushed the leadership further into its alliance with Papadopoulos and the power-sharing prospect. It is worth noting at this point that Papadopoulos, regardless of the openly rejectionist stand by DIKO and his personal aides as well as by the media that supported him, had never publicly spoken of rejection until 7 April. Although, through secretive methods, as has already been shown, he undermined both the Plan and the solution prospect, he gave reassurances, on every public occasion until 7 April, that he sought solution on the basis of the Plan, that he simply sought improvements that would make it more workable, but that he did not aim to overturn its philosophy. Through such statements, and probably through reassurances whenever he judged this was necessary, he

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created the public image of a tough negotiator, who, in any case, never abandoned the goal in favour of a compromise, ‘workable’ solution on the basis of the basic parameters of the Annan Plan.106 The accusation by Verheugen in the European Parliament: ‘I personally feel that I have been deceived by the government of the Republic of Cyprus’, and the criticism directed against President Papadopoulos in person to the effect that, ‘while in public he said he agreed with the general principles of the Plan and that he only sought marginal improvements, now he is suggesting its rejection’,107 precisely expressed this public image that the President took considerable care to convey to his European interlocutors in particular. This same reality was expressed in the shock the declaration caused AKEL and the bewilderment in EDEK Vice President, Sophoclis Sophocleous: ‘Had the Annan Plan been what the President said it was, then why all that discussion and negotiation?’108 In spite of this evidence, the AKEL leadership, having recovered from the shock, sought, as facts will show, a way out in order to avoid ‘divorce’ and ultimately join the President’s line of rejection. It was this goal that Christofias’s statement targeted when he stated, following Easter (12 April 2004), that the aim of ‘postponement’ was to achieve ‘the necessary improvements’ that would guarantee the implementation of the Plan, and that ‘this has always been the President’s position since his election’.109 The same goal was also targeted by Christofias’s statement, following his meeting with the President on the eve of the Party Congress, that there was no question of AKEL withdrawing from the government.110 The elaboration by Christofias on the term ‘security’ in the Central Committee decision, in order to show that he meant changes to the Treaty of Guarantee,111 pre-empted any possibility of agreement with Turkey, given the absolute rejection by the Generals of any amendments to the basic provisions of the Treaty. Nor could AKEL’s bid for such changes secure the slightest support from the international community. The second demand by AKEL for guarantees for the implementation of the Plan related to the UN Security Council. Beyond reassurances by the US Ambassador to President Papadopoulos that the US government ‘will do its utmost for the implementation of the Plan and will safeguard that the parries fulfil their obligations’,112 Secretary of State Colin Powel moved immediately in the direction of a UNSC resolution safeguarding the guarantees that were demanded. Moreover, in an interview with M. Ignatiou, Powel reiterated US determination to work for the full implementation of the Plan, noting that ‘the situation has fundamentally changed since 1974’ and that a reunited Cyprus, as a EU member state, would enjoy the highest degree of stability and security.113 Response by the UN Secretary General towards satisfying this demand was also prompt. A report of his, dated 16 April 2004, was submitted to the UNSC following long deliberation, on 19 April. The sole topic of the report was the

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creation of prerequisites that would safeguard implementation of the solution. ‘While its adoption is a matter for the people of Cyprus to decide upon,’ the Secretary General noted, ‘its implementation would clearly be in the interest of international peace and security in the region, and would thus fall within the primary responsibility of the Security Council’ (§ 9). He further suggested to the UNSC, on adopting the Foundation Agreement, that it adopt a series of concrete practical measures, which he proposed in his report and elaborated on in detail (§§ 22–53). In fact, through these measures, the UNSC would be enabled continuously to monitor the course of implementation of the solution and ensure that the provisions of the Agreement were fully implemented on the ground and within the agreed timeframes. The government of Cyprus deployed all means at its disposal to block adoption of the Secretary General’s report by the UNSC. The main reason it put forward was its opposition to the adoption of the Foundation Agreement by the UNSC. Russia, France and China initially supported Cyprus’s position on the reasoning that adoption of the Plan by the UNSC would interfere with the free expression of popular will at the forthcoming referendum. Within the framework of continuing deliberations, a US–British draft resolution removed the provision for the adoption of the Foundation Agreement and transferred it to 28 April, provided the Plan had been endorsed by the people through the referenda, and left the measures meant to safeguard implementation. In the light of this development, France and China withdrew their initial reservations and gave their consent. But Russia, apparently at the urging of Cyprus, blocked adoption of the resolution, which was also supported by all elective UNSC members, by exercising its veto power.114 It is important to note in this regard that, during the intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy in New York, Foreign Minister Iakovou, who had been put forward for the post by AKEL, instead of rushing to New York to follow developments and to try to achieve the best for Cyprus in the drafting of the UNSC resolution, travelled to Moscow, obviously to thwart it.115 Immediately after the Russian veto, AKEL’s General Secretary stated, in a press conference, that the conditions set by his Party had not been satisfied, and therefore the Party would definitely reject the Plan. Christofias spoke of a ‘moderate NO’ and claimed that ‘AKEL’s ‘NO’ was different from that of other parties and particularly of those on the extreme Right’. Through AKEL’s ‘NO’, he concluded, ‘we want to cement “YES”.’116 However, Christofias’s political behaviour following the referendum raises plausible questions as to whether he really meant what he was saying, as to whether his statement was just bait for AKEL supporters to vote NO at the referendum, in the hope of a second referendum at which safely to vote YES. At this point the crucial question arises as to whether Christofias’s ‘concern’ for guarantees backing implementation of the solution was genuine, or whether

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it was no more than a pretext for the postponement of decision and, through ‘non-satisfaction’ of the conditions he set, to drag the Party in line with President Papadopoulos’s NO. If one accepts that Christofias’s ‘concern’ was genuine, one cannot explain his complicity with Papadopoulos in the all-out effort to block adoption of the Secretary General’s report by the UNSC and particularly of the resolution intended to guarantee implementation of the solution. One cannot distance Christofias from the whole intrigue that resulted in the Russian veto. By contrast, if one accepts the ‘pretext’ version, one can fully explain the whole series of handlings by Christofias both prior to and following the referendum. Such an approach also explains Christofias’s contention, which was incorporated in the Central Committee decision, that the rejection climate could not be reversed, as no more than an excuse. It has already been shown through opinion-poll findings that a position by AKEL’s leadership in favour of the Plan would be enough to create a YES current in the Party’s electoral body. The assessment as non-reversible was meant to be used simply as an alibi for postponement, and the postponement as a plausible tactical move leading to the NO vote. Moreover, from the moment the leadership’s political analysis led to a positive overall assessment of the proposed solution, the projected impossibility of reversing the climate of rejection, in the light of both what preceded and what followed the referendum, may accept no other explanation than that of a planned manipulation of events in order to establish a NO vote. After all, it is precisely when there is risk and even possible cost that a leader shows himself or herself worthy of his or her role in the Weberian sense of the word. Demetris Christofias, entrenched in a reasoning that was alien to politics, and that research must at some point delve into and bring to light, proved incapable of undertaking the role of a leader who involves himself in the creation of developments and thus makes a personal contribution to the shaping of history. The NO vote to which he dragged the world of a massive popular movement that had long ago lost its leftist revolutionary radicalism, regardless of intentions, had ultimately the same weight as that of the nationalist Right in the final outcome.

9.4.4. The

NO

decision by Yiannakis Omirou

EDEK’s President, Yiannakis Omirou, followed a parallel path to that of Christofias, albeit a shorter one. His analysis of political developments that culminated at Bürgenstock led him to acceptance of the proposed solution, as will be shown below. However, once back in Cyprus after Bürgenstock, he had to grapple with the hard rejection line taken by Honorary President Vassos Lyssarides and the strong block within the Party that its founder continued to control.117 On the other hand, he enjoyed the friendly encour-

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agement, compatible with his own line of thought, from PASOK’s President, George Papandreou, and the European Socialist Party. It was not mere accident that the President of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, Enrique Baron Crespo, and Cyprus’s renowned friend Mechtild Rothe visited Cyprus following Bürgenstock and held a wide range of meetings particularly with EDEK’s President.118 While in public Omirou took a reserved stand that called for calm consideration among the Party’s collective organs, he revealed in private contacts his intention of proposing acceptance of the Plan. During a meeting with Takis Hadjidemetriou arranged on his own initiative, he asked for his interlocutor’s support for a YES decision. Hadjidemetriou, who had already taken a position in favour of acceptance, promised Omirou unconditional support.119 Moreover, Omirou’s close friend and aide Nikos Nicolaides, a member of the Political Bureau and the Party’s Limassol District Secretary, the President’s brother, Andreas Omirou, Pafos District Secretary, the Party Spokesman, Vassilis Protopapas, the Party’s Youth President, Yiangos Yiangoullis, and a number of other Polit-Bureau or Central Committee members – all being close to the President – had openly assumed a position in favour of a YES vote.120 Nothing was coincidental. Even prior to Bürgenstock, Omirou had given his support to the President ‘to negotiate [. . .] a solution on Cyprus on the basis of the Annan Plan’.121 A few days later, he gave full cover to Party Spokesman Protopapas against attacks by Honorary President Lyssarides – which attacks, according to political observers, targeted the Party President himself.122 Two days prior to the Central Committee meeting, which had been scheduled for 9 April, Omirou withdrew to his hometown, Pafos, to prepare his speech. Meantime, his close aides privately intimated that he continued to believe that ‘the Annan Plan might constitute the basis for solution’, but that he also took seriously into account, first, the possibility of conflict with the Honorary President and, second, the possibility of rejection by the Central Committee of a proposal, put forward on his initiative, for acceptance of the Plan.123 Within this atmosphere of anxious anticipation, amid reports that ‘those who reject the Plan, their exponent being Vassos Lyssarides, are to cross swords with those who adopt the Plan, their exponent being the Party President, Yiannakis Omirou’,124 the President proceeded to the Central Committee and proposed rejection, dragging the vast majority of members in tow.125 At the critical moment, Yiannakis Omirou – as Christofias would do the following day – denied the role of political leader and confined himself to following the current generated by the President’s declaration. In choosing this course of action, he missed a unique opportunity to free himself from the heavy shadow of the founder and Honorary President, a shadow that held the Party entrenched for years and alienated from the renovating movement of ideas within the European Left.

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In contrast to the Party President’s stand, Takis Hadjidemetriou, an EDEK founding cadre, who was at the time EU Harmonization Coordinator, took a clear public position on acceptance of the Plan, focusing his argument on timing. He also revealed, in a statement, that he had suggested to Crespo, during a meeting of the two, the setting-up of a special committee by the European Parliament systematically to monitor implementation of the Agreement, and gained a favourable response.126 His resignation from the post of Coordinator was henceforth a matter of days. He communicated this to President Papadopoulos on 19 April. On the same day, he publicly explained the reasons, in a press conference, stressing once again the importance of timing, and pointing out that ‘the popular climate which had been generated within the country could sustain the solution’.

9.4.5. Anastasiades: breach with the past The leader who generated great surprise, by first and foremost battling his past, was DISY President Nikos Anastasiades. Within the Party of the Right, he had more or less been the exponent of the Party’s nationalist ‘patriotic’ wing, which had been particularly strong in Limassol, where his constituency was based. In 2001, he had sent – and released to the press – a letter to the Greek Premier Simitis, expressing his concern at the handling of national issues following George Papandreou’s ‘Greek–Turkish’ dance with his Turkish counterpart, Ismael Cem, an act that had annoyed Greek Cypriot ‘patriots’. For Cypriot nationalists, every act on the part of Greece intended to improve Greek–Turkish relations was regarded as a humiliating act as long as the Turkish occupation of Cyprus continued. Either they were unable to realize, or they did not want to accept, the gradual political transformation through which the Cyprus problem was tackled not as a national but as a political issue. The leader of Cyprus’s Right now had to face a strong rejection movement within the electoral basis of his party.127 Even worse, a considerable number of high-ranking cadres who carried strong influence in the Party openly engaged in nationalist rhetoric in opposition to Clerides’s compromising approach. On his return from Bürgenstock, Anastasiades had already made up his mind to propose acceptance of the Annan Plan. However, he was fully aware of the difficulties he was to face in order to pass such a proposal through the Party’s collective organs. In order to facilitate AKEL, but chiefly to capitalize on a possible decision in favour of acceptance, he fixed the dates for convening his Party’s Political Bureau and Congress one day after those of AKEL – that is, on 7 and 15 April respectively. In both bodies, he would let the Party’s founder, Clerides, give direction.128 As expected, Clerides gave clear direc-

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tion towards YES at the Political Bureau meeting, thus helping Anastasiades to have the decision passed.129 Anastasiades, capitalizing on Papandreou’s YES and counting on the special weight that a similar position by the Greek Premier, Karamanlis, would have for his own Party in view of its congress, sent an article to Kathimerini,130 in which he gave the basic parameters that should be taken into account before a decision was taken on the Annan Plan. First, he pointed out, we have to count the long-term cost in the event that we reject solution. Second, we have to consider the possible consequences in the event the Turkish Cypriots vote YES. Third, we have to think of when and under what circumstances the UN would undertake a new initiative in the event that we rejected this Plan. ‘Those who have become uncritically entrenched in rejection’, Anastasiades’s article concluded, ‘have not so far suggested a comprehensive alternative proposal that reveals the way out of deadlock, partition and occupation, one capable of becoming accepted by the international community and the Turkish Cypriots’. As for AKEL’s proposal for postponement, Anastasiades stated his readiness to stand up and support it, provided the other side, the UN, and the international community at large were prepared to discuss it.131 However, he did not falter from his determination to proceed with a YES vote, even though this led him personally and his Party into isolation. At the Party congress, Clerides gave direction again.132 However, it was Anastasiades who won the day. He emerged as the leader prepared to face up to the historic challenge, by transcending his impulsive ‘patriotic’ past and by putting aside the predicted danger of his Party’s split in two factions,133 as well as by risking his personal political career. In a speech that constituted a breach with the traditional nationalism of the Cypriot Right,134 he criticized the demonization of the Plan by the President, and overturned the President’s claim that even the slightest of our demands had been ignored, by citing particular provisions of Annan V. He made particular reference to intentional misinformation from Bürgenstock: ‘People were daily bombarded with fabricated news about conspiracies against us, intended to create a public opinion hostile to the Plan.’ He called on the political leadership to ‘take into account the fact that decisions taken by people in conditions of anger or national pride are not, as a rule, the most prudent ones’, and warned that such decisions by the people ‘turn out to be tragically wrong when taken under conditions that are intensely and emotionally charged and stirred by misinformation’. He then made selective reminders of DISY’s ‘sense of responsibility’ and ‘moderation’, and of its ‘courageous’ and ‘realistic’ stand throughout its history, which might have caused ‘temporary cost’, but which were ultimately vindicated. Finally, through building on the ‘ethic of responsibility’, he called on the congress to give a positive response to the challenge of history by deciding on acceptance of the Plan, thus opening the way to reunification of Cyprus.

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The outcome of the voting was a vindication of the Leader. It gave a 77.6 per cent vote in favour of YES and only 21.3 per cent to NO. However, this ratio would not reflect within the rank and file of the Party, which would proceed to the referendum deeply split.135

9.4.6. Unanimous

NO

by DIKO

DIKO’s course of action has not been explored in detail, though it is the third largest party, because it fully identified itself with, and faithfully followed, its President and the President of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos. DIKO claimed to be the principal heir to Makarios’s ‘fighting spirit’ and to be closely connected throughout its history with the Church and its nationalist rhetoric, so it was quite natural that it would completely endorse Papadopoulos’s overall approach to the Cyprus problem and particularly his absolute rejection of the Annan Plan. Even when Papadopoulos’s manoeuvring gave the impression at times that he was prepared to accept the Annan Plan, his Party, in silent – if not premeditated – understanding, acted as the militant vanguard that always targeted ‘absolute solution’. Within the framework of this approach, DIKO’s Central Committee unanimously decided on NO, the day after the 7 April declaration, with all its members giving a rapturous standing ovation to the leader that so genuinely expressed their will.

9.4.7. The single-seat parties EDI: From amongst the small single-seat parties, the United Democrats Movement (EDI) took a clear stand in favour of compromise on the basis of the Annan Plan from the very beginning. EDI participated in Clerides’s second-term government. The Party President, Vassiliou, was the head of EU accession negotiations, while Papapetrou, as Government Spokesman, had an active role in the negotiations on Cyprus under President Clerides. Following press reports to the effect that Vassiliou and Papapetrou were ready to accept the Annan Plan at Copenhagen (December 2002) and to have made suggestions in this direction to President Clerides, they became targets of attack by DISY’s rejectionist wing as well as by AKEL.136 Following Bürgenstock, the Party’s Central Council endorsed almost unanimously (167 to 3) the proposition by the Party President, Vassiliou, for acceptance of the Plan.137 NEO: The ‘New Horizons’ Party, consistent with its nation-centred rejection of a federation, and its absolute rejection of the Annan Plan in particular, went ahead unhesitatingly with its final NO verdict at the Party congress of 3 April 2004.138 NEO party cadres, particularly Christos Clerides, with a

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free hand because of their party’s clear NO position from the beginning, became leading players, together with KOP and DIKO cadres, in the NO campaign, through TV talk shows, throughout the critical period from the submission of the Plan in November 2002 until the referendum. KOP: The Ecologists–Environmentalists Movement had, together with NEO, rejected the Annan Plan as a basis for negotiation from the very first days following its submission. From that point onwards, it maintained the same approach until it finalized its NO verdict at its congress on 4 April. The Cyprus Greens revealed yet another paradox by failing to internalize the true nature of the European Green Movement, which has always been in opposition to nationalist ideas. Because of their stance, which placed them in the same stable as the extreme nationalists, they became alienated from the Green Party in the European Parliament. ADIK: The ‘Militant Democratic Movement’ of former Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides, a DIKO offshoot with no ideological or political identity, aligned itself with the rejectionist camp, following its leader’s opportunistic about turns.

9.4.8. Non-parliamentary political movements From amongst non-parliamentary political movements, the ‘Bastion for the Reconstruction of the Centre’, a grouping under Kypros Chrysostomides, a former DIKO cadre and MP, merged with the political current led by Tassos Papadopoulos. The very fact that Chrysostomides served as Government Spokesman in Papadopoulos’s government left the Movement no margins for manoeuvre. The Movement’s congress, which was convened on 14 April, endorsed with a 95.6 per cent majority a suggestion by Chrysostomides for rejection of the Plan.139 Finally, the ‘Movement for Euro-Democratic Renovation’ of Antonis Paschalides, another DIKO offshoot, also merged with the NO camp. The ‘Movement for Political Modernization’, a left-of-centre grouping under Christos Stylianides,140 had a more conspicuous political presence. The close political relationship of Stylianides with the Greek Foreign Minister, Papandreou, and his participation in the Cyprus think-tank of the Greek Foreign Ministry, placed the Movement in the modernist socialist political spectrum. As a result of these relations, the Movement’s approach to developments relating to the Annan Plan was parallel to that of Simitis and Papandreou in Athens and to that of Clerides in Nicosia. Therefore, its final YES verdict was an expected outcome. Documentation of its position marked out the following important issues, which formed the core of the political reality of the time: the Annan Plan constituted a substantial improvement in relation to both the

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status quo and previous UN plans. The workability of the solution was safeguarded within the European framework, which also ensured an evolutionary process. The timing created a unique opportunity for a solution to the Cyprus problem. Rejection of the Plan was a conservative option entrenched in past experience, which failed to realize the importance of the European framework.

9.4.9. The

NO

verdict of the Church hierarchy

The Church hierarchy exerted strong leverage towards rejection, using both the media and the pulpit. Capitalizing on the crowding of churches during Passion Week, in which the President’s declaration took place and the parties’ decision-making processes were set in motion,141 Church prelates converted churches into forums for the preaching of rejection and distribution of all kinds of rejectionist material. Even publications by Christian Societies, which saw in the Annan Plan a Zionist conspiracy to exterminate the Greeks of Cyprus, were distributed in the churches. They called for ‘repentance, fasting, and prayer in order that Jesus might thwart the hostile plans of powerful enemies’, and recalled the revelations experienced by a Holy Mount monk, according to which ‘a time will come when Turks will leave Cyprus of their own accord’.142 A Holy Synod encyclical on the occasion of the Easter celebration, which was read out in all churches throughout Cyprus, stirred emotionally charged religious sentiments so as to generate people’s defence reactions to foreign conspirators: ‘Our country’s future is being horse-traded in Organizations and Councils’ (as in the case of Jesus) that aim at ‘safeguarding foreign interests in violation of our rights’. The message openly called on people to reject the UN Plan and indirectly accused those who stood up for YES of ‘spiritual slavery’, which ‘is hated by God’, of ‘voluntary abandonment of rights’, of ‘selling out’ and of ‘national humiliation’.143 A few days later, the Bishop of Kyrenia, Pavlos, took up the ‘British– American conspiracy’ again and called for a ‘resounding NO’,144 while, on the last Sunday prior to the referendum, he preached from the pulpit that ‘whoever says YES becomes an accomplice of injustice and loses both the country and the Kingdom of Heaven’.145 By contrast, the Bishop of Pafos, Chrysostomos, bound rather to earthly things, while speaking on TV declared the enosis of Cyprus with Greece through the EU, announced a ‘champagne celebration’ at the Bishopric and sent out an open invitation to EOKA fighters.146 Simultaneously, he did not miss the opportunity to terrorize Greek Cypriots into believing that they would have to feed the ‘lazy’, ‘wretched’ and ‘goodfor-nothing’ Turkish Cypriots!147 Even on the eve of the referendum, on the

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occasion of St George’s name day, the Bishop of Pafos, in his capacity as Acting President of the Holy Synod, sent out an encyclical to be read out during both vespers (the evening service held on 22 April) and the main services on 23 April, in which he called on people to heed the voice of the Church and give ‘the appropriate reply to the Annan Plan: a resounding NO’.148 The only exception from among the Prelates was the Bishop of Morfou, Neofytos. On the opening of the checkpoints, he began a series of frequent visits to occupied Morfou and villages in his diocese, in which, through example and genuine Christian love, he built relations of trust with Turkish Cypriots, thus preparing people for mutual understanding and the coexistence of diversity within the framework of a reunified Cyprus. Two interviews with him during that period reveal his deep trust in human nature and the breadth of his pastoral approach, through which he transcends conventional Ethnarchic Church nationalism, and helps one recall the pastorate of Patriarch Vartholomeos and the Archbishop of Albania, Anastasios.149 Through these visits, the Bishop became aware of the fact that ‘both Greek and Turkish Cypriot refugees restored in themselves the sense of space and time, reconnected with reality and thus freed themselves from the world of illusion’. He elevated ‘forgiveness’ to a value that would build peaceful coexistence; he also saw through direct contact how similar people were: ‘Realization of the degree of sameness of Greek and Turkish Cypriots is a shattering experience.’ He saw in the Church not the standard bearer of fanaticism but ‘the catalyst in bringing together diverse elements’. He declared that, the day immediately following solution, he would settle in his Bishopric in Morfou: ‘I went to the Morfou Bishopric and I felt that there I belong [. . .] Following that visit, there was nothing else in my life. I felt I had to live in Morfou and rebuild it.’ He replied to accusations that his attitude was tantamount to treason: ‘To be branded “traitor” is the cost of love; a love that transcends colour, religion, or ethnic origin.’ The Bishop’s attitude penetrated deep into the core of the Cyprus drama. However, TV bombardments at the time left no room for the Bishop’s pastoral word and bright example to reach the masses and exert any influence on them.

9.5. The

YES

position

Within the atmosphere of ‘national resistance’ to ‘foreign conspirators’, or to ‘cynical blackmail’ by ‘US–British imperialism’, it was clear that acceptance of a UN-proposed solution had no hope. NGOs, most prominent among them being the ‘Society for Contemplation on Modernization’ (OPEK), were mobilized in the form of organizing open discussions mainly in Nicosia and the suburbs. Participation, however, was confined to the intelligentsia. The clear

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decision by DISY in favour of YES (15 April), despite noisy questioning by a considerable number of Party cadres, gave new impetus to mass YES mobilizations during the final days prior to the referendum. But this simply strengthened the determination of the YES supporters. There was no way to reverse the NO climate. Two significant events in support of YES were organized in Nicosia under the umbrella of the ‘United European Cyprus’ Platform, which embraced, in addition to NGOs, DISY and EDI. The first of these, held at the International Conference Centre (16 April), came as a surprise through the participation of more than a thousand citizens from all political and ideological convictions, even with the participation of Turkish Cypriots. Those who addressed the gathering – Kasoulides, Markides, Hadjidemetriou, Averof Neofytou, Stylianides, G. Christofides, Vassilis Protopapas, G. Kaskanis, Nikos Mesaritis, Themos Demetriou, Yiannos Ioannou and Yiouli Taki – represented a wide range of organized political forces and non-committed citizens who stood for the solution–reunification perspective. Messages sent to the gathering by Eleni Mavrou and Takis Hadjigeorgiou, despite the fact that their Party decision disallowed their participation, further broadened the range of YES support.150 On 21 April, the Platform organized a rally in Eleftheria Square; speakers included Clerides, Anastasiades, Vassiliou, Hadjidemetriou, Stylianides and NGO representatives.151 The following day (22 April 2004), OPEK and the Turkish Cypriot Platform ‘This Country Is Ours’ jointly organized a significant political gathering in Ledra Palace, which attracted unprecedented participation from both communities. Main speakers were Anastasiades, Andreas Christou, Mustafa Akinci (BDH) and Kutlay Erk (CTP). Hadjidemetriou, M. Attalides, Symeon Matsis and NGO representatives also addressed the gathering. Also present were the eminent AKEL cadres: Kikis Kazamias, Stavros Evagorou, Eleni Mavrou, Takis Hadjigeorgiou and Yiannos Lamaris. Andreas Christou worded his speech in such a way as to avoid open confrontation with his Party. But he did not fail to send out a clear YES message through references to the reunification of Cyprus and coming-together of Greek and Turkish Cypriots.152

9.6. Pressure from the international community The submission of the Plan at Bürgenstock, under conditions that foreshadowed final rejection by President Papadopoulos, was accompanied by the Secretary General’s exhortation to the two leaders, which was in all respects a serious warning. Urging them ‘not to make the same mistake again’, he put the Plan before them as the only option that was on offer by the UN at that stage: ‘The choice is not between this settlement plan and some other magical

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or mythical solution. In reality, at this stage, the choice is between this settlement and no settlement.’153 The following day, exhortations to the people of Cyprus to accept the Plan started flowing in from all directions. Under the shadow of predictable rejection by President Papadopoulos and the negative climate already prevailing within the Greek Cypriot community, these exhortations took the form of warnings. And the ‘warnings’ were interpreted to the people by the rejectionist camp as intolerable pressure from outside and, more particularly, as cynical blackmail for acceptance of an objectionable solution. The President himself had signalled the inception of that type of reception through his first statements on his return from Bürgenstock. He had recalled his ‘pledge’ ‘not to sacrifice the rights of our people regardless of pressures or timeframes serving the expediencies of foreigners’, and had reassured the people that he had honoured that pledge.154 On the same day, the second-ranked state official, the President of the House of Representatives Demetris Christofias, targeted his fire at ‘imperialism’: ‘Those who rule over the world and give direction to international organizations bear the largest share of responsibility for the outcome of Bürgenstock.’155 The following day, Christofias spoke of ‘decisions that had been taken by foreigners prior to Bürgenstock, aimed at serving Turkey and its European accession bid’.156 And for a third consecutive day, apparently in reaction to Verheugen’s statements in the European Parliament, Christofias turned against the EU, which, he said, ‘instead of acting as a catalyst towards solution, is developing into leverage for pressure’. Finally, he pointed out, obviously for the domestic audience: ‘We are fed up with pressure. It is high time they took into account how the people concerned feel.’157 The obsession with foreign conspiracy, enforced by the Bürgenstock air ‘pogrom’, made people perceive the volleys of exhortations and warnings that followed the submission of the Plan as volleys of threats and blackmails. Verheugen followed the Secretary General’s exhortation – and warning – with his statement at the European Parliament to the effect that ‘we have to choose between this Plan and nothing’.158 Of course, the Commissioner’s statement dealt mainly with a positive assessment of the Plan and the solution prospect.159 But in Greek Cypriots’ minds there remained only the last words, ‘between this Plan and nothing’, which sounded like volleys of threats targeting their rights. Verheugen was followed the same day by White House Spokesman Scott McClellan, and State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli. They both verified a telephone communication the US President had had with Karamanlis and Erdogan during which he had reassured them of US preparedness to help the people of Cyprus make use of that ‘historic opportunity’. In replying to a flurry of questions, Ereli repeatedly stressed that it was up to the people of Cyprus to decide. However, pressed by reporters on the fact

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that there had not been an agreement, he ultimately resorted to the Secretary General’s and Verheugen’s warning: ‘In our view the choice is between the solution plan proposed by the UN Secretary General and no other plan.’160 The British Prime Minister also greeted the UN solution proposal for accession of a united Cyprus to the EU and stressed the influence that EU accession process might have in solving age-long disputes.161 The British Prime Minister must already have received a telegram in which the Head of the British delegation at Bürgenstock, foreseeing the difficulty in getting the Plan endorsed by the Greek Cypriots, because of the climate that was known to all, had summarized in twelve points the Plan’s positive features for the Greek Cypriots. The authors of that document obviously intended to leak its content –without the source – to the press so as to influence the Greek Cypriots towards accepting the Plan. However, Papadopoulos, having been given the whole document by a foreign ambassador, presented it as part of the conspiracy, and went as far as claiming that the yes supporters’ arguments were drawn from that document. He even claimed that the listing of the Plan’s positive elements by Christofias at his Party congress was based on the British document.162 Later on, Papadopoulos, in the letter he wrote to the Secretary General, in reply to the latter’s report to the UNSC (28 May 2004), claimed that ‘the section outlining the improvements of the sides bears an uncanny resemblance to a well known document of a Permanent Security Council Member widely circulated at the time of the Bürgenstock phase of negotiations’.163 The whole row, which simply served the conspiracy theory, was completely unnecessary. This was so, since improvements in Annan Plan V, in relation to both the existing situation and Annan III, emerged from the texts and were there for anyone who was interested in studying them. And the British summary, apart from the positive connotations of the wording, did not misrepresent reality. The ‘volleys of threats’ by EU officials and Western country leaders, as well as by UN officials, continued unabated following those made by the Secretary General, Verheugen, the US government spokesmen and the British Prime Minister.164 Along with the support for the UN Plan and the exhortations to the parties involved, most such statements of the kind, including those of the US Secretary of State (5 and 16 April), also contained an indirect warning to the Greek Cypriots in a form similar to that of the UN Secretary General. In his first statement, the American Foreign Minister simply verified the real fact that there was no ‘Plan B’, that it was highly unfeasible that a better settlement could be reached and that, in the event of its rejection, ‘all initiatives will cease for a long time’. His second statement was made in reply to a question as to whether the United States had explored the possibility of rewarding the Turkish Cypriots in the event that they said YES and the Greek Cypriots NO. Colin Powel said that the United States focused its effort on persuading the two sides that it was in their interest to vote YES at the refer-

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enda. He added that he did not see any advantage for either side in rejection, and reiterated that there was no ‘Plan B’. At the same time he reassured them that the UN intended to play a substantive role in order to safeguard implementation of the solution as provided by the Plan. The impression given during those days was that Cyprus was at the centre of the world’s stage. It is not an exaggeration to say that Cyprus lay at the centre of world interest. The submission of the UN Plan at Bürgenstock was the culmination of a unique convergence of developments that were set in motion following the 6 March 1995 Agreement. It was also the culminating point of US and EU planning for the broader Eurasian region, which, for the first time since 1974, included as a substantive part – and favoured – a solution on Cyprus. That moment was the end result of the UN process that had started in 1999, during the last two years of which, in particular, an unprecedented, sustained and multifaceted UN effort had been undertaken aiming at a comprehensive solution. It was a course of action we, the Greek Cypriots, had been seeking for years, as it was only through involvement of powers capable of exerting influence on Turkey that the conditions might have been created for a realistic and viable compromise on Cyprus, a compromise that would put an end to Turkish military aggression and the de facto partition of Cyprus. Therefore, the involvement of all those international factors throughout the process and following the submission of the final Plan in particular was not inexplicable; nor were those powers ‘self-invited mediators’. We ourselves had, for years, asked for their intervention and mediation. Nevertheless, many of us, particularly those in power, functioning through the ‘ethic of conviction’, the culture of ‘absolute solution’ and the ‘conspiracy syndrome’, or a combination of all these, were made to believe that it was morally binding on the international community to become concerned with our drama, and that it was its duty to solve our problem. Even more, they tended to believe that any solution should fully and absolutely comply with moral principles of justice, as we ourselves saw this justice and as we ourselves interpreted it. They did not realize or did not want to accept that solution would be the end product of a complex compromise between principles of justice, on the one hand, and delicate balances and interests of all parties and powers involved in the puzzle, on the other. In such a compromise, what crucially mattered for us was the safeguarding of our survival and development, under conditions of security and freedom, as an autonomous historical and cultural entity, within the complex world Cyprus was to enter through EU accession. In view of such an approach by those in power among the Greek Cypriot community, it was no surprise that they rejected everything that fell short of their expectations. To return to the facts leading to the referendum, it was not accidental that President Papadopoulos did not even consider participating,

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though personally invited, in the Preparatory Donors’ Conference on Cyprus organized by the EU in Brussels (15 April 2004). He did not even allow political representation at Minister Level.165 The Conference was seen as another intrigue by ‘self-invited mediators’, and he was not prepared to play their ‘game’. He also had one more reason to downgrade the Conference in the minds of the people. A key argument in the rejection of the UN Plan was what he presented as the danger of economic collapse in the process of implementation of the solution and, as a result, the serious degradation of Greek Cypriots’ living standards. And it was to prove this argument right that the Cyprus government inflated, to the point of causing consternation amongst the public, the overall cost of the solution. A report that was prepared by the Planning Bureau for the EU and leaked to the press in October 2003 raised the cost to C£16.6 billion.166 However, the figures given caused suspicion in Brussels, and the EU made an assessment of its own, which was incomparably lower, and it was to present this at the Preparatory Donors’ Conference. In view of the risk of being ridiculed, the Planning Bureau Director, who represented the government of Cyprus at the Conference, ultimately presented a new document, which calculated the total cost at C£4.8 billion, out of which C£1.9 billion was assigned to a ten-year development plan actually irrelevant to solution cost.167 However, nothing was announced by the government. And the people were left to go to the referendum with the fear of a £16.6 billion price tag. The Preparatory Donors’ Conference, at which thirty-six countries and eight international organizations – the World Bank among them – participated and pledged to contribute financially were the Cypriots to endorse the UN-proposed solution, announced preliminary contributions of €750 million ($400 million by the United States, €300 million by the EU, £31 million by Britain and smaller amounts by other EU member states).168 If one takes into account the contributions that would have followed at the official Donors’ Conference following the referenda, and the yearly saving of about C£300 million owing to demilitarization, one can clearly see how unrealistic the myth of economic collapse was.169 Returning to the reception by Greek Cypriots of international involvement in support for the solution, one should also note the hostile reception, particularly by those in power, of both the UN Secretary General’s report of 16 April and the move within the UNSC towards issuing a resolution that addressed demands for implementation guarantees.170 They also showed complete indifference to Verheugen’s reassurances that the EU Commission, ‘as Guardian of the Agreement, will closely monitor its implementation and will use all legal means – and has lots of measures that it can take – to safeguard that the settlement is implemented in a way satisfying the people concerned’.171 Finally, the government and the presidential environment reserved the same

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reception for a decision taken by the European Parliament, according to which the EU would undertake a practical, continuous and substantive role in monitoring and guaranteeing the implementation of the solution.172 The matter of how international involvement was received by the Greek Cypriot community should be further studied in order that the role played by those in power, and the electronic media in particular, during the critical period prior to the referendum might come to light. It would also be worth exploring in more depth the hypothesis that the unprecedented mobilization by the international community might have been counter-effective in two distinct areas: first, in having further strengthened the suspicion of foreign conspiracy and thenceforth turning the proposed solution into a prospect that was a priori objectionable and dangerous; second, in having generated among a large number of citizens, within the intensely charged atmosphere of those days, the feeling of unbearable pressure exerted on them, in relation to a matter that was exclusively theirs to decide upon. ‘I don’t want Bush to tell me what to do in my house,’ a friend of mine retorted angrily, while watching relevant TV exhortations by Western leaders. However, the crucial question was whether this decision was exclusively ours; whether the effects or consequences of our YES or NO related only and exclusively to us and no one else; whether a NO vote on our part would not have far-reaching negative consequences for Cyprus as a whole; whether the repercussions of our choice would not reach the Aegean and Greece, the Greeks of Istanbul and the Patriarchate, whether they were not linked to the prospect of shaping a new political landscape of stability and peace in the whole region; whether, in other words, we saw the grand picture, the wood beyond the trees.

9.7. The ‘supreme law’ The ‘ethic of conviction’ through which President Papadopoulos functioned – that is, the absolute belief in the correctness of his positions and the emotionally charged feeling that he was fighting for his country’s heartland – blunted any possible reservations as to the means he could use in order to achieve his goal. In particular, as direct or indirect pressure by the international community was intensified, he must have realized that the only defence available to him was a crushing popular NO – which, however, consecutive opinion polls during the last days (14–17 April) had made out to be unlikely.173 He already had two open fronts with the international community: the first with Brussels (Preparatory Donors’ Conference and deliberations for the adoption of relevant resolution by the European Parliament), and the second with the UN Security Council (deliberations for adoption of resolution guaranteeing

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implementation of the solution). On the domestic front, he had by that time the all-out YES campaign by official DISY and – more dangerous – the covert ‘mutiny’ by AKEL cadres and particularly by AKEL-aligned ASTRA radio, which, though not directly questioning the Party’s NO decision, continued, one way or another, to send out YES messages. Moreover, he had the increasing reaction of NGOs that, under the umbrella of the ‘United European Cyprus’ Platform, mobilized during the last days by organizing a large number of quantitatively small but militant events in support of YES. Under such conditions, the achievement of the ‘national goal’ was, for the President and the rejection front, the ‘supreme law’. His office invested him with power, which he was determined to use with no restraint in the service of the ‘supreme law’ and in line with the logic: ‘the end justifies the means’. Spearheading the campaign was to be fear; an instinctive fear of the new and uncertain, now also dangerous; fear of conspiracy by the enemies of Cyprus, who were launching volleys of threats from all directions and were pressing hard to impose a solution that served their own interests. The primary measure was control of televised air time.174 Thus, without any explanation, pre-announced re-transmission of a televised debate by Tselepis and Aemilianides (19–20 April) was cancelled. It was a unique political debate in the true sense of the word, in which the deep knowledge of the Plan that Tselepis commanded, as well as his honest, presentation, devoid of personal or political calculation, of the various aspects of the Plan, had stolen the show in favour of YES. And it was under strong pressure on the part of the public that the CBC decided to repeat the show – although it was to be cut following intervention from the Presidential Palace, according to press reports.175 During the same period, CBC and ANT1 channels turned down Verheugen’s bid for a TV interview in order to explain to the citizens the Union’s approach to the UN-proposed solution. This was denounced by the Commission Spokesman in Brussels, who revealed the CBC’s contention that Verheugen’s presence would constitute ‘interference with internal dialogue in Cyprus’.176 Verheugen himself expressed bitterness over that behaviour and pointed out that ‘it would have been important for the citizens of Cyprus to hear directly from competent EU officials what the European Union’s view on the matter was’. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘solution is a matter that concerns the EU as well. This is not an exclusively Cypriot affair.’177 Apparently on the same grounds, De Soto was denied an interview with the CBC. This was noted in the Secretary General’s report to the UNSC, who added that, prior to Bürgenstock, ‘it had not been possible to find a Greek Cypriot television station prepared to work with a Turkish Cypriot television station to produce a bi-communal phone-in exercise, with questions and answers on the Plan directed to UN experts’.178 And, while the CBC ceded its air time following the Tuesday and Wednesday central evening news bulletin prior the Saturday (the day of the referendum),

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to the DIKO Deputy President and the EDEK President respectively, the President arranged an all-channel two-hour-long conference immediately following the central evening news bulletin on Thursday, 22 April, the last day of the campaign, thus totally monopolizing communication at the most critical moment.179 The above-mentioned facts are simply indicative of the communication strategy of the NO campaign used by the President and his environment. The attempt to silence the opposite opinion, even through accusing YES supporters for bribery by foreign centres,180 was so provocative that it made AKEL lambaste the phenomenon through written statement by the Political Bureau. Moreover, the Party Spokesman, Andros Kyprianou, stated that ‘the Party is in possession of evidence to the effect that Central Bank officials threatened employees that, in the event YES vote prevails, they will lose their positions’. He also spoke of ‘similar cases in other government services’.181 The Journalists’ Association also expressed concern at the climate created by the presidential NO campaign. In a written statement, it referred to ‘complaints and concern’ about ‘symptoms of misinformation or partiality in the presentation of various positions and opinions, as well as impermissible interference with the work of reporters and the free functioning of the media’. The statement added that the Journalists’ Association had sent a letter to the Radio and Television Authority calling on it to exercise its role to enforce respect for the principles and the legal framework relating to press freedom. Finally, it called on journalists and the media to ‘resist any kind of pressure and interference with their work’.182 Another parallel campaign aimed at intimidating professional classes mainly in the public sector, as well as group interests, by brandishing the danger of losing vested rights or interests, thus creating a climate of uncertainty and insecurity, particularly with regard to the danger of serious degradation of living standards following implementation of the solution. In a printed form given to 962 police officers, in which they were called upon to state if they accepted transfer to the federal police, it was noted that no safeguard existed as to pension, vested rights and service status. And as, in the state of uncertainty and insecurity generated by the note, the vast majority refused to accept transfer, the government, instead of settling a purely practical matter that really might have emerged from certain gaps in federal legislation, decided to send out the forms to all police officers again.183 In a similar form submitted to thousands of civil employees asking them to state their willingness to transfer to the federal public service, it was noted that an effort was being made so that government personnel transferred to the federal government service in the event of solution were assured salary, pension, status and other benefits. But the government Spokesman, in reply to questions on the matter, invoked constitutional experts’ opinions to claim that ‘continuity of public servant

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status is not safeguarded to those who will opt for transfer to the central government’.184 The message was clear both in the wording of the forms and even more in the Spokesman’s statement – that all these rights and benefits of public employees were not safeguarded within the framework of the proposed solution. The attempt to intimidate through hints about future professional insecurity, and particularly about the danger of employees losing their jobs, was also transferred to the National Guard. Defence Minister Kyriakos Mavronicolas, speaking at an unprecedented (in the history of the Force) gathering of 1,300 permanent staff members in a military camp in the area of Mathiatis, after analysing the negative aspects of the Annan Plan, announced in a bombshell statement that ‘their future could not be safeguarded’ and that ‘the government of the Greek Cypriot constituent state would take up the issue in the event of solution’.185 The climate of insecurity was further intensified following statements by Labour and Social Insurance Minister Makis Keravnos, who left open the possibility of collapse of the social insurance system, while Agriculture Minister Timis Efthymiou spoke of problems that would emerge for rural people as a result of implementation of the Annan Plan, and the Central Bank Governor, Christodoulos Christodoulou, called upon ‘those who respect[ed] [him] to vote NO’.186 The climate of intimidation, misinformation and the stifling of opposing views was openly denounced by Alekos Markides, who accused the government of using ‘Goebbels’ methods’ intended to ‘stir up instinctive fear’.187 At the same time, DISY President Anastasiades released to the press a denunciation of government practices, made by him to European institutional organs.188 However, Anastasiades’s letter, instead of making people reconsider the path developments were following, was received as an act tantamount to treason.189 The President himself, setting the example in this kind of encounter during his all-channel conference of 22 April, chastised Anastasiades for morally inadmissible behaviour. ‘For a handful of votes’, he said, ‘they malign Cyprus’.190 EDEK had already issued a written statement in which it accused Anastasiades of ‘slanderous defamation of the Republic of Cyprus and its democratic regime’.191 Under the weight of an orchestrated row directed against him, which continued unabated even after the referendum, Anastasiades asked for suspension of the proceedings, in relation to his denunciation, in EU institutional organs. However, the matter that, when used as intentional misnformation, would stir the conspiracy syndrome to its utmost limits was a ‘news’ item that was left to spread initially through gossip but then like a tidal wave once it had been transmitted as a bombshell through Sigma Channel news bulletins of 21 April. The entire contents of this news ‘bombshell’ focused on the fact that the Annan Plan ceded to Britain sovereign rights on Cyprus’s continental shelf

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and the sea-zone of exclusive economic exploitation in the sea area between Egypt and the British bases coasts, where oil and natural gas deposits had been located.192 The masterminds behind this campaign used, as proof of a UN–British conspiracy, a provision in the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, cited in the ‘Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Establishment’ that was annexed to the Annan Plan,193 and presented it to ignorant and credulous citizens as a newly introduced provision, supposedly imposed by the British. Actual facts were as follows: because Britain had ceded 45 square miles (out of 99) of the Base Area to the Republic of Cyprus, Article 3 of the 1960 Treaty of Establishment was amended in order to cover territorial readjustment. As provided for by this Article, the Republic of Cyprus had pledged in 1960 ‘not to claim as part of its territorial sea, waters bordering on the Bases coastline’. The obvious objective of this provision, Tselepis wrote later, when the presence of a British oceanographic ship off the Akrotiri Base coast rekindled the oil ‘seizure’ row, ‘was to ensure to Britain unimpeded access to the Base areas from the sea’.194 The first paragraph of Article 3 of the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, the point at issue, was transferred unchanged to Article 5 (§ 1) of the Additional Protocol in Annan Plan V. Paragraph 2 of the same Article described the procedure for the new delineation in order that, as Tselepis put it, ‘the waters not to be claimed by the Republic of Cyprus be restricted along the coastline that would remain within the Base Areas’. ‘In simpler terms,’ he added, ‘the Additional Protocol provided that Britain’s rights were to remain the same as those in the (1960) Treaty of Establishment but the area of their implementation would be restricted to a shorter coastline’.195 The inventors of this ‘new conspiracy’ concealed the fact that the obligation of the Republic of Cyprus described in Article 5 (§ 1) of the Additional Protocol was simply part of the 1960 Treaty of Establishment. But, apart from this, the agreement between Cyprus and Egypt, which had been signed during Clerides’s term of office, and which delineated the continental shelf and the area of exclusive economic exploitation of the two countries along the ‘median line’ of the sea between them, and which had not been questioned by Britain, was incorporated in the Annan Plan, together with the other international treaties that the Republic of Cyprus had signed. And Britain did not question the incorporation of this agreement into the Plan,196 an incorporation that gave international legitimization to the rights of Cyprus in that sea area. The NO campaign directed by President Papadopoulos, investing in fear and insecurity, sustained and further built upon the myth of economic collapse as a result of implementation of the solution, with serious consequences to the living standards attained so far. Reference has already been made to the fabricated calculations of C£16.6 billion in relation to the cost of the solution and the apparent goals that such fabrications served. The President further intensi-

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fied this fear by bringing back to the fore, through his 7 April declaration, the danger of serious degradation of the Greek Cypriots’ living standards: . . . Through a thorough consideration of the economic aspects of the Annan Plan, we determine that its economic viability is doubtful. The implementation of the relevant provisions entails unbearable economic effects for the Greek Cypriots, while the whole structure of the Plan would lead, if not to the collapse of the Cyprus economy, surely to a serious economic crisis and adverse repercussions on the Greek Cypriots’ standard of living that we have built with so many sacrifices.197

The President made the above claims while he had in his possession a report by independent experts who had been commissioned by the government of Cyprus to study the economic aspects of Annan Plan III, and whose report ended up with a positive overall assessment of economic prospects within the framework of solution.198 In the ‘executive summary’ of their report, the experts stated the following in the section entitled ‘general assessment’: . . . We believe that, suitably adjusted and supported by sound economic policies in each constituent state, the economic aspects of the Annan Plan provide the basis for a sustained rise of living standards throughout the island, including accelerated growth in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state leading to the eventual convergence of living standards in the two constituent states.199

Moreover, in the first page of its introduction, the experts’ report, after clarifying that the authors had studied the Annan Plan (its 26 February 2003 version)200 and had evaluated its economic aspects, concluded as follows: ‘Our overall assessment is that the economic aspects of the Plan provide an adequate basis for a lasting settlement to the Cyprus question.’ The report stressed, of course, problematic issues, such as those of property reinstatement and compensations, and made suggestions as to how to address the problems within the framework of the Plan’s provisions. In fact, certain proposals made by the experts, particularly those relating to the Property Council and compensations, were adopted by Annan Plan V,201 thus making relevant arrangements much more secure and viable.202 Furthermore, it was widely recognized that Annan Plan V was substantially improved compared to Annan III, particularly in relation to economic workability. The more significant improvements were marked out in the UN Secretary General’s report of 28 May 2004.203 Prior to the Secretary General’s report and the President’s 7 April declaration, the government had released an eight-page report (6 April 2004), in Greek, entitled ‘Evaluation of the Economic Aspects of the Annan Plan’. ‘The

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general assessment by the Greek Cypriot side’, the report noted in its opening statement, ‘is that, despite limited progress that has been achieved in certain sectors, a number of vital issues still remain which are not satisfactorily addressed by the revised Annan Plan that was submitted on 31 March 2004’. The ‘Evaluation’ proceeded with an analysis by subject, citing briefly (1) the ‘basic issues’, (2) the ‘matters that have been addressed’ and (3) the ‘problems that still remain’. From this brief topic-based analysis, which covered all significant aspects of the economy, a series of improvements emerged, relating to the Central Bank, taxation and budgets, property reinstatement and compensations, the Property Board, economic convergence, federal government powers and functions, the cost for the UN peace force, harmonization with the acquis communautaire and supervision of the financial sector. Given that the experts’ report considered that the economic aspects of Annan Plan III provided ‘a basis for stable development’, and given that most of these aspects were further improved in Annan Plan V, and given further that a substantial part of the solution cost would have been covered by the Donors’ Conference, where did the President base the claims concerning an economic crisis and the degradation of Greek Cypriot living standards that he made in his 7 April declaration? The only reasonable explanation for this attitude is that the above-mentioned predictions were invented and used to serve the ‘supreme law’ as conceived by the President’s strategy of rejection. ‘Predictions’ made by the Commerce and Industry Minister Georgios Lilikas about the pending collapse of the tourism industry, in the event the Plan was accepted, were also suited to serve the same goal.204 The evidence cited above is simply indicative. It covers only the findings of the present research, a research that has been carried out with restricted means and restricted access to sources. It is only the tip of the iceberg. But it adequately documents a ruthless campaign planned and directed by President Papadopoulos and his aides in order to achieve the targeted ‘resounding NO’, by resorting to the logic ‘the end justifies the means’.

9.8. The citizens’ NO vote Greek Cypriot citizens proceeded to the referendum of 24 April 2004 under the conditions described above. The result, as might have been expected, was a sweeping personal victory for Tassos Papadopoulos. Citizens gave him the ‘resounding NO’ that he had asked of them, with the overwhelming percentage of 75.8 per cent as against the 24.2 per cent of YES vote.205 An exit poll carried out by RAI for the MEGA Channel gave the following findings underpinning the NO vote reasons: ‘security’ 75 per cent, ‘economic cost’ 5 per cent, ‘the President’s position’ 7 per cent, and ‘I prefer to live separately’ 13 per cent.206

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However, a first glance at the geographic distribution of the results leads to serious doubts as to whether the NO vote reasons given at the exit poll were really the driving force in the minds of citizens at the critical time. Had security been the overwhelmingly major reason for the NO vote, this should have been reflected in distinctly higher NO percentages in areas along the ceasefire line in which citizens had direct live experience of occupation and confrontation with Turkish military threat. But results were, on average, exactly contrary to such a reasonable expectation. The Greater Nicosia municipalities of Nicosia, Agios Dometios, Aglantzia and Geri gave YES votes to the tune of 29. per cent, 28.9 per cent, 29.1 per cent and 28.8 per cent respectively. Even higher percentages for YES, in excess of 30 per cent, were polled in rural communities along the occupation line, from Derynia and Paralimni in the east, in which YES polled 57.6 per cent and 42.1 per cent respectively, to Kato Pyrgos in the west, in which YES polled 30.7 per cent. In contrast, areas remote from the dangerous zone, such as Pafos, which has the fewest refugees of all other districts but lives mainly on tourism, polled overwhelmingly NO. Indicatively, in the town of Pafos, NO votes polled 82.2 per cent, in Geroskipou 84.3 per cent, Kisonerga 89.1 per cent, Chlorakas 83.8 per cent and Polis 82.3 per cent.207 The row that AKEL’s stance generated over the security issue (troops, guarantees) and the guarantee of implementation (which also touched upon security), and particularly the feeling of insecurity that was targeted by the NO campaign, elevated the ‘security’ issue to the position of dominant alibi for the NO vote, directed at the international community. Further research from the political and sociological point of view, as well as an exhaustive analysis from the electoral behaviour point of view, will certainly produce a much more complex account of the genuine reasons behind the crushing NO vote of 75.8 per cent. Among the dominant reasons to emerge will most probably be the role that political leaders, those in power in particular, and the Church, played during the critical period, more specifically in the manner in which they presented the UN Plan to the people, and the methods they used to stir up fear and insecurity.208 The role played by the leadership was certainly a determining factor. This judgement is based on the fact that the question before the people at the referendum was not of the type that involved a straightforward ethical dilemma, such as death penalty, abortion, euthanasia or cloning. It was about a complex legal document that few had read and fewer still had managed to comprehend.209 And even fewer had been able to put together all the bits of the puzzle and see the ‘grand picture’ – that is, the convergence of developments at the local, regional and global level, which resulted in the unique historic juncture. Therefore, those who were finally dragged along by the rejection climate created by the political and religious leadership around the President must have been more numerous than those who admitted it in the exit polls, because most people

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tend to believe, or make others believe, that they think autonomously and likewise take their decisions autonomously. The substantial shift of AKEL voters towards NO and of DISY voters towards YES at the referendum, compared to opinion-poll findings of February and March 2004, cannot be explained otherwise than by the direct influence exerted by the leadership.210 Undoubtedly, beneath the thin surface of current attitudes, there had been a thick layer of popular culture, which was ready to receive and internalize the messages sent out by rejectionist political leaderships and the Church. It was the culture of ‘absolute solution’, which has been extensively explored, and which, through the ‘ethic of conviction’, had become a decisive determinant in the perception of the solution by the Greek Cypriot community throughout the twentieth century. Despite this, however, the referendum result cannot be considered as having been predetermined. Beyond the equally – if not more – decisive role of the leadership in this particular case, one should not completely exclude the role coincidence may have played. If, for instance, Simitis and Papandreou had remained in office in Greece and had consequently been in Bürgenstock, it would not have been as easy for Papadopoulos to put them aside as he did with the newcomers on the stage, Karamanlis and Molyviatis. Developments in Cyprus also might not have taken the same path had Clerides been the negotiator in some form or another. Of course, one of the factors for change here was the questioning of a ‘compliant’ Clerides, who was held responsible by a vocal militant opposition for what were regarded as unacceptable provisions in the Annan Plan, and, even more, for having already made concessions beyond the ‘red lines’ set out by the National Council. But, on the other hand, many of those who had opted for Papadopoulos had seen in him the hard negotiator who might achieve a better solution within the framework of existing realities – not the one to thwart it. The unexpectedly warm coming-together of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, for one whole year following the ‘breach in the partition wall’, was an eloquent witness to a significant shift in the attitudes of both communities and to an unprecedented political rapprochement, on which it was up to the leadership to capitalize. However, Papadopoulos, as facts ultimately proved, had his own hidden agenda, which few perceived even when, following the Treaty of Accession, he cautiously began to put it forward. Finally, one more issue that needs be explored is the correctness of the popular verdict, the legitimacy of which could not be questioned even if it was not for the overwhelmingly high percentages of the NO vote. Nevertheless, this legitimacy is not in itself a presumption of correctness of the people’s particular verdict. This will be judged by future historians in the light of long-term developments as a result of this verdict. But even then, no absolute judgement could be passed, because it will not be possible to find a comparison for the situation that would have occurred, had people voted YES at the referendum.

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I will venture a personal judgement, which, even though largely supported by research findings and by highly detached data analysis, cannot claim the status of an objective judgement, particularly as developments have not yet come full circle: the NO vote at the referendum of 24 April 2004 was a tragic collective blunder, the outcome of which will most probably determine the future of Cyprus by definitely thwarting the political rapprochement of Greek and Turkish Cypriots that the unique timing of 2002–4 generated. The Turkish Cypriots, having lived through the demise of irredentist Denktas nationalism in Copenhagen and The Hague, having freed themselves from that obsession and having decided in favour of solution-accession, looked forward to our reciprocating towards the same goal, so that they could come to the fore of history and, together with the Greek Cypriots, take part in the European journey of a reunited Cyprus. Such a development by itself would also free them from the bond of ‘gratitude’ to the Turkish army,211 which Denktas had tried hard to implant in them since 1974, and would decisively contribute, through a ‘spillover effect’, to making a common Cyprus interest a joint goal. Had we reciprocated through a YES vote at the referendum, the European paradigm of ‘unity in diversity’ would have become, for the people of Cyprus as a whole, a compass with which to guide us on a common journey into the future, together with the peoples of Europe. Our failure to overcome stereotyped nation-state concepts that had their roots in nationalism, and positively respond to the historic challenge, will cast the two communities back into a new period of confrontation, which, in its turn, will lead to renewed, protracted crisis and deep-seated deadlocks. The poet Georgios Moleskis, speaking ‘the language of human conscience – of human anxiety, sensitivity and vision’ – and seeing in the NO vote simply the fear of YES, the fear of a journey into the future, concluded an explosive article with the following words: . . . Now that future is before us we dare not stretch out our hand. Instead, we turn our face away. We blindly rest in the deep sleep of unreal strength, fabricated security, and fake prosperity that stands on foreign crutches. We say ‘NO’ instead of shouting out ‘YES’, seizing a unique opportunity, and setting out for a new creative journey. When we wake up the future will have gone.212

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Postscript

At the time these lines are being written, August 2007, forty months following the NO vote of 24 April 2004, it is worth pondering on what the situation would have been like today had we, Greek Cypriots, said YES to the UN proposed solution. All areas under ‘territorial adjustment’, as shown on Map 2, would have been returned and, by the end of October, the sixth and last phase of return in the Morfou area would have been completed. All churches and religious sites would have been reinstated to the Church and ancient monuments to the federal government, which would have restored their true history and character. People would have reconnected with the place and time of their personal and collective memory. Greek and Turkish Cypriots would have come together to secure a common political goal for the first time in our history and would have been jointly building a common Cypriot – and simultaneously European – future, leaving behind political confrontation and conflict in which opposing nationalisms and incompatible visions had held us captive for one entire century. Turkish Cypriot reorientation towards a common path of development alongside Greek Cypriots, a reorientation that had already liberated them from the obsession with a past in which Denktas had held them captive, would have helped them escape isolation and the humiliating high-handed treatment by the Embassy,1 and, through solution – in practical terms, reunification and accession – would have opened up to them a window to the world. Under such conditions, they were prepared to give up land for exit from isolation, participation in government and the gradual upgrading of their living standards. In other words, they were prepared to ‘give land for peace’.2 We, as Greek Cypriots, had as many reasons to work to make the new endeavour succeed. We would have given the Turkish Cypriots equal say – and proportionate participation – in the management of state affairs, and, in return, we would have had our ancestral lands either fully or partially reinstated to us. On the one hand, the European environment would have facilitated the smooth functioning of the state, while, on the other, we would not have experienced a drastic change in our lives, since our daily dealings would

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have continued as before to be with the government we had before the solution, in the form of the Greek Cypriot constituent state. A new, creative challenge was opened up to us. And all of us, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, would have worked together, inspired by common political will – contrary to 1960 – to lead a reunited Cyprus towards a common future. Turkey’s highest priorities, relating to the reorientation of its foreign and domestic policy, were also at stake in a Cyprus settlement, thus making it imperative for the Turkish government to fulfil its obligations and further make the solution work. It was clear to all that, following a solution on Cyprus, a new ‘Franco-German’ chapter in the history of Greece and Turkey would begin, with Cyprus acting as a catalyst. In such a situation, Erdogan, the leader who would have brought ‘peace to the country’, as in the case of Mustafa Kemal, would have gained the necessary power and prestige to accelerate reforms in the direction of Turkey’s democratization, particularly in relation to restricting the political role of the military and improving the country’s human-rights record. This might have included steps towards further safeguarding cultural rights for the Kurds and other minorities (education in their mother tongue), thus acknowledging the multicultural character of the country. Such developments, as part of a domino effect scenario, would, most probably, have left Erdogan’s hands free to come to terms with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and even, through academic research, to liberate the Turkish people from obsessions relating to the dark pages of their past (the Armenian genocide), so as to be able to advance alongside Europe towards a common future.3 Normalization of Turkey’s relations with EU member states, Greece and Cyprus, and Turkey’s growth as a major factor of peace and stability in the region, might possibly have had a ‘spillover effect’ on the improvement of the country’s image in Europe, to such an extent as to pull down a significant part of the wall of prejudice and xenophobia that had been raised by ultra-right movements in certain EU countries, particularly those with large numbers of immigrants. Such a development might have had, in its turn, chain effects in blunting psychological barriers to Turkey’s integration within the EU, thus removing one of the factors that led to rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty. The adherent of inertia, or even the average citizen, might object that this is an extremely optimistic scenario, an idealist vision, too good to be true. Visions tend in fact to shrink, in the process of action, to the measure of human nature. However, history has never moved forwards without vision. Europe might not exist in its present form had it not been for visionaries of the calibre of Jean Monet and Robert Schumann. Vision is the creative force that, if fertilized in the intellect of an inspired leader at the particular historical moment when decay of the old generates conception of the new, becomes

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collective consciousness through the leader’s charismatic influence, and moves a society forward to grasp the challenge of a particular historic opportunity. It was really through vision of a future whose historic convergence of events was conceived that we supported the prospect of solution; by fitting the UN Plan in the grand puzzle within which we envisioned it to function effectively and lead Cyprus, Turkey and Greece to a new period of cooperation to the benefit of all. The NO vote of 24 April 2004 did not allow this vision to be tested on real ground. Bearing in mind, however, that it was not a high-flying theoretical conception but a vision firmly founded on rational analysis and interpretation of reality, we were – and still are – justified in claiming that our vision could stand the test, more than any other option available (including the status quo) at the particular time.4 The power of inertia among Greek Cypriots, reinforced by the factors that this research has brought to the surface, inhibited Cyprus from making the leap forward into the future. This inhibitive behaviour has, since then, been causing chain reactions, the negative consequences of which have begun taking shape. Papadopoulos’s expectation that, from a more powerful position as President of an EU member state he would be able to negotiate a more favourable solution, has faded away with time, and the Cyprus problem has entered a period of decay. The European Council of June 2004, which, with the consent of President Papadopoulos himself, ‘welcome[d] the positive contribution of the Turkish government to the efforts of the UN Secretary General to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem’,5 was proof enough of the meagre to non-existent chances the Cypriot President had in forcing through the policy he had envisioned in his 7 April declaration. The thirty or so ‘small’ vetoes on Turkey’s accession process, which have been publicized as Cyprus’s main arsenal, have proved to have no relation whatsoever to European reality. Since that time, Papadopoulos has abandoned every effort to bring the substance of the Cyprus problem to the European or any other international forum. Instead, he has found refuge in trench warfare involving legal or technical issues that are completely irrelevant to the substance of the Cyprus problem. The forty months that have elapsed since the referendum have shown the President or other Cypriot delegations to European bodies puffing and blowing after initiatives set in motion by either the Commission or influential EU member states, which have been consistently directed at establishing direct economic and other relations with the Turkish Cypriot community without the mediation of the Republic of Cyprus.6 Moreover, the overall handling of the Myra Xenides-Arestis complaint against Turkey by the ECHR leaves the window open to the referral of such cases to legal bodies set up by the ‘TRNC’.7 On the UN front, Resolution 1687 by the UNSC (15 June 2006), while

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leaving Turkey untouched, included a shattering judgement on the leaders of both communities, to the effect that ‘the gap between words and deeds remains too great for the Secretary General to resume fully his good offices mission’. Six months later, the Secretary General, in his last report to the UNSC, warned that ‘the continued active involvement of the international community in Cyprus, through the presence of UNFICYP, should not be taken for granted’.8 Continued confrontation with Turkey within European institutional bodies, into which Greece is also dragged, sidelines the feeling of friendship that permeated down to grass-roots level during the years 1999–2004, and returns a climate of tension and hardening of Turkish positions on Cyprus as well as on issues of Greek interest, such as the Patriarchate. Such trends, also fed by xenophobic reactions to Turkey’s integration in certain European societies, play into the hands of nationalist reaction, one of the side effects of which has been the conspicuous retardation of the internal reform process.9 While the sweeping victory gained by the AKP in the elections of 22 July 2007, on the one hand, verifies this book’s assumption that Turkey is entering a postKemalist era, the resurgence of the MHP’s ultra-nationalists, on the other, is evident of a new tension and polarization between the democratization and reform process and reactionary nationalist resistance. The fact that MHP leader Bahceli came out during the pre-election period as the standard bearer of ‘no concessions’ on Cyprus is one further disquieting signal of new obstacles threatening the solution prospects. Back to Cyprus, the personal vendetta between Papadopoulos and Talat,10 and the sense among the people in both communities that reunification prospects are fading, are leading back to incompatible visions of the past – that is, a separate state for the Turkish Cypriots and a unitary state for the Greek Cypriots. Demonstrative of such trends are opinion polls, the findings of which show the two communities being led apart once again. An opinion poll presented by the CBC11 showed 48 per cent of Greek Cypriots (as against 45 per cent) rejecting symbiosis with Turkish Cypriots. An ‘Opinion Survey-Polling’, conducted by the UN in both communities between 26 January and 19 February 2007, revealed 72 per cent of Greek Cypriots as considering ‘unitary state’ to be a ‘satisfactory’ solution compared to 19 per cent who considered ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’ to be a ‘satisfactory’ solution. As regards the Turkish Cypriots, the Survey showed that 59 per cent considered a ‘two state arrangement’ to be a ‘satisfactory’ solution and that 45 per cent considered a ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’ to be a ‘satisfactory’ solution. The same survey also found that 57 per cent of Greek Cypriots believed ‘the problem will not be solved in the foreseeable future’ and 14 per cent believed that ‘the status quo is the solution’. Respective percentages for Turkish Cypriots were found to be 70 per cent and 3.5 per cent.12 The above findings were corroborated for Turkish Cypriots by a series of

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opinion polls conducted by CADEM during 2006, which showed a significant shift among Turkish Cypriots, with 65 per cent opting for a ‘two-state solution’.13 The UN findings on Greek Cypriot attitudes were also corroborated by an opinion poll conducted by Noverna Consulting and Research on behalf of the IKME Foundation between 7 and 30 March 2007. This survey showed only 27 per cent opting for ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’, and an overall figure of 73 per cent opting for solutions that actually meant or led to a ‘two state settlement’.14 The attack organized by a ‘Golden Dawn’ gang of hooded Greek Cypriot youths ‘imbued with Greek souls’ against Turkish Cypriot students at the English School in Nicosia (November 2006) and the reported reappearance of ultra-right nationalist organizations among Greek Cypriot youths15 adds to the anxiety over the direction the Greek Cypriot Community is taking. Moreover, the recent row caused by the questioning of ‘bi-zonal-bi-communal federation’ by leading political figures among all three presidential coalition parties and the Archbishop – the latter also reiterated support for the ‘status quo as the second best solution’16 – is causing deep concern as to whether we are really heading towards partitionist solution options. Harsh reality, however, tells us that the path towards partition is a deadend road for both communities. Even in the event of an agreed partition, an under-surface crisis will be continuously gathering impetus and feeding conflict, particularly as the Greek Cypriot state will always feel under permanent threat from Turkey. Takis Hadjidemetriou, in a penetrating analysis, highlighted new impasses and warned of a new protracted crisis to which such a situation would lead.17 However, while reunification remains the only viable option, and while officials pay lip service to it, they do not seem to act in this direction. Initiatives directed towards resumption of negotiation so far, as well as those scheduled, recall manoeuvrings of past decades rather than a substantial result-oriented effort towards solution. The ‘Gambari process’, initiated with the 8 July 2006 Agreement to resume talks at working group level, has not produced any tangible results so far, nor does it allow any hope for a breakthrough.18 Papadopoulos’s insistent rejection of any initiative based on the Annan Plan, which the UN, the United States and the EU still regard as a basis for any search for a solution, is acting as an inhibitive factor to the detriment of any new mediation initiative. At the same time, his shattered reliability amongst those power brokers prohibits him from pushing forward his own agenda – the exact content of which, however, as well as his ultimate goals, will remain unclear as long as he refuses to put forward an alternative comprehensive solution proposal. As for the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, he does not seem to have the same incentives as prior to the referendum for a reunification

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solution. On the one hand, continued dependence on Turkey has dragged him along in full alignment with Turkey’s policy of serving prestige, with regard to implementation of its legal obligations arising from the Customs Union, which has resulted in further intensification of the ‘blame game’. On the other hand, domestic priorities involving the raising of living standards among Turkish Cypriots have pushed him towards further promoting the piratical development of Greek Cypriot-owned properties, thus further narrowing the already meagre solution prospects. Unless a dramatic change occurs in Greek Cypriot politics, which is hard to foresee at the moment, Cyprus will go on heading towards an uncertain and hopeless future. They call the one ship that sails AG ONIA 2007.19

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Notes

Introduction 1 Epimetheus (the opposite of Prometheus) was, in Greek mythology, the personification of imprudence, a man who thought of the consequences of his behaviour only after he had acted. This is shown in the myth according to which he (or, according to another version, his wife Pandora) rashly opened the box from which sprang every misfortune that befell mankind.

Chapter 1 1 Notis Marias: ‘Negotiating Peace: The Helsinki Decision for Turkey’s Accession Process in the Light of the Theories of Integration’, in Panos Kazakos et al. (2001: 86–9). 2 The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by the peoples of France and the Netherlands (referenda 2005), which suspended the integration process, has not been interpreted as rejection of integration. The Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt (2006), counts on findings of the Eurobarometer (Summer 2005, after the referenda) to suggest a strong desire among the European peoples for a further deepening of integration along with more effectiveness. Of particular interest is Verhofstadt’s proposition for a more effective EU, as the ‘United States of Europe’, through a process of integration parallel to the one followed in the gradual creation of the United States of America. 3 Robert Cooper (1996: 32). See also Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 199–200). 4 Thomas Diez (2002: 6). 5 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 95–6). 6 Robert Cooper (1996: 7–14). 7 Notis Marias (2001: 73–113). 8 Robert Cooper (1996: 27). 9 Thomas Diez (2002: 7–9). 10 Robert Cooper (1996: 36–9). 11 Robert Cooper (1996: 46). 12 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 221). 13 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 222).

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14 ‘Europe’s Way to the Information Society: An Action Plan’ (1994) and ‘Europe at the Forefront of Global Information Society: A Rolling Action Plan (1996), in Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 223–4). 15 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 225). See also Loukas Tsoukalis (2004: 50–66). 16 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 226). 17 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 226–9). 18 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 230–3). 19 Elizabet Sachtouris (2000). 20 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 271–82, 352). 21 Jeremy Rifkin (2004: 358–85). 22 Thomas Diez (2002: 6).

Chapter 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24

Yiannos Kranidiotis (1999: 202). Yiannos Kranidiotis (1999: 21–2). Yiannos Kranidiotis (1999: 22–3). George Papandreou (2000a). George Papandreou (2000b: 30). To Vima, 2 July 2000: ‘The new Greek foreign policy’. Costas Simitis (2005: 92). Costas Simitis (2005: 99). Costas Simitis (2005: 99–100). Costas Simitis (2005: 101). Panos Kazakos et al. (2001: 23). Panos Kazakos et al. (2001: 22–4). Thanos Veremis (2001: 55). Kalypso Nicolaidis (2001: 252). Dimitris Keridis (2001: 2–18). A small town on the southern coast of Turkey East of Castelorizo. Public opinion poll: To Vima; Hurriyet, 2 Oct. 2005. Eurobarometer: Politis, 1 Oct. 2005. Alexis Alexandris: ‘The Framework of Greek-Turkish Relations 1923–1954’, quoted in Miltiades Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: 409). Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 121). Dimitris Kitsikis (1981: 31). George Ostrogorsky, in his classic book entitled History of the Byzantine State (1968), gives an illuminating analysis of the economic and social conditions that caused the decline of the central Byzantine state as a result of the advance of feudalism in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This analysis explains how Asia Minor was lost to Byzantium in the aftermath of the battles of Manzikert (1071) and Myriocephalum (1176), and how its populations, particularly in the interior, converted to Islam long before the fall of Constantinople. See also Lord Kinross: The Ottoman Times (Greek edn, Nicosia 1980), p. 23. Altaic: from Altai mountains in central Asia where the cradle lands of Turkish tribes. Kitsikis (1981: 27–9).

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25 Frank Weber (1979) presents Atatürk’s successors, Inonu and Saracoglu (1938–45), as turning with unconcealed opportunism towards either Britain or Germany, depending on their predictions as to the most likely early victor and, later, according to the course of the war, repeatedly projecting territorial claims stretching from the Crimea, the Urals and Azerbaijan in the north, to Iraq, Syria and Egypt in the south, and from Thessaloniki and the Aegean islands and Cyprus in the west, to Si Kiang in the east. 26 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 133). 27 Niels Katritzke (1976: 104). 28 Pandazis Terlexis (1971:. 134–6). 29 Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 36–46). See also Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 89–93), and Ioannis Stefanidis (1999: 207–15, 220–3). 30 Christoforos Christidis (1967: 7–37). 31 Christoforos Christidis (1967: 31). 32 Christoforos Christidis (1967: 33–5). 33 Ioannis Stefanidis (1999: 270). 34 Ioannis Stefanidis (1999: 269). 35 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 129–30). 36 Neoclis Sarris (1982: 276–301). 37 Cf. the pogrom against the Greeks of Istanbul, 6–7 Sept. 1955. 38 Alexander Philon (1989: 1–15). See also Dimitrios Triantaphyllou (2001: 57–8). 39 Demetris Bitsios (1982: 204, 206). See also Thanos Veremis (2001: 66). 40 Demetris Bitsios (1982: 123). 41 Demetris Bitsios (1982: 129–62). 42 See letter from G. Rallis to A. Papandreou in Georgios Rallis (1990: 363–9). See also Constantina Boutsiou: ‘Greek-Turkish relations’, in P. Kazakos et al. (2001), p. 159. 43 Charles McCaskill (1989: 45). 44 Charles McCaskill (1989: 43–5) and Constantina Boutsiou (2001: 160). See also Thanos Veremis: ‘Greek–Turkish Relations and the Cyprus Problem’, in D. Constas and C. Tsardanidis (1989: 16). 45 Charles McCaskill (1989: 44). 46 Kirikas, 6.3.1988. 47 According to reliable information, the articles signed by ‘Democritos‘ were written by Tassos Papadopoulos himself. 48 Kirikas, 20 Mar. 1988. 49 Ta Nea (Athens daily), 6 Feb. 1988: Athens News Agency report from Istanbul: ‘According to a cabinet decision published in today’s official gazette, the decree 6/380 of 2.11.64 is abrogated as from 6.2.88. The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that “owing to changed conditions” and in accordance with the efforts being made towards improving the climate in the relations of the two countries, the abrogation of the 1964 decree has been decided upon.’ 50 As regards the negative consequences of the policy towards FYROM (1990–3) for Greece’s national interests, see Constantina Boutsiou (2001: 184–5). See also Sotiris Valten: (1994), and, in particular, the critical views of Honorary Ambassador K. Zepos in the prologue of the book, pp. 11–12, and the criticism in the introduction, pp. 13– 19. In the same spirit are the critical views of Thanos Veremis and Theodoros Kouloumbis (1997: 14, 35–45).

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51 Argyris Fatouros: (1988: 22). 52 Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 233). 53 Argyris Fatouros (1988: 17–25). See also Vyron Theodoropoulos: ‘Foreign policy should be exempted from self-indulging political benefit’: an interview with Kathimerini, 7 Mar. 1999.

Chapter 3 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17

Robert Chase et al. (eds) (1999: 6–11). Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997: 40–1). Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997: 47). Statements by Holbrooke quoted in Robert Chase et al. (eds) (1999: 101, 117). The article caused such a heated discussion in the United States and the world at large that it made Huntington write his controversial, albeit classic, book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), in which he formulated a theory on the new conflicts that would threaten the world at the beginnings of the twenty-first century. Philip Robins (2003: 129–32). Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 230–1, 233–4). Hugo Gobbi was Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Cyprus during the period 1980–4. The Athens daily Eleftherotypia (21 Oct. 1991) published a letter from Mitsotakis to Bush dated 13 Sept. 1991, a ‘non-paper’ answer of Bush to Mitsotakis the same day, and a reply to Bush by Mitsotakis dated 14 Sept. 1991. Mitsotakis’s first letter, written only two days after his meeting with Yilmaz in Paris, is revealing enough on what must have been privately agreed upon between the United States and Turkey. The Greek Prime Minister expresses his disappointment at his Turkish counterpart’s hard-line positions at their talks in Paris (11 Sept. 1991).Yilmaz had not only failed to show any flexibility on pending issues but had reneged on positions that, according to US and UN briefings, had been accepted by the Turkish side. Mitsotakis specifically mentioned Yilmaz’s refusal to accept Gobbi’s line even with adjustments and his rejection of the return of Morfou to the Greek Cypriots, as the Greek Prime Minister had been reassured by all the parties involved. UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali: ‘Set of Ideas on an Overall Framework Agreement on Cyprus’, 25 Aug. 1992, § 92. Eleftherotypia, 21 Oct. 1991: letter from Mitsotakis to Bush, 13 Sept. 1991, a ‘nonpaper’ answer of Bush to Mitsotakis, 13 Sept. 1991, and a reply to Bush by Mitsotakis, 14 Sept. 1991. Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 119). Ref.: Report of the Secretary General on his Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus, Security Council, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, § 41. Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 113). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 138). George Vassiliou (2004: 54). Giorgos Vassiliou (2004: 54–5).

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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

39 40 41 42

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Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 192). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 192). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 198). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 253). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 516). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 520). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 521). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 522). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 523–4). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 527). Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 631–2). To Vima, 12 July 1998: Alexis Papahelas: ‘S-300: In case they are installed there will be a Turkish strike’. Ta Nea, 5 Oct. 1998: Notis Papadopoulos: ‘Stop the S-300 by all means’. Theodoros Kouloumbis (1999: 23–5). The author, writing in Kathimerini, 3 Mar. 1998, comments on a revelation in Ta Nea, 14 Apr. 1998. To Vima, 29.11.1998: Alexis Papahelas: ‘Clerides’ dilemma on the S-300’. Fileleftheros, 3 Dec. 1998: Kyriakos Pierides: ‘The missile crisis and diffusion’. To Vima, 19 July 1998: Nikos Marakis: ‘Three scenarios for the S-300: Why the Americans are concerned’. The talks at Dayton, United States, in Nov. 1995, which were both conceived and coordinated by Holbrooke, led to a comprehensive settlement in Bosnia. To Vima, 17 Aug. 1997: Stathis Efstathiadis: ‘Holbrooke’s turn’. See also a report on this issue by A. Hadjikyriakos in Fileleftheros, 17 Aug. 1997, and an interview by Inal Batu in the same edition of Fileleftheros. Kathimerini, 6 Oct. 1996: Alexis Papahelas: ‘Package deal from the US for Greek– Turkish affairs’. The Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO) works for the restoration of peace by bringing people together and promoting dialogue between social groups of conflicting parties. One result of this procedure was the historic Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO in 1993. Kathimerini, 6 Oct. 1996: Alexis Papahelas: ‘Package deal from the US for Greek– Turkish affairs’. To Vima, 10 May 1998: Nikos Marakis: ‘Holbrooke’s next step’; Kathimerini, 9 Nov. 1997: Alexis Papahelas: ‘The next moves of Holbrooke on Aegean and Cyprus’. David Hannay (2005: 91). Kathimerini, 3 May 1998: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Difficult to find a solution with Turkey’. In the same edition of Kathimerini, see also A. Ellis: ‘Holbrooke’s plan on Cyprus’, and K. Yennaris: ‘Legalization of the status quo: Holbrooke does not wish a change in Cyprus and threatens’. See also To Vima, 10 May 1998: Y. Kartalis: ‘The magic and the truth’ and A. Papahelas: ‘The flexible, the inflexible, and the magician’. See further two more articles by A. Papahelas: ‘Holbrooke’s next step’ and ‘Holbrooke’s formula on Cyprus’ in To Vima 3 May 1998 and 5 April 1998 respectively. David Hannay (2005: 76, 83). David Hannay (2005: 92). See also reference to Holbrooke’s statements in an interview of the Cyprus Coordinator at the State Department Tom Miller with A. Ellis in

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45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

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The Cyprus Referendum Kathimerini, 10 May 1998, as well as statements by Miller himself in the same interview, in which he reiterates that the responsibility for the deadlock rests completely with the Turkish side. To Vima, 20 Dec. 1998: A. Papahelas: ‘The S-300 definitely to Crete’. Politis, 9 Oct. 1999: Ch. Kafkarides: ‘Holbrooke line against Denktas in the US’. See also Politis, 26 Oct. 1999: Ch. Kafkarides: ‘Unbending Turkish intransigence’. The report included a reference to a statement by Holbrooke to NTV and carried by Hurriyet, in which the American diplomat had said the United States considered not Denktas but the Turkish government to be their interlocutor on Cyprus. G8: The seven richest countries in the world (United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy) and Russia. David Hannay (2005: 100–1). To Vima, 7 Nov. 1999: interview with Marc Grossman. See also Kathimerini, 7 Nov. 1999: A. Ellis: ‘What Simitis and Clinton will discuss: The agenda of the Americans’. See detailed reports in the Greek press of 21 Nov. 1999. David Hannay (2005: 109). The Luxembourg Presidency Conclusions (12 Dec. 1997) refused Turkey candidate member status on the reasoning that the political and economic conditions of the country were not such as to allow the commencement of accession negotiations.

Chapter 4 1 Ziya Gokalp (1876–1924): one of the founders of Turkish nationalism, an intellectual and poet, member of the Young Turk Movement and later Mustafa Kemal’s supporter. During the Young Turk period, Ζiya Gokalp’s nationalism merged with the ideas of Pan-Turkism. 2 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 39). 3 Berch Berberoglu (1982: 4–5). 4 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 40, 49). 5 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 57). 6 Jacob Landau (1981: 7–21). 7 Through the implementation of this policy, the Armenian genocide was ruthlessly executed. 8 Jacob Landau (1981: 53), from the proclamation of the Young Turk government on its entry into the war on the side of Germany. 9 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 68–70). 10 Jacob Landau (1981: 111–35). Frank Weber (1979) also gives detailed documented evidence on the grand expansionist designs that led Turkish foreign policy during the war period. 11 Jacob Landau (1981: 145–70). 12 Alexis Alexandris: ‘Turkish Foreign Policy 1923–1993: The Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia’, in Thanos Veremis (ed.) (1995: 462–92). See also Shireen Hunter: (2002: 488–502). 13 Berch Berberoglu (1982: 109): The Army Mutual Assistance Association (OYAK)

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33

34 35

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established by the Turkish army in the wake of the 1960 coup and members of which become the high-ranking officers, controls a wide range of state enterprises. M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 4). Kemal Karpat (1959), while supporting the secularist reformations (pp. 53–63), takes note of the criticism of renowned intellectuals, according to which ‘the positivism promoted by the government has led to the worship of science’ (p. 58) and acknowledges that ‘an attempt to reform Islam failed chiefly because the ground was not ready and the inner urge to make such a reform was lacking’ (p. 60). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 48–9) and Kemal Karpat (1959: 54–5). See also Sencer Ayala: (1997: 86–7). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 46). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 52–3). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 54–5). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 56–8). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 134–9). A somewhat differing version of Sufi and Naksibendi orders is given by Ioannis Mazis: (2002: 197–200). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 139–40). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 141–2). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 142–3). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003:.144). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003:.149). See also a public opinion poll in Ali Carkoglu: ‘An Assessment of Religiosity and Public Life in Turkey’, in Thanos Veremis and Thanos Dokos (eds) (2002: 153–92). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 151–7). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 160–2). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 142–3, 166, 187, 194). As for Max Weber’s theory of ‘Protestant ethic’, a penetrating analysis is given in Pantazis Terlexis (1999). M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 88–9, 166). A survey in Economikos Tahydromos, 27 May 2000, shows that small ‘family’ enterprises constituted the trunk of private enterprising in Turkey, representing 99.5 per cent of the processing industry, and employing 61 per cent of the economically active population. M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 187–94). Berch Berberoglu (1982: 22–4). See also Kamuran Bekir Harputlu (1974: 88–112). Berch Berberoglu (1982: 30–41). According to a survey carried out by the Financial Times (2 Apr. 1980) that covered the decade of the 1970s, state enterprises were the most serious aspect of the economic crisis, swallowing the largest portion of foreign economic assistance. ‘The Economist’, 14 Dec. 1991: ‘A Survey on Turkey’. Berch Berberoglu (1982: 58–60) and Kamuran Bekir Harputlu (1974: 112–37). A comparison of data of 1938 given by Kemal Karpat (1959: 99) and Berch Berberoglu (1982:. 58–60), with the findings of a survey by the Financial Times (13 Nov. 1978), shows that, in relation to land ownership, there had been a further widening of the gap between large and small ownerships. According to Kemal Karpat (1959:. 124) and Berch Berberoglu (1982: 56–7), the agrarian question (redistribution of land) had taken the CHP until 1945 to bring it to Parliament. And even then, when it started being implemented in 1947, it had degenerated to such an extent that by 1950 only 36,000 donums of land had been distributed to landless country people.

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36 Berch Berberoglu (1982: 74–8). The writer notes that, in the three major cities of Turkey in 1963, the gecekondu people numbered 660,000 in Istanbul (45 per cent of its total population), 365,000 in Ankara (46 per cent), and 99,000 in Ismir (33 per cent). See also, in the survey of The Economist, 14 Dec. 1991, the report ‘Cities of the Night: A Very Turkish Way of Making New Towns’, p. 19. Furthermore, Basam Tibi (University of Göttingen), Fileleftheros, 11 Aug. 1998, from Spiegel, refers to this phenomenon by saying that ‘here in the gecekondus there accumulates a vast amount of explosives waiting for the Islamists to spark off the explosion’. 37 Berch Berberoglu (1982: 103–4, 107–8). 38 Berch Berberoglu (1982: 118–22). 39 Thanos Veremis (1995:. 11–17). 40 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 75). 41 Vassilis Notis: (1995: 168–76). Foreign export tables presented by the author show a quadruplicating of exports between 1980 and 1989, while clothing industry output increased twenty times during the same period. 42 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003:. 88, 91). 43 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 3). 44 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 75, 89, 141). See also Sencer Ayala: ‘The Politicization of Islam in Turkey’, in K. Geormas and G. Karampelias (eds) (1997: 93–4). In the same book, see also Sami Zubaida: ‘Turkish Islam and National Identity’, p. 64, and David Shankland: ‘Islam and Society in Turkey’, pp. 127–8. 45 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 183). 46 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 69–70). See also A. E. Paresoglou: (1995: 104–9). 47 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 67–75). See also Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 78). 48 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 75). 49 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 78–9). 50 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 194–202). 51 Sencer Ayala (1997: 94–6). 52 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 213), an interview of Abdullah Gul, then Vice President of RP with the author, 10 June 1994. 53 Thanos Veremis (1995: 17). 54 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 209). 55 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 211). 56 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 213), from an interview of Abdullah Gul, Vice Chairman of RP, to the author (10 June 1994). 57 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 214). 58 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 214). 59 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 216). 60 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 215). 61 Alkis Kourkoulas (1997: 22). 62 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 219–20). 63 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 233–4). 64 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 234–5). 65 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 244). 66 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 250). 67 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 265).

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68 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 249). 69 To Vima, 27 Feb. 2000: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Counterattack by the conservatives’. See also: Article of The Economist, republished in Kathimerini, 18 June 2000: ‘Turkey: Holy war on two fronts’. 70 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 255). 71 M. Hakan Yavuz (2003: 255), Ziya Onis (2003: 29) and Nergis Canefe and Tanil Bora (2003: 157, 159). See further Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 230). 72 Ali Carkoglu: (2002: 161–92). 73 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 103). 74 See Chapter 4.2. 75 See Chapter 2.4. 76 Jacob Landau (1981: 125–35). 77 Jacob Landau (1981: 135), referring to the war between Pan-Turkists and their opponents, which had spread from the periodicals to nationwide newspapers, makes the following illuminating comment: ‘This was particularly evident in times of national crisis, such as the escalation of the Cyprus conflict, which had been one of the pet issues of Pan-Turkists in Turkey since the end of the Second World War.’ 78 Neoclis Sarris (1982: 67–128). 79 The destruction by the Greeks of Istanbul is directly related to the unionist movement in Cyprus, in spite of the fact that the Greek Cypriot leadership of the time bypassed it as an isolated incident and despite the fact that historiographers on Cyprus unreasonably marginalize it. 80 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 208–9). 81 Philip Robins (2003: 89–91). 82 See Chapter 3.3 for a discussion of Ozal in relation to Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’. 83 Philip Robins (2003: 83), from an article by Mumtaz Soysal in Hurriyet, 27 Nov. 1992. 84 Philip Robins (2003: 84): from Cengiz Candar’s articles in Sabah, 22 July 1992 and 4 Aug. 1992. 85 Philip Robins (2003:. 84): from Cengiz Candar’s article in Sabah, 4 Aug. 1992. 86 Philip Robins (2003: 83). See also Tozun Bahceli: (2002: 613). 87 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 248–9). 88 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 249). 89 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 133, 277, 297, 298). 90 Constantinos Svolopoulos: (1990: 27–32). 91 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 304). 92 Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 297–8). 93 For the events of 1955, 1964, and 1973, see Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 269–70, 297–8, 304). 94 For the whole nexus of Greek–Turkish disputes and revisionist Turkish claims against Greece, see also Dimitrios Triantaphyllou (2001: 57–79). Also in D. Keridis and D. Triantaphyllou (2001) see Aslan Gunduz: ‘Greek–Turkish Disputes: How to Resolve Them’, pp. 81–101. See also Christos Rozakis: ‘Greek–Turkish Relations: The Legal Aspect’, in D. Constas and C. Tsardanides (eds) (1989: 21–68, and, specifically for Turkish revisionism, p. 65). 95 To Vima, 21 Feb. 1999: Yiannis Kartalis: ‘The consequences of a fiasco’, and, Nikos Mouzelis: ‘The Kurds and the Greek misfortune’.

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96 Kathimerini, 7 Mar. 1999: An interview with Vyron Theodoropoulos: ‘We should not let Greek–Turkish relations be Kurdified’. 97 To Vima, 21 Feb. 1999: Yiannis Kartalis: ‘The consequences of a fiasco’. 98 Specifically during the Imia crisis, Greek TV channels also had a significant share in the conflagration by projecting as patriotic irresponsible acts such as that of the Mayor of Kalymnos and by transmitting the serials of the Turkish channels in an emotive ‘patriotic’ rhetoric. See in this regard Alkis Kourkoulas (1997: 39–56). 99 Kathimerini, 9 Nov. 1997: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Fallback of the hawks’ in Ankara’. 100 Kathimerini, 19 Jan. 1997: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Weapons (S-300) cause concern to the US’. 101 Kathimerini, 30 Mar. 1997: Alexis Papahelas: ‘An envoy to be appointed’: Greek Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, after meeting his US counterpart, Madeleine Albright, said that ‘Turkey belongs to Europe’. 102 Kathimerini, 30 Mar. 1997: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘The message of Karadayi’s gesture’. 103 Kathimerini, 1 June 1997: Costas Iordanidis: ‘Polycentrism a new element in Turkish foreign policy’. 104 Kathimerini, 1 June 1997: Costas Iordanidis: ‘Polycentrism a new element in Turkish foreign policy’. See also Alkis Kourkoulas (1997: 120–2). 105 Kathimerini, 2 Nov. 1997: Athina Kalaidjoglou: ‘R. Koc: We can’t solve problems with weapons’. 106 To Vima, 5 Sept. 1999: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Euphoria on relations with Greece’. 107 To Vima, 5 Sept. 1999: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘Euphoria on relations with Greece’. 108 To Vima, 5 Sept. 1999: Mehmet Ali Birand: ‘The Greeks are not devils’. The article was published the same day in the Turkish Posta. 109 To Vima, 10 Oct. 1999: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘The positive test of Papandreou’s visit’. 110 To Vima, 29 Aug. 1999: special contributor: ‘What changes in Turkey after the great earthquake’. 111 Turkish Daily News, 29 May 2003, Mehmet Ali Birand: ‘Sharia would be prevented by the EU rather than by the bayonet’. 112 Philip Robins (2003: 111). 113 Nergis Canefe and Tanil Bora (2003: 136). 114 Vassilis Fouskas (2003: 85). 115 Fileleftheros, 20 Nov. 2005: C. Yennaris: ‘Semdinli, Ataturk, and antagonisms’. See also To Vima, 20 Nov. 2005: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘War of secret agencies in Turkey: Military circles cause tension in Kurdish areas with ultimate target the stability of the Erdogan government’. 116 Ziya Onis (2003: 11–12). 117 Ziya Onis (2003: 13). 118 Ian O. Lesser: ‘Changes on the Turkish Domestic Scene and their Foreign Policy Implications’, quoted by Vassilis Fouskas (2003: 84). Furthermore, a survey by the Economic Research Unit of the University of Cyprus on the Turkish economy (Fileleftheros, 7 Sept. 2003: ‘Turkey will find it difficult but it will manage to meet the economic EU accession criteria’) notes that state enterprises still play an important role and that ‘the policy of privatizations as a means of decreasing state intervention in the economy, has not yet made substantial progress in Turkey’. 119 See, in this regard, European Commission: ‘Turkey: 2005 Progress Report’, 9 Nov.

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121 122 123 124

125

126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

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2005, and Council of the European Commission: ‘Agreement on a Council Decision on the principles, priorities and conditions contained in the Accession Partnership with Turkey’, 6 Dec. 2005. Ali Carkoglu (2003: 171–92). In the same book see also Ziya Onis (2003: 22) and Gamze Avci (2003: 167). See also Panos Kazakos: ‘Exalted Politics and Domestic Factors in Greek–Turkish Relations’, in Panos Kazakos et al. (2001: 14). See further To Vima, 7 Apr. 2002: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘How much Turkish society is changing and in what direction’. Christopher Walker (1980: 197–237) constitutes a historic documentary of the Armenian genocide. Alithia, 23 Feb. 2003: «Αλήθεια», 23 Feb. 2003: Bernard-Henri Levy: ‘How much European Turkey is: The philosophical question’. See the report on the conference by Constantia Sotiriou in Fileleftheros, 2 Oct. 2005: ‘Europe brings Turks face to face with their dark past’. Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 469) quotes from the text of the Agreement: ‘The Council of Ministers (. . . ) calls upon all parties to intensify their efforts in search for a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus, in line with the UN Security Council resolutions and on the basis of a bi-zonal bi-communal federation.’ Paragraph 9 of the Helsinki Presidency Conclusions stated the following: ‘(a) The European Council welcomes the launch of the talks aiming at a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem on 3 December in New York and expresses its strong support for the UN Secretary General’s efforts to bring the process to a successful conclusion. (b) The European Council stresses that a political settlement will facilitate the accession of Cyprus to the European Union. If no settlement has been reached by the completion of accession negotiations, the Council’s decision on accession will be made without the above being a precondition. In this the Council will take account of all relevant factors.’ See, in this regard, an article by Sahin Alpay in Milliyet, republished in Politis, 12 Oct. 1999: ‘Let’s solve the Cyprus problem’. Ziya Onis (2003: 19, 23–6). To Vima, 7 Apr. 2002: Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘How much Turkish society is changing and in what direction’. Ali Carkoglu (2003: 172–3, 181). Semin Suvarierol (2003: 57). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 230). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 230), with reference to Ecevit’s statement published in Milliyet, 27 May 2002. The Turkish documentation made reference to articles 8 and 185 of the constitution of Cyprus. Semin Suvarierol (2003: 57–8). Politis, 19 Dec. 2002: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Turkey supports Denktas; Projects sovereignty; Papandreou answers’. Stephen Larrabee (2001:. 232–3), with reference to an article by Yusuf Kanli: ‘Revolutionary Changes in Turkey’s Foreign Policy’, in Turkish Daily News, 4 July 1997. Semin Suvarierol (2003: 59).

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138 Politis, 26 Oct. 1999: M. Ignatiou: ‘What Cem revealed to a Turkish journalist; Greek tales that we are changing our position’. See also Fileleftheros, 11 Nov. 1999: ‘Cem: We endorse Denktas’ positions’. 139 Politis, 26 Oct. 1999: Ch. Kafkarides: ‘Unbending Turkish intransigence’, with reference to the relevant report in Hurriyet. 140 To Vima, 12 Dec. 1999: ‘Liponen letter and Ecevit’s reply’. 141 Semin Suvarierol (2003: 61–2). 142 Semin Suvarierol (2003:. 62). 143 Semin Suvarierol (2003: 66). 144 Semin Suvarierol (2003: 67). See also Philip Robins (2003: 120). 145 Politis, 17 Oct. 1999: Niyazi Kizilyurek: ‘Turkey’s impasse on Cyprus’. 146 Semin Suvarierol (2003: 70). 147 Politis, 8 Dec. 2002 (from the Athens daily Ta Nea): A. Ellis: ‘Richard Holbrooke on the Cyprus question; they cannot say NO to Cyprus’. 148 Eurobarometer, No. 63 (carried out 9 May 2005–14 June 2005, published Sept. 2005, § 2.2.3: ‘The choice of future enlargement’, and § 2.2.4. ‘The question of Turkey’, pp. 159–62), shows the public opinion of the 25 member states giving 35% in favour and 52% against Turkey’s accession. In Eurobarometer, No. 64 (carried out 10 Oct. 2005–14 June 2005, published Dec. 2005, § 5: ‘Support for future enlargement’, pp. 29–32), the respective percentages are 31 per cent and 55 per cent. 149 Fileleftheros, 22 May 2005: Loukas Tsoukalis: ‘What if the French say NO?’. See also Politis, 31 May 2005: M. Andoniadou (Brussels): ‘Turkey the first victim’. Eurobarometer Nos 63 and 64 (§ 3, pp. 25–7, and § 1.3, pp. 7–8: ‘The main concerns of European citizens’, show citizen concern running along roughly the same curve as the ones in spring and autumn of 2004 on the following issues: unemployment, economic conditions, crime, prices, health, immigration, terrorism, social insurance. 150 To Vima, 29 May 2005: Anny Podimata: ‘The French Referendum . . . It’s not “doomsday”’. 151 Typical examples are Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and the Neo-Nazis in Germany. 152 Kalypso Nicolaidis (2001: 255). 153 Kalypso Nicolaidis is University Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford University. She is also adviser to George Papandreou on European Affairs and Chair of the Programme on Southeastern Europe at St Anthony’s College. 154 Kalypso Nicolaidis (2004). 155 The letter was published in Cyprus by Politis, 8 Oct. 2005, and in Greece by To Vima, 9 Oct. 2005. 156 Ulrich Beck is Professor of Sociology at Munich University. 157 Anthony Giddens has been Director of the LSE. A renowned sociologist, he has been established by his writings as the ‘Third Way’ theorist of the European Left. 158 See relevant discussion in Vassilis Fouskas (2003: 92–3). 159 Turkish Daily News, 12 July 2003: Mehmet Ali Birand: ‘US gets further, EU gets closer’. The escalation of anti-Americanism in Turkey, due to the arrest of Turkish officers by Americans in northern Iraq, is also pointed out by Alkis Kourkoulas: To Vima, 27 July 2003: ‘When anti-Americanism is re-invented in Turkey’. 160 Vassilis Fouskas (2003: 93). 161 Vassilis Fouskas (2003: 93), quotes sources according to which ‘US policy in the Gulf

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in the early 1990s cost Turkey the closure of the pipeline from Iraq together with the loss of Middle East trade which is estimated to have cost Turkey up to $9 billion in lost revenue’. 162 Vassilis Fouskas (2003), chs 5 and 6: ‘Turkish Question for the West’, pp. 81-8, and ‘Eurasian Gambles over Cyprus’ EU Prospects’, pp. 99–115.

Chapter 5 1 Paschalis Kitromilides: 1994 2 Paschalis Kitromilides: (1998: 148–51). 3 Paschalis Kitromilides: ‘The Greek State as National Center’, in D. G. Tsaousis (ed.) (1998: 152). See also Katia Hadjidemetriou (2005: 287). 4 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 72–7). See also Georgios Theodoulou (2005: 50–3). 5 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 77); Georgios Theodoulou (2005: 53). 6 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 182). 7 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 25–8). 8 Paschalis Kitromilides (n.d.:, vol. 14, p. 391). 9 Paschalis Kitromilides: ibid., p. 392. See also Katia Hadjidemetriou (2005: 295). 10 Paschalis Kitromilides (1994: 18–19). 11 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 182–3). 12 The political activism of Katalanos in the 1890s and 1900s links nationalism with political reform. Using a patriotically aligned press and a network of nationalist clubs, he stages a powerful opposition to the conservative establishment. See accordingly: Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 215–23). 13 Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 210-14). 14 Paschalis Kitromilides (1979: 24–5). 15 G. S. Georghallides (1979: 40-2, 335–6; 1985: 177–82). 16 Paschalis Kitromilides (1994: 13). 17 G. S. Georghallides (1979: 226–39). 18 G. S. Georghallides (1979: p. 421), points out that Britain’s involvement, after the First World War, in Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, made Cyprus vitally important in safeguarding its interests in the region and, as a result, did not ever seriously think of ceding it to Greece subsequently. 19 G. S. Georghallides (1979: 346–424). 20 Yiannis Pikros (1980: 94-143). 21 Paschalis Kitromilides: (1998: 158). See also Yiannis Pikros (1980: 95–6). 22 Writing in Eleftheria (Nov.–Dec. 1930), Savvas Loizides classified the Greeks of Cyprus into three categories: (a) ‘radical nationalists’, (b) ‘nationalists’, and (c) ‘reformists’. See reference to these articles in Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, pp. 476-7). 23 Alexis Kyrou (‘Dreams and Realities’, referred to in Yiannis Pikros 1980: 64), sees three parties (in the form of social movements with regard to the political future of Cyprus): (a) the ‘governmental’, (b) the ‘reformists’ or ‘constitutionalists’ who demanded ‘freedoms’ but not ‘freedom’, and (c) the ‘unionists’, who rejected any intermediate stage and insisted on non-negotiable enosis. 24 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 467).

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30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46

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The Cyprus Referendum Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 476). G. S. Georghallides (1985: 132–53). Michael Attalides (1979: 31). Michael Attalides (1979: 29–30). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I): see petition by Nicodemos Mylonas to the Secretary for the Colonies (Sept. 1929), p. 465, the Bishop’s position in the Council (Apr. 1930), p. 470, address to the British Under-Secretary for the Colonies by the Bishop (Oct. 1930), p. 473, and the proposition he put forward in the Council (Apr. 1931), p. 482. G. S. Georghallides (1985: 198–379). See also Yiannis Pikros (1980: 82–5). Yiannis Pikros (1980: 86–8). See in this regard the reaction of Zekia Bey to the enosis speech by Bishop Nicodemos in the Council (Oct. 1930) and that of Necati Ozkan, the ‘13th Greek’, who would later (Sept. 1931) align himself with the Greek representatives in voting against taxation measures, in Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, pp. 473, 482 respectively). For a comprehensive account of the events that led to the October Rebellion, see G. S. Georghallides (1985: 380–699); for a synoptic evaluation, see in the same work, Epilogue: pp. 700–8. A brief account of the course of events is also given by Rolandos Katsiaounis (2000: 34–8). The term ‘absolute solution’ is a ‘loan’ from Takis Hadjidemetriou (2006: 67–70). Vassilis Protopapas (2002, pp. 70–5). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 568). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, pp. 580–1). See also Fifis Ioannou (2005: 266– 84) and Kyriakos Markides (1977: 13–15). Fifis Ioannou (2005: 319–54). References to the ‘Rally of Self-Government’ as a historic event are found in Fifis Ioannou (2005: 284), Ploutis Servas (1985: 132) and Rolandos Katsiaounis (2000: 498). Katsiaounis, referring to AKEL’s newspaper, Democratis, mentions a whole series of rallies in the towns on 20 and 21 May 1948 (p. 435) as well as the Pancyprian Congress on Self-Government (1 Aug. 1948) held by the National Liberation Coalition. The Coalition of the Left, which contested the local elections of 1946 as the Front of National Cooperation, was renamed National Liberation Coalition on 7 Dec. 1947 (Katsiaounis 2000: 350). A critical assessment in this direction is also expressed by AKEL’s former General Secretary, Ploutis Servas (1985: 133–42). According to Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 250–1), Andreas Ziartides, on his return from Grammos through London, met Harry Pollitt and conveyed to him the opinion of Zachariades. ‘The British communist leader commented that the Greek comrade was talking “nonsense”. He reiterated to the Cypriot communist leader that enosis could not arrive the next day and that the search for intermediate solutions was the order of the day.’ Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 218–22). Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 210). Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 226). Andreas Fantis (1993: 102). Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 212–13, 223).

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79

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Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 224). Andreas Fantis (1993: 103–11). Rolandos Katsiaounis (2000: 523–31). Rolandos Katsiaounis (2000: 424–8). Rolandos Katsiaounis (2000: 343–8, 422–3). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, pp. 581–2). Angelos Vlachos (1980: 20–2), having cited in full Papaioannou’s letter, criticizes AKEL’s intention as that of being to expose ‘monarcho-fascist’ Greece in case its government failed to respond. Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 583). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: App. A, pp. 444–51). Paschalis Kitromilides (1994: 14). G. S. Georghallides (1979: 41–2). See relevant references in Chapters 2.4., 4.2. and 4.7. Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 141). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 97). See the answers of G. Papandreou to Th. Dervis (1950) and those of Plastiras and S. Venizelos to Makarios (1951) in Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 92–3). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 141–2). Answer by G. Papandreou, Vice President of the Greek government, to the Mayor of Nicosia, Th. Dervis, in 1950. See Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 92). ‘Listen, your Beatitude, if you came to my poor cottage and asked me to come and fight for Cyprus, I would unfailingly do it as I am a soldier. But you’ve come to the Office of the Prime Minister of Greece and you ask me to burn Greece without being able to help Cyprus.’ See Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 93). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 93). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 111). Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 45). Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 46). Pantazis Terlexis (1999: vol. II, ch. XI: ‘Forms of domination and the notion of legitimacy’, pp. 241–359. Pantazis Terlexis (1999: vol. II, pp. 298–9). Kyriakos Markides (1977: 35). Kyriakos Markides (1977: 50). Kyriakos Markides (1977: 41). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 90). With regard to the events leading to the rally of Faneromeni (22 Aug. 1954), see Ethnos, 15 June 1954, 24 July 1954 and 24 Aug. 1954, as well as Kypros, 23 Aug. 1954. As to the political climate in which the rally took place, see Andros Pavlides (1978: vol. I, pp. 230–40), and Ethnos, 10 Aug. 1954: statements by Tornaritis on the anti-sedition law. See further Robert Holland (1998: 37–41). Old Testament: 2 Kings, chapter 6, verses 12–22. Angelos Vlachos (1980: 76–7). P. N. Vanezis (1974: 6, 188). See also P. N. Vanezis (1979: 7–8, 70, 103). See further Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 50–1). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 125).

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80 Chrysostomos Pericleous (1986: 104–7). 81 Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 50–1). 82 Neos Democratis, 9 Dec. 1955: editorial: ‘Immediate and unconditional self-determination’. 83 Neos Democratis, 8 Dec. 1955: editorial: ‘A priori invalid’. 84 Fileleftheros, 7 Dec. 1955: ‘Serious incidents in Nicosia’, and Neos Democratis, 7 Dec. 1955: reportage on the demonstrations in Famagusta. 85 Neos Democratis, 11 Dec. 1955: front-page article signed by Papaioannou: ‘The people against capitulation’. 86 Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 137–40, 158–9, 173) gives the impression that the Greek government was trying to push Makarios to a compromise with Harding but, owing to attacks by the opposition particularly in a pre-election period (general elections were scheduled for 19 Feb. 1956), left the final decision to him, promising support for any decision he made. A similar assessment of the attitude of the Greek government is given by Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 242–52). Terlexis considers a telegram by the Greek government to Makarios (17 Feb. 1956), three days after Harding’s last proposals had been submitted and two days ahead of the Greek elections, to have determined Makarios’s final decision. He was left completely free – and alone – to manage the situation with only the promise for support of any decision he made (p. 251). ‘Makarios was found in an extremely difficult position,’ Kranidiotis points out, adding the following comment, which reveals an aspect of how Makarios functioned: ‘Although he usually took his decisions alone, he wanted to have others as well share the responsibilities’ (p. 159). 87 Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 135, 156–8, 172–3). 88 Makarios was the first to accept independence in his historic statement to the Vice President of the Labour Party, Barbara Castle, asking her in addition to forward his new position to all the interested parties. See Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 75–80). 89 Angelos Vlachos (1980: 131), uses the expression ‘engaged in tightrope diplomacy’ to describe Makarios’s stand in the talks with Harding. When referring to his attempt to overturn the Zurich Agreements in London, he describes Makarios as a ‘persistent cliffhanger’ (p. 284). A similar conclusion on the breakdown of the Makarios–Harding talks is drawn by Evanthis Hatzivassiliou (1997: 64), who points out that ‘the breakdown came when the Archbishop tried to continue his tactics of exhaustive bargaining, while the British patience had ended, and London was concerned about the possible Turkish reaction and the evolving Middle Eastern crisis’. 90 Ref.: the breakdown of talks of Makarios with Harding and, as a result, his exile. 91 A. G Xydis: (1972, p. 28), notes the following on the signing of the Zurich–London Agreements: ‘These Agreements were submitted to, or rather enforced on, a hard pressed and desperately resisting Makarios.’ 92 Roderick Beaton (2003: 527–30). 93 Diana Markides (2001: 16–17). 94 Diana Markides (2001: 20–4). 95 Diana Markides (2001: 33–6). 96 From the signed minutes of the meeting, cited in Evaggelos Averof-Tositsas (1982: vol. II, pp. 168–76). 97 Peter Loizos (1994: 11) notes accordingly: ‘In 1962 the people behind the “Akritas”

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101 102 103 104 105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119

120 121 122 123 124

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Plan aimed at enosis through a brief struggle against the Turkish Cypriots leading to majority rule. The Turkish Cypriots had their own plans for promoting partition. The two communities pushed towards constitutional crisis during the day while during the night they proceeded in military preparedness.’ Diana Markides (2001: 122–4). Diana Markides (2001: 126–7). Diana Markides (2001: 75, 80). Article 78 of the Constitution provided for separate majorities in the House of Representatives on issues relating to amendment of electoral law, legislation on municipalities and laws relating to taxation. Diana Markides (2001: 96). Diana Markides (2001: 105). Diana Markides (2001: 111 121–2). Diana Markides (2001: 131). See Averof’s letter to Makarios (19 Apr. 1963), given in full by Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 74–9). In that letter Averof invokes the Hellenism of Polis three times. In connection with this issue, Kranidiotis cites a petition made to him by Patriarch Athenagoras at a secret meeting on Agion Oros, to ask Makarios ‘not to push things to the extremes because the Turks wreak their vengeance on the Patriarchate’. Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 125). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. I, p. 222). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 161). See also Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 74–5) and Diana Markides (2001: 87). Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 74). Spyros Papageorgiou (1983: vol. I, pp. 250–7). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 80). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 81). Emphasis added. Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 135). Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 29, 30–1, 54, 75–6). See also Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 43–5), and Spyros Papageorgiou (1980: 179–81). Diana Markides (2001: 89–90). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. I, p. 145). To Karamanlis’s angry remark, on 17 Feb. 1959 in London, for what he considered an irresponsible attitude, given that five days before he had given his consent, Makarios retorted that he had a ‘conscience crisis’ and consequently could not accept responsibility. See, in this connection, Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. I, p. 145). See Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. I, pp. 144–5) and Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 63–4. Nikos Kranidiotis (1981: 159) imprints this sensitivity on the part of Makarios in the following comment: ‘He was always sensitive to those who criticized him and did his utmost to avoid criticism and appease his critics.’ Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 150) and Diana Markides (2001: 79–80). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 166–7). See also Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 79). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 165–7). C. Hadjiargyris (1972: 43–60). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 380–2).

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125 See Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 426–34), Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 213– 18), Spyros Papageorgiou (1983: vol. II, pp. 259–78). 126 The Plan had been leaked by Grivas to the paper Patris, which published it on 1 Apr. 1966 (see Spyros Papageorgiou 1980: vol. I, p. 222). Later on, Spyros Papageorgiou, who had been chief editor of Patris at the time of the leakage, included the document in his work (1983: vol. I, pp. 250–7). 127 C. Hadjiargyris (1972: 43–60). 128 C. Hadjiargyris (1972: 57). 129 C. Hadjiargyris (1972: 47). The articles quoted had been carried by New York Times (12 Aug. 1961) and Christian Science Monitor (28 Sept. 1963), which expressed the typical American fear of communism. 130 C. Hadjiargyris (1972: 60). 131 Diana Markides (2001: 132–7) and Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 68–73). 132 Diana Markides (2001: 133). 133 Diana Markides (2001: 140–9, 153–5). 134 Diana Markides (2001: 139–40, 155). See also Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 93). 135 Demetris Bitsios (1975: 122), notes: ‘On May 31, 1963, in Ottawa, during the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers, Evangelos Averof sounded out Sir Alec Douglas Home, his British colleague. From this conversation, Averof drew the conclusion that the British Foreign Minister would not only discourage any change in the contractual status quo but was unable to understand the Cypriots’ attitude even on the problem of the Municipalities. Sir Alec appeared to consider Ankara’s position as moderate.’ 136 Demetris Bitsios (1975: 123). 137 Demetris Bitsios (1975: 123). 138 Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 85). 139 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 178). 140 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 178). 141 Makarios’s interview with Hadjiargyris was published in the Athenian paper Ethnos and in Fileleftheros (6 Aug. 1963). See accordingly Hadjiargyris (1972: 56–57) and Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 79–80). 142 Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 84). 143 Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 79). 144 Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 81–2). 145 Extensive evidence is cited in this matter by Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 18–24). Chrysostomos Pericleous (1986: 99–103), cites evidence on the same matter from Ihsan Ali’s memoirs (1980) as well as from his own personal experience. 146 Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 119–23) and Diana Markides (2001: 77–8, 82–3). 147 Fileleftheros, 20–1 Feb. 1959, 3 Mar. 1959; Ethnos 20 Feb. 1959; Kypros 2 Mar. 1959. 148 Following the elections, AKEL aligned itself completely with Makarios despite Yiorgadjis’s anti-communist tactics, and despite the reservations it had with those initiatives of Makarios that led to intercommunal conflict. AKEL’s alignment with Makarios contributed to the proximity of Makarios and Khrushchev and the significant deterrent role that the Soviet Union exercised against the Turkish threats in 1964. 149 As such ‘dark forces’ one could describe Yiorgadjis and Denktas in the Greek and Turkish communities respectively. Historical research, still ongoing, points in the direction of Yiorgadjis for murders of political opponents and for provocative acts, most

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151 152 153

154 155 156 157

158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165

166

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significant among them the blast at the monument of Markos Drakos in Nicosia (3 Dec. 1963). Parallel research into the ‘dark’ role of Denktas considers him to be responsible for the murders of Ayhan Hikmet and Ahmet Muzafer Gurkan (23 Apr. 1962) and for provocative acts, particularly the bombs at the mosques of Omerie and Bayractar (25 Mar. 1962). For the evidence in this regard, see Makarios Drousiotis (2005: 31– 50, 133), and Ihsan Ali (1980: 34–41). With regard to Clerides’s reservations and respective actions, see Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. I, pp. 167–77). As for the reservations of AKEL, as they were expressed by the Party Secretariat in at least two meetings with Makarios (June and Dec. 1963), see Pavlos Dinglis (2005: 134–8). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 163–4). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 208). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995): vol. II, p. 216: acceptance by Papandreou of the Acheson Plan (Aug. 1964); vol. II, pp. 218–19: plan for unilateral declaration of enosis (Aug. 1964). See also Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 254–5): public statements and positions of Papandreou in favour of enosis. Nikos Kranidiotis (1985): vol. I, pp. 131–3: letter of Papandreou to Makarios (25 Feb. 1964); vol. I, pp. 261–4: letter of Papandreou to Makarios (29 Aug. 1964). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 201, 203). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 254–5). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 257) recalls Makarios telling him during an intimate discussion they had in Sept. 1964: ‘I see that partition will be the outcome of the policy of Athens. But I cannot be continuously under the accusation of having violated my oaths and of having abandoned our national objective.’ Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 256). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 323). Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 326). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 208). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 239). See relevant reference to an oral exchange between Kostopoulos and Isik (12 May 1965) in Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 329–30). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 267) and Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 71–2). After Erkin’s visit to Moscow (Nov. 1964) and the development of a dense network of bilateral contacts culminating in Kosygin’s visit to Ankara (Dec. 1966), the Soviet Union moves gradually from ‘recognizing the legal rights of the two communities’ to accepting the idea of ‘federation’. See accordingly Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 239–43). Makarios encountered even personal hatred on the part of Stephanopoulos, whose premiership was linked with successive hostile acts against Makarios. See accordingly Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 352–72). Typical cases, the Memorandum of Paris (17 Dec. 1966) and the Evros talks (9 Sept. 1967). See accordingly Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, pp. 381–5, 443–9 respectively) and Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 233–6, 249–52 respectively). Ref.: the meeting of the Junta Prime Minister, Kolias, with his Turkish counterpart, Demirel, on the Evros frontier line (9 Sept. 1967), in which the naive expectation of the junta that it would achieve enosis crumbled in the face of Turkish diplomacy.

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169 Resolution 244, § 3, ‘Invites the parties promptly to avail themselves of the good offices proffered by the Secretary General and requests the Secretary General to report on the results to the Council as appropriate.’ 170 See Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 263). 171 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 263–4). 172 Panayiotis Papadimitris: ‘Historical Encyclopedia of Cyprus’, Period: 1963–73, vol. I, p. 266. The quotation is taken from the statement of the Bishop of Kition, Anthimos, at his Bishopric Palace in Limassol after the Synod. 173 Leontios Ierodiakonou (2003: 135–6), after documenting criticism of that repressive violence, highlights the point that it was useless after all, as, even without it, the outcome would not have been substantially different. 174 The title of a poem by George Seferis from his collection Logbook I. In Seferis’s world, there are only interludes of joy, in the deep layers of which drama is always lying in wait. ‘You stopped laughing when you lay down in the hut / and opened your large eyes as you watched / the archangel practicing with a fiery sword. / ‘Inexplicable’, you said, ‘inexplicable. / I don’t understand people: / no matter how they play with colors / they are all black.’ (The translation is by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherard, Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 223.) 175 See Chapter 6.4. 176 Ref.: the dictatorship in Greece (21 Apr. 1967), the fiasco of the Evros talks (9 Sept. 1967), the battle of Kofinou (Nov. 1967), the threat of Turkish invasion following the battle of Kofinou and the humiliating withdrawal of the Greek army division from Cyprus (Dec. 1967). 177 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 229). 178 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 231–3). 179 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 233–41). 180 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 242–3). 181 Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 50-1). 182 Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 66–8). A detailed presentation of Pipinelis’s positions, as they emerge from his memorandums to the government of Cyprus or from his positions during talks with Makarios or Clerides, are given in Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 259–70, 279–85, 304–10, 320–1). 183 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 229). 184 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 244–8) gives a detailed account of the Turkish positions. Clerides’s account is verified by Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 65–6), who, as he states in his preface, went through the files of the intercommunal talks and relevant correspondence, as well as UN reports and other relevant material. 185 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 248–50). 186 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 252–3). 187 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 252). 188 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 238, 241). 189 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 290). 190 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 280). 191 R. A. Patrick (1976: 156–61). 192 Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 63–4). 193 Glafkos Clerides (1988 vol. II, p. 249).

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194 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 280). 195 With regard to the autonomy of the Turkish Cypriots on matters of local administration, the UN Mediator, Galo Plaza, in his Report to the Secretary General on Cyprus (26 Mar. 1965), §165, had suggested that the position of the Turkish Cypriots as a community might be safeguarded, in addition to their autonomy in matters relating to religion, education and personal status, and their representation in government and Parliament, also ‘by the appointment of a Turkish Minister responsible for the affairs of his community’. 196 Clerides had submitted his suggestions to Makarios in written form (28 June 1968) and, at two meetings with Makarios before the first phase of the talks had been completed, had pressingly suggested acceptance of Denktas’s proposals. See accordingly Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 253–8). Though Clerides did not publicize his disagreement with Makarios, his decision to set up a new party, the ‘Unified Party’ (Enieon Komma), particularly at that timing, constitutes his first effort at liberation and independence from the heavy shadow of the charismatic leader. Makarios’s immediate secretive reaction was the establishment of the ‘Progressive Front’ (Proodeftiki Parataxis) an alliance of right-wing personalities belonging to the close circle of Makarios’s environment. The goal of that movement was to block the possibility of a majority by Clerides’s party in the new Parliament. See accordingly Leontios Ierodiakonou (2003: 139–43) and Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 331). 197 Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 71). 198 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 326–7). 199 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 311–22). 200 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 328). 201 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 307–8). 202 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 307). 203 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 309). 204 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 267–8). 205 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 281–5). 206 Pipinelis’s evaluation is corroborated by Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, p. 573). Commenting on the visit of Turkey’s President, General Sunay, to Moscow a year later, Kranidiotis writes: ‘The Soviet Union, acting on the basis of strategic and economic considerations (. . . ) and assessing its relations with Turkey as more important than those with Greece and Cyprus, made new concessions (to Turkey) in its policy on the Cyprus problem.’ 207 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 284–5). 208 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 285). 209 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 285). 210 For the events of the dramatic slide into blind violence from the ‘National Front’ to EOKA-B, see Makarios Drousiotis (1994). 211 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 314); Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. III, pp. 307–10). 212 In para. 163 of his Report, Galo Plaza suggested measures ensuring for the minority community ‘a proper voice in their traditionally communal affairs’ and ‘an equitable part in the public life of the country as a whole’. 213 A detailed elaboration on the theoretical approach of the talks by the two sides is given

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in Polyvios Polyviou (1980), ch. 3: ‘Philosophy, principles, attitudes’, pp. 87–101. 214 In an interview with the Salonican newspaper Ellinikos Vorras (6 July 1971), Makarios, in replying to a question on the crisis that had ensued in the aftermath of the Lisbon Agreement, stated: ‘I have survived thirteen prime ministers (of Greece); I shall survive the fourteenth one.’ See accordingly Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, p. 279). 215 Aristos Katsis (1977: 236–7). 216 Stanley Mayes (1981: 256). 217 Despite the effort he made not to reveal his personal drama, he had suddenly become old in the eyes of Kranidiotis and Clerides, who visited him in London on 2 Aug. and 20 Nov.1974 respectively. See accordingly. Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. II, p. 439) and Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 141). And when he came back and went around the refugee camps, one could see the tragedy of his people engraved on his face. 218 Ref.: Makarios’s speech at the massive rally at the Archbishopric on his return from exile. The full text of his historic speech is given in Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. II, pp. 572–80). 219 Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. II, p. 554). 220 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, pp. 141–2). 221 Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. II, p. 559) notes that the two superpowers, despite declarations such as that of Vladivostok (Nov. 1974), not only did not stand by the UN resolutions but acted against them. Further down (p. 589), he comments: ‘Both the East and the West were not displeased with the partition of the island. On the one hand, the East believed that in this way Cyprus would remain a weak non-aligned, independent state, outside the framework of NATO. On the other, the Western powers thought that, with this Solomon type solution, there would be no more crises in Greek–Turkish relations.’ 222 Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. II, pp. 478–9). 223 PIO (1981: 27). 224 The minutes of those meetings are to be found in: Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, pp. 473–523). 225 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 505), National Council meeting (28 Feb. 1977). 226 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 509), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). 227 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, pp. 520), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). 228 For the full text of that historic speech, see PIO, Press Release No. 1, 20 July 1977. 229 Andreas Hadjikyriakos and Christoforos Christoforou (1996) highlight, in their analysis of election behaviour, significant aspects of the above categorization with regard to the perception of the solution. 230 Stanley Mayes (1981: 255); Ta Nea, 8 Nov. 1974. 231 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, pp. 150–1) and Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. II, p. 565). 232 See in this regard Congratulation message from PEO to Clerides for the work he had done until the return of Makarios (Haravgi, 13 Dec. 1974), as well as the support by AKEL for Clerides’s position on federation at ‘Pnevmatiki Stegi’ (Teachers’ Club) and ‘Argo’ (Club) with an article in Haravgi, 3 Apr. 1975, ‘Realism in tactics’, which concluded with the following words, typical of the political climate of the time: ‘For the political leadership to be realistic in its evaluations and not to fly in the clouds does not mean it lags behind any of its accusers in fighting spirit. Needless to say that the

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accusers base their accusations, either on incorrect evaluations, or on suspect irresponsibility. On the contrary, correct evaluations for determining the right tactics show off the best fighting leaders, capable of helping their peoples to come out of the hardest ordeal.’ Tassos Papadopoulos, then the negotiator for the Greek Cypriot side, retorted angrily to Papaioannou’s criticism that he spoke publicly in a way that was not in line with the compromising line of the National Council, regarding it as an attempt to ‘censorship’. At any rate, in all his positions at the Council meetings in his capacity as negotiator, Papadopoulos stood by the line of Makarios. Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 495), National Council meeting (13 Dec. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 510), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 519), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 519), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 520), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 520), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 513), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. IV, p. 513), National Council meeting (9 Mar. 1977). From the Founding Declaration of the Neo-Cyprian Association: www.tech4peace.org. From Article (2) of the statutes of the Association, titled: ‘Basic objectives’ Ref.: Article (2) of the statutes of the Association, titled: ‘Basic objectives’ For the full text of the Archbishop’s address, see press release of the Holy Archbishopric, 27 Feb. 1982. PIO: Press Release No. 2, 27 Feb. 1982. PIO: Press Release No. 2, 1 Mar. 1982, ‘Papandreou’s reply to President Kyprianou’s address at the official dinner.’ PIO: Press Release of the House of Representatives No. 11, 28 Feb. 1982. The Minimum Programme, which was declared on 20 Apr. 1982, was circulated in a booklet (Apr. 1982) titled: ‘The Minimum Program and Declaration of the Democratic Cooperation of DIKO and AKEL’. The title, under which Haravgi carried its reportage on the Minimum Programme, closed with the following appeal: ‘The cooperation is open to all those who have joined their strength under the policy of Makarios.’ See the Minimum Programme, ch. IV. PIO: press release (unofficial), 28 Feb. 1982: ‘Statements by Party Leaders after their meeting with the Prime Minister of Greece at the Presidential Palace today’. In a letter to Kyprianou leaked to the press (Ta Nea, 1 May 1982: ‘Letter by Papandreou: You are torpedoing the internationalization crusade’), Papandreou noted that ‘with your unpredictable position in favour of the intecommunal dialogue, you are actually torpedoing the crusade the Greek government has started with the aim of internationalizing the Cyprus problem’. The crisis had been sparked before the leak by a statement of Maroudas to APE (22 Apr. 1982), in which, after reaffirming the Greek government’s respect to the legitimate President and the independent state of Cyprus, he sent Papandreou’s political message in the following words: ‘Having said that, it does not mean that, as regards the handling of the national cause, the Greek government shares policies such as the one recently announced in the Joint Declaration and the Minimum Programme in view of the presidential elections.’ See Haravgi, 1 May 1982: ‘The Central Committee of AKEL denounces: Maroudas’

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The Cyprus Referendum statement an outright intervention in Cyprus’s internal affairs.’ In harsh terms, AKEL rejected the statement of Maroudas as an intervention in the internal affairs of Cyprus, linked it with ‘the criminal intervention by the junta in Cyprus’ internal affairs’, warned that it would not be tolerated and suggested to Papandreou all that Papaioannou had told him at their meeting in Cyprus. See Haravgi, 30 Apr. 1982: ‘KKE: The interventions of the so called “national center” which have cost so much to Cyprus revitalized’. See Chapter 7.2. DIKO and EDEK allied themselves against AKEL; they profited from its losses at the Dec. 1985 elections, and, with Papandreou acting always as a ‘catalyst’, they aligned themselves in the election of Vassos Lyssarides as President of the House of Representatives. With the votes of AKEL and DISY, the House adopted a resolution proposed by DISY (22 Feb. 1985) that called upon the President either to accept, under certain preconditions, the Cuellar Plan as a basis for a solution, or to resign. For the House’s resolution in full, see Alithia, 23 Feb. 1985. The author has had a pile of evidence to the effect that EDEK cadres of the close circle of Lyssarides worked for the election of Clerides. He has also had personal evidence from a long discussion he had on the matter with Lyssarides days only after the elections. Further, having come into conflict with the President of the Party on this same issue, the author resigned the post of Press Secretary of the Party that he held at the time. Yiannis Lambrou (2004: 698–700). Kirikas, 5 Jan. 1986: ‘Democritos’: ‘Panethniki [meeting of all Greek and Cypriot parties under the Greek Premier] should be convened.’ Kirikas, 5 Jan. 1986: ‘Democritos’. The KYKEM seminar was held on 7, 8 and 9 Feb. 1986. Papadopoulos’s speech in full was published in Kirikas, 6 Feb. 1986. It is also included in the collective edition of the proceedings of the seminar by KYKEM (1987: 148–56). Of specific interest is also the argumentation he developed during the discussion (pp. 171–2) on the coming of a Greek army division to Cyprus, which, in some respects, was a prelude to the theory of the ‘active volcano’. Furthermore, in an article by ‘Democritos’ in Kirikas, (8 Nov. 1987): ‘The army division, DISY and AKEL’, he came to the point of claiming that the presence of Greek land and air forces in Cyprus would pose a threat to Turkey’s defence, thus taking away from that country the advantage of being the exclusive proxy of the Western powers in the Middle East. Kirikas, 13 Apr. 1986: ‘Democritos’: ‘Better as we are’. The theory of the status quo as the ‘second-best solution’ with the same reasoning as that of Tassos Papadopoulos was first put forward by Michalis Dountas, then Permanent Representative of Greece at the UN, in a classified memorandum to Papandreou (1 Apr. 1983) and was repeated in a second similar document by Dountas (30 Jan. 1985). See accordingly Michalis Dountas (2006: 15–22). It is a tragic irony that both Dountas and Papadopoulos would remain obsessed with this theory, even when, years later, the Annan Plan would constitute a substantive improvement and, in many respects, a termination of the status quo. Kirikas, 6 Dec. 1987: ‘Democritos’: ‘Why the Centre Union supports Kyprianou’.

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266 ‘Troika’: a derogatory connotation referring to AKEL and DISY as the ‘troika’ of President Vassiliou. See Kirikas, 5 Jan. 1991: ‘Democritos’: ‘Our maximum demands and expectations for the year 1991’. 267 Kirikas, 13 Jan. 1991: ‘Democritos’: ‘The crisis in the Arab Gulf, the new balances, and the Cyprus problem’. 268 Kirikas, 10 Feb. 1991: ‘Democritos’: ‘The Cyprus problem our foremost national issue when our turn comes’, and Kirikas, 24 Feb. 1991: ‘Democritos’: ‘The EEC initiative: An opportunity for a solution or a lost victory?’ 269 Kirikas, 24 Mar. 1991: ‘Democritos’: ‘The quick solution of the Cyprus problem: We clutch on straw and ignore substance’. 270 See relevant references in Chapter 2.5. ‘Andreas Papandreou: From “no dialogue” to Davos’. 271 Kirikas, 25 Dec. 1988: ‘To the members of the National Council: stand firm’. 272 See in this regard: (1) speech by Stoforopoulos at Panteion University, 4 Nov.1988 (full text in Epikeri, 12–13 Nov. 1988: ‘We should completely abandon the 1974–1988 course of the Cyprus problem’; (2) speech by Stoforopoulos in Nicosia, 21 Nov. 1988, at an event organized in his honour by the EOKA 1955–9 Fighters Associations, Simerini, 22 Nov. 1988: ‘Stoforopoulos: The Turks are trying to buy time’, and Epikeri, 26–7 Nov. 1988: ‘Crisis in DISY’; (3) press conference by Stoforopoulos in Athens on behalf of the Citizen Committee on National Issues (Epikeri, 28 Oct. 1989); (4) interview by Dountas with Kirikas, 7 Jan. 1990; (5) speech by Dountas at an event organized by the magazine Endoskopisi of the Simerini media group, 2 Feb. 1990 (Simerini, 3 Feb. 1990: ‘All out struggle proposed by Dountas’, and Epikeri, 3 Feb. 1990: ‘Dountas: Stop the Intercommunal dialogue’; (6) speech by Dountas at a memorial of Makarios, organized by DIKO in Nicosia, 3 Aug. 1990 (Eleftherotypia, 4 Aug. 1990: ‘Dountas: Unyielding struggle, the only feasible left’, and Epikeri, 4 Aug. 1990: ‘Dountas for the policy and the mistakes of Makarios: Makarios and the policy of Athens’; (7) article by Dountas in Kirikas, 24 Feb. 1991: ‘Cyprus: No one at the helm’. 273 Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 166–7). 274 Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 167–9). 275 Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 171–3). 276 Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 171). 277 Ref.: the title of Hadjikyriakos’s analysis in Fileleftheros, 12 May 1996. 278 Television debate on ‘LOGOS’ TV Channel, 22 May 1996: Lyssarides’s reply to the question of Koutsou on whether EDEK accepted the Unanimous Proposals of the National Council on Federation. 279 See Hadjidemetriou’s interview with Fileleftheros, 9 Feb. 1997. 280 Eleftherotypia, 19 June 1995: ‘NEDIK: Why should the war option be excluded?’. There was reference to the war option in a resolution of NEDIK Congress and a statement by NEDIK President and DIKO MP, Markos Kyprianou, to that effect: ‘There is first the peaceful option. But if it need be, if we are given the opportunity, we should be ready to push the invader out of Cyprus even through war.’ 281 Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 175–7). 282 See in this regard Eleftherotypia (Athens daily), 28 July 1996: Stefanos Kasimatis: ‘With score 9 to 7 Turkey ahead of Greece in signing defence treaties with foreign countries’. The report compares much trumpeted successes and realities in relation to

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The Cyprus Referendum the agreement with Syria. See also Macedonia, 19 June 1996, main front-page report: ‘Greece–Armenia in the “eye” of Turkey’. The report refers to the incorporation of a drastically limited range agreement into the planning of a ‘defence network’ with countries surrounding Turkey. The report makes reference to the promotion of defence treaties with Bulgaria, Rumania, Syria, Israel, Iran and Egypt. From Papadopoulos’s interview with A. Taramounta in Fileleftheros, 29 Oct. 2000: ‘Tassos Papadopoulos: I want a reliable DIKO to assume a pivotal role’. Caesar Mavratsas (2001: 178–9). Relevant evidence was given to the author by Christos Stylianides, then Government Spokesman. To Vima, 3 Jan. 1999: Yiannos Kranidiotis: ‘The three new objectives of Cyprus’. An opinion poll carried out by AMER (Fileleftheros, 22 Nov. 1998) showed 57 per cent of those interviewed to be in favour of immediate installation and deployment of the S-300 missiles and only marginal percentages in favour of compromising in between solutions or options that meant ‘retreat’. Clerides had committed himself, in view of the presidential elections of Feb. 1998, to resigning in case the missiles did not come, while EDEK, having opted for participation in Clerides’s government, publicly threatened to withdraw in case the missile project was cancelled, a threat it eventually realized. Resolution 1217, § 8, after stressing the Security Council’s full support for the Secretary General’s mission of Good Offices, called for ‘a sustained process of direct negotiations aimed at achieving a comprehensive settlement on the basis of the relevant Security Council resolutions’. Kyriakos Pierides (2001: 529–48) gives a detailed account of how the 6 Mar. 1995 Agreement was received by the Cyprus political leadership, in a whole chapter pointedly titled: ‘Old-fashioned politics a barrier to the EU’. Vassilis Protopapas (2002), whose research is focused on the formation and development of party politics in the 1940s and 1950s, sees the whole history and engagement of AKEL as typical of a social democratic party. Vyron Theodoropoulos (1988: 251), in one of his personal narrative digressions, notes the ‘painful surprise’ he felt when he came to Cyprus in 1965 and experienced the first dividing lines, and then speaks of the fact, which was strange to him, that, ‘for some Cypriots, particularly in the higher political ranks, the situation did not seem to be so much unbearable’. And when, he continues, he visited Cyprus after twenty-three years, ‘the absurdity (of partition) not only was sustained but had become a way of life’. See, in this regard: Politis, 7 Nov. 1999: K. Pierides: ‘The truth in the face of Helsinki’, Haravgi, 9 Oct. 1999: ‘Everything to Turkey ... Has Athens changed strategy?’, Haravgi, 10 Oct. 1999: ‘D. Christofias: No to a change of strategy’, Politis, 5 Dec. 1999: K. Pierides: ‘Political entrenchments’: In the text: ‘AKEL and DIKO, constitute the front of the uncompromising fighters for a Greek veto (. . . ) The approaches of Christofias and Kyprianou in line with the dominant reasoning of both to spark off a long preelection struggle.’ Politis, 19 Dec. 1999: K. Pierides: ‘The parties in the face of Helsinki’, Politis, 20 Dec. 1999: K. Pierides: ‘Anastasiades–Christofias raise the tones: Skirmishes from London on Helsinki and New York’. Politis, 19 Dec. 1999: opinion poll by AMER-Politis: ‘Bravo to Simitis but Turkey the

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one to profit’. To the question: do you believe that the Helsinki decision favours Greece more than Turkey or that it favours no one more than the other?’ the answers were: 32 per cent Turkey, 21 per cent Greece, 22 per cent no one and 24 per cent blank. To the crucial question: ‘do you believe that the Helsinki decision is a positive or a negative development for Cyprus?’ the answers were: 33 per cent positive, 30 per cent negative, 14 per cent neither positive nor negative and 24 per cent blank. Elizabeth Prodromou (Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Associate Director of the Institute of Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University) (1998: 6–7). Elizabeth Prodromou (1988: 9–10). Elizabeth Prodromou (1988: 11–12). Elizabeth Prodromou (1988: 12). Elizabeth Prodromou (1988: 12). Kalypso Nicolaidis (Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) (1998: 31). Kalypso Nicolaides (1998: 31). Kalypso Nicolaides (1998: 31). The succession of presidential, parliamentary and local elections fosters a political climate of an almost continuous electioneering within which parties with weak leaderships prone to populism tend to become mere election mechanisms whereas they should be policy production organizations par excellence.

Chapter 6 1 See accordingly Paschalis Kitromilides (1977: 36–41). See also Michael Attalides (1977: 76–8). 2 M. Hakan Yavuz (1991: 62) observes accordingly: ‘One should be careful not to accept without reservation either the Turkish view that tolerance towards the Orthodox Church was always the case or the Greek view that the Ottomans persecuted the Orthodox Church. The truth lies between these two claims. The Ottoman policy of toleration was very much conditioned by practical factors.’ 3 Paschalis Kitromilides (1977: 40), Michael Attalides (1977: 75). 4 Paschalis Kitromilides (1977: 43). 5 Michael Attalides (1977: 77–8). 6 Altay Nevzat (2005). 7 Altay Nevzat (2005: 77–8). 8 Altay Nevzat (2005: 82) (quotation from Zenon Stavrinides: ‘The Cyprus Conflict: National Identity and Statehood’, Cyprus Research Centre, 1976, repr. 1999, p. 8.) 9 M. Hakan Yavuz (1991: 67). 10 M. Hakan Yavuz (1991: 72). 11 See accordingly M. Attalides (1977: 78–80). 12 In June 1902, enosis agitation by Greek Cypriots caused prompt reaction by Turkish Cypriots, who ‘held meetings to oppose any such movement’, sent a series of protest telegrams to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies and forwarded a petition of over 600 signatures demanding the return of Cyprus to the Sultan, the ‘lawful owner’

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The Cyprus Referendum in the event that the British left the island (Altay Nevzat 2005: 132–3, ref.: Enclosure No. 2 in Haynes–Smith to Chamberlain, 30 June 1902, CO883/6, 415). In May 1903, the Turkish Cypriot members of the Legislative Council, reacting to a petition for enosis brought to the Council by their Greek Cypriot colleagues, asked that ‘the island should be returned to the Imperial Ottoman Government, its lawful owner, when the proper time arrives’ (Altay Nevzat 2005:131, ref.: Minutes of the Legislative Council, 7 May 1903, CO69/17, 43). Altay Nevzat (2005: 141). Zaman ‘was launched with Young Turk tendencies and remained in circulation from 1891 to 1900’. Altay Nevzat (2005: 73–4). See accordingly relevant report by the Greek Consul in Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 181–2). Altay Nevzat (2005: 147–8). Altay Nevzat (2005: 148–9). Altay Nevzat (2005: 151). Ref.: Kibris, 31 July 1893, 4 June 1894. Altay Nevzat (2005: 149–50). Altay Nevzat (2005: 157). Altay Nevzat (2005: 150–1). Altay Nevzat (2005: 152) Altay Nevzat (2005: 154–6). Altay Nevzat (2005: 152–3). Altay Nevzat (2005: 157). Altay Nevzat (2005: 158). Altay Nevzat (2005: 159). Altay Nevzat (2005: 162–4). Altay Nevzat (2005: 164–5). Ref.: Legislative Council Minutes, 25 Apr. 1907, CO69/21, 549. Altay Nevzat (2005: 165). Ref.: Mir’ati Zaman, 10 June 1908. Altay Nevzat, (2005: 165). Ref.: Mir’ati Zaman, 10 Dec. 1906, 2 Mar. 1908, 29 June 1908). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 64). Rolandos Katsiaounis (1996: 210–14). Altay Nevzat (2005: 144–5). Altay Nevzat (2005: 146). Ref.: Cyprus Gazette, 5 Feb. 1897. Altay Nevzat (2005: 146). Ref.: Kibris, 16 July 1894, 23 July 1894. Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 64). Altay Nevzat (2005: 169–70). Altay Nevzat (2005: 178–9). Clubs mentioned: Turk Teavun Ternegi (Turkish Solidarity Association, 1908), Hurriyet (Freedom, 1909), Terraki (Progress, 1909), Hurriyet ve Terraki (integration of the two above mentioned, 1910), Turk Ocagi (Turkish Hearth, 1913, as branch of similar Hearths in the Ottoman state). Altay Nevzat (2005: 170–1). Altay Nevzat (2005: 171–4). Altay Nevzat (2005: 192). Altay Nevzat (2005: 195). Ref.: Mir’ati Zaman, Jan. 1909. Altay Nevzat (2005: 200–1).

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Altay Nevzat (2005: 205). Ref.: Cyprus Gazette, 31 May 1912. Altay Nevzat (2005: 209–10). Altay Nevzat (2005: 210–11). Altay Nevzat (2005: 218–19). Jacob Landau (1981:49). Ref.: confidential dispatch by High Commissioner, Gould Adams, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lewis Harcourt, 4 Sept. 1914. ‘Our newspaper’s primary goal is to serve Turkism and the nation,’ Kibris wrote in its editorial on 1 June 1914 (see accordingly Altay Nevzat 2005: 223–4). The impossibility of such writing and in general of going along with the Young Turks during the war, under marshal law conditions, led all Turkish Cypriot papers to suspend their circulation during the period 1915–19 (see accordingly Altay Nevzat 2005: 230–1). Altay Nevzat (2005: 235). Altay Nevzat (2005: 236). In October 1915, Britain offered Cyprus to Greece on condition that it enter the war on the side of the Entente powers. The government of Zaimis, installed by the Palace following the overthrow of Venizelos, rejected the British offer. See accordingly Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, pp. 313–15). Altay Nevzat (2005: 238). Altay Nevzat (2005: 239). Altay Nevzat (2005: 248–9). Altay Nevzat (2005: 250–1). Ref.: confidential dispatches by Deputy High Commissioner, Malcolm Stevenson, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In one such report (6 May 1919), after informing about suspect movements by Turkish Cypriots, Stevenson asked that, in the event that it was decided to cede Cyprus to Greece, there should be strengthening of the garrison as a pre-emptive measure against possible disturbances. Altay Nevzat (2005: 261–5). Altay Nevzat (2005: 266–7). The Lausanne Treaty was agreed upon on 24 July 1923 and entered into force on 6 June 1924. Altay Nevzat (2005: 270–1). Ref.: minutes of Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, 2, 3, and 5 Mar. 1923. Altay Nevzat (2005: 276). Ref.: Cyprus Gazette, 12 June 1925. G. S. Georghallides (1979: 411–20) and Altay Nevzat (2005: 280). Working on the annual population reports of the colonial administration, G. S. Georghallides (1979: 420) calculates the total number of émigrés until 1928 to be around 5,000 (out of a Turkish population of 61,399 in 1921) out of about 9,000 applicants (see p. 418). Altay Nevzat (2005: 280–1) reaches roughly the same total of 5,000 as regards actual Turkish Cypriot migrants to Turkey. Altay Nevzat (2005: 345–55). Altay Nevzat (2005: 350–1). Altay Nevzat (2005: 298–304). Altay Nevzat (2005: 291–4). G. S. Georghallides (1985: 199–200). Altay Nevzat (2005: 329–30). Altay Nevzat (2005: 367–8). Ref.: Soz, 2 Oct. 1930. Altay Nevzat (2005: 392–3). Ref.: Soz, 23 Apr. 1931.

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89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

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The Cyprus Referendum G. S. Georghallides (1985: 483). Altay Nevzat, (2005: 392–4). Altay Nevzat (2005: 394–5). Ref.: Soz, 14 May 1931. G. S. Georghallides (1985: 483). Altay Nevzat (2005: 402). Altay Nevzat (2005: 404). G. S. Georghallides (1985: 482–3) and Altay Nevzat (2005: 398). Altay Nevzat (2005: 399). Ref.: minutes of the Legislative Council 1931, Part I, 13– 18. See also Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 482). Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 473). Altay Nevzat (2005: 401–2). Jeanette Choisi (1993: 21). G. S. Georghallides (1985: 419–20). Ref.: articles by N. Kl. Lanitis in Alithia, 14 and 20 Nov. 1930. Miltiadis Christodoulou (1995: vol. I, p. 476). G. S. Georghallides (1985: 640). Yiannis Pikros (1980: 114). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 299) uses the term ‘common Cyprus interest’ in connection with the timing of 2002–4 and the Turkish Cypriot uprising against Denktas and Ankara. Altay Nevzat (2005: 421–4). Ref.: reports by the governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Altay Nevzat (2005: 425–6). Ref.: documents from the Colonial Office to the Governor, Sept. 1938. See also Jeanette Choisi (1993: 18–19). Jeanette Choisi (1993: 21). Ihsan Ali (1980: 5–6) speaks of KATAK as a political party networked all over Cyprus. He himself was President of KATAK’s Paphos district committee. Ihsan Ali (1980: 5–6) notes that Kucuk withdrew from KATAK and established his own party after he had clashed with Necati Ozkan. Jeanette Choisi (1993: 22). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1993: 62). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1993: 62) cites relevant colonial office document of 1948. Jeanette Choisi (1993: 22). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 62). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 64–5), Jeanette Choisi (1993: 23–4) and M. Attalides (1977: 80). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 69–71). Makarios Drousiotis et al. (2004: 75, 77). Makarios Drousiotis et al. (2004: 82–4). Makarios Drousiotis et al. (2004: 88–9). See article by Emin Dirvana in Milliyet, 15 May 1964. Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 267). See also Evanthis Hatzivassiliou (1997: 88). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 268–9). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 273–4) and Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 196). Pantazis Terlexis (1971: 274–8) and Neoclis Sarris (1983: 281). Evanthis Hatzivassiliou (1997: 67–93) cites documented evidence according to which partition was suggested

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109 110

111 112 113 114 115 116

117

118

119

120 121 122

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to the Foreign Office by Turkey’s Ambassador in London, Fuat Urguplu, on 18 Nov. 1956. Hatzivassiliou gives the behind-the-scenes deliberations in the United States, Greece and Britain, during which the United States suggested a ‘Greek solution’ but Britain, valuing more its alliance with Turkey and aware of the Suez crisis, turned towards the Turkish position of partition. Neoclis Sarris (1983: 276–291). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 80–1) and Ihsan Ali (1980: 19). Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 287–8) cites a TMT leaflet that, in the style of Denktas’s speeches, calls for partition struggle until death in the name of the ‘nation’, of ‘justice’ and of ‘God’. The leaflet concludes with ‘Partition or Death’. John Scherer (1997: 15). Ref.: Halkin Sesi, 24 July 1957. Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 287). R. A. Patrick (1976: 342). R. A. Patrick (1976: 339). Demetris Assos (2005: 34) (source: Minute 6, 11 July 1957, C.C. 51 (57) CAB 128/31). The plan of Governor Sir Hugh Foot provided for a transition period of 5–7 years before final decisions on the future of Cyprus were taken. Agreement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots was a precondition for the implementation of any decision at the end of the transition period. The plan obviously intended to preclude both enosis and partition at the time decisions were to be taken. See accordingly Aristos Katsis (1981: 222). A detailed narrative of the TMT terror campaign (Jan.–June 1958) is given by Panayiotis Mahlouzarides (1985: 458–72). See also Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 276–7, 294). A list of names of people murdered by the TMT, Greek as well as Turkish Cypriots who opposed the segregation policy of their leadership, is given in a brochure entitled ‘Victims of Fascist Terror’, issued by the leftist ‘Patriotic Organization of the Turkish Cypriots’ in the wake of the murders of the PEO trade unionists Dervis Kavazoglu and Costas Mishaoulis in 1965. Demetris Assos (2005: 36). Kucuk’s statement, made to a mainland Turkish paper, is cited in a report from the British Embassy in Ankara to the Foreign Office, 2 Feb. 1958. Demetris Assos (2005: 36–7). Zorlu’s statement is cited in a report from the British mission to Ankara, 27 June 1958. Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 275) makes the following comment, revealing of Turkish intentions: ‘Publicly committed to partition but privately willing to consider a solution based on a federal constitution and the establishment of a Turkish military base, Turkey was determined to work for an early settlement which in certain contingencies would give her direct control over part of the island.’ The idea of a military presence by Turkey on Cyprus is first presented in an appendix to the second report of Nihat Erim to Menderes (26 Dec. 1956). See accordingly Neoclis Sarris (1983: vol. II, Book A, p. 300). Panayiotis Mahlouzarides (1985: 470–1). Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 277). See accordingly interview of Rauf Denktas with The Times, 20 Jan. 1978, and Osman Orek’s interview with Halkin Sesi, 17 Feb. 1979. For a detailed account, see Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 80–156). M. Hakan Yavuz (1991: 73); Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 288–90); Stanley Mayes (1981: 115).

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124 Nancy Crawshaw (1978: 259–60). 125 Paschalis Kitromilides (1990: 13) notes that ‘the ethnic predominance of the Greek element in Cyprus and the consequent facility of the expansion of Greek nationalism resulted in an oversight, even oblivion, of the existence of a Muslim community in the island and a concomitant loss of the sense of importance of neighbouring Turkey, which remained the sovereign power over Cyprus until 1914’. Critical of this attitude, mainly of the Greek Cypriot Right and the Church is also Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 226). 126 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 58). 127 Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 200). 128 Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 203). 129 Yiorghos Leventis (2002: 220). 130 Jeanette Choisi (1993: 23). 131 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 80–1). 132 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 79) and Ihsan Ali (1980: 16–17). 133 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 44). 134 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 54). Ref.: the first TMT declaration written by Denktas himself. 135 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 16). Ref.: Denktas’s memoirs (1996). 136 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 18–19). 137 Riza Vuruskan places the Kucuk–Denktas visit to Ankara and the meeting with Zorlu in December 1957 and links this meeting with the Turkish government’s initiative with the General Staff, which took place in late December. See accordingly Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 100–1). 138 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 16–20, 81–2, 123). 139 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 20). Ref.: talk of Vuruskan with Zorlu before he had left to Cyprus, as he recalls in his memoirs. 140 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 91). 141 ‘All thought that I was the leader but I wasn’t. I was the political adviser.’ See accordingly Denktas’s interview with The Times, 20 Jan. 1978, Cyprus PIO (1979: 7). 142 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 94–8). 143 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 31, 97–8, 173). 144 Michael Attalides (1977: 81). See also Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 36–41), Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 81–2) and Patriotic Organization of the Turkish Cypriots (1965) 145 R. A. Patrick (1976: 79). 146 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 81). 147 Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 21). 148 Ihsan Ali (1980: 17). See also pp. 33–5 and 37–9, where Ihsan Ali cites personal evidence on Denktas’s preaching of hatred and the plans for partition as well as on the role of Yiorgadjis and ‘irresponsible’ Greek Cypriots who contributed towards the materialization of those plans. 149 Kyriakos Markides (1977: 27). Ref.: Halkin Sesi, 8 Apr. 1963. 150 Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 13). Ref.: from Denktas’s memoirs (1996). 151 In the course towards the elections of 2003, he threatened that, in case the opposition won, he would put behind him the people of Anatolia and would start a new struggle. See accordingly Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 390). 152 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 253). Ref.: a report in the Guardian, 25 Sept. 2001, by

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155

156 157

158

159 160 161

162

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Helena Smith, who quotes Turkish Cypriots as telling her: ‘Please, tell the world that we want to get liberated from those who liberated us.’ Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 178–80). The presence of Ambassador, Emin Dirvana, at the funeral of the TMT victims, Hikmet and Gurkan (Apr. 1962), and his denouncement of the murder, as well as an article of him in Milliyet, 15 May 1964, in which he rejected accusations by Denktas against him, are an additional indication of the tense relations of the two men. Arif Hasan Tahsin (2001: 76–82) cites personal evidence that points to a conflict of policy in the Dirvana–Denktas clash. A report in Fileleftheros, 12 Feb. 1964: ‘Denktas returns today’ (he had represented the Turkish Cypriot community at the London Conference and afterwards addressed the UN Security Council during the discussion of the Cyprus problem), referred to incendiary statements by Denktas in Ankara according to which he would return to Cyprus to lead a secession government. The report concluded: ‘It has not been known if, after such seditious statements, the competent authorities of the Republic of Cyprus will allow the Turkish Cypriot leader to enter Cyprus.’ The next day, Fileleftheros reported that Denktas might possibly be arrested on his return and charged with ‘treason against the Republic’. Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 208–9) confirms that the Cabinet had really decided the arrest of Denktas on his return and his committal to trial. Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 210–13). From Denktas’s book Five to Twelve, which he published in Turkey in 1967. The abstract is cited in English in his Memoirs, vol. IV (1997: 46–7) which I had photocopied by a Turkish Cypriot friend. Spyros Athanasiades (1998: 211–12, 254). From Denktas’s deposition, which he made in Greek to the police and was first published in Spyros Papageorgiou (1983: vol. III, pp. 363–400). Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 211–12). Ihsan Ali (1980: 52–3). On 5 July 1970, Denktas organized elections (parallel to the elections in the Greek community) for the 30 members of the Turkish Communal Chamber and the 15 members of the House of Representatives as provided by the constitution. As the leader of a broad coalition, the National Solidarity Front, he won 72.5 per cent of the votes. The pre-election ‘Solidarity Programme’ he had put forth focused on dedication to the principles of Atatürk, opposition to divisive movements within the Turkish community, readiness for participation in a government of the Republic of Cyprus within the framework of a settlement on the basis of the proposals he had submitted at the intercommunal talks. See accordingly R. A. Patrick (1976: 163–4). Arif Hasan Tahsin (2001: 96–196), bearing personal evidence from within, links the complete domination of Denktas over the Turkish community with the reactionary coup of 1971, which, by bringing back to the fore Nihat Erim, signalled Turkey’s return to the military solution strategy. In 1973, parallel to the presidential elections proclaimed by Makarios, Denktas declared his candidacy for the Vice Presidency as a counter candidate to Kucuk. Under the weight of pressure from Ankara, Kucuk withdrew and the same was done by Denktas’s real opponent, exponent of a different policy, President of the Republican Turkish Party, Ahmet Mithat Berberoglu.

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175 176 177

178

179 180

181 182

183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

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The Cyprus Referendum Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 254). Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 119–20, 130–2). Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 132). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 207–12). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 214). See also Rauf Denktas (1988: 119, 121, 123). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 213, 217). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 219). See accordingly Chapter 4.7. Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 97). Ref.: Denktas’s interview with Yeniduzen, 15 Aug. 1991. PIO: TPress, 3 Sept. 2003: Kibris, 3 Sept. 2003. Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 353). Rauf Denktas: (1988: 39, 43–44, 69–74, 209–11, 288, 290–2, 305). See also in the same, p. 308, the following passage from his address of the UN Security Council on 18 Nov. 1983: ‘They come to my house. We say to them: “Come and see the common graves.” They reply: “NO.” We say: “Come and meet our refugees.” “NO.” “Come and see the relatives of the persons missing since 1963.” “NO.” This is the treatment we receive. And then you talk here about human dignity, sovereign rights, peace, equality . . . ’ Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 269). Reed Coughlan (1991: 88–9). There is extensive literature, which provides full documentation of colonization as a premeditated, planned, and implemented policy of Ankara. See in this regard Ahmet Cavit An (2004); Mete Hatay (2005); Cyprus PIO (ed.): ‘Colonization’ (Nicosia, 1978), ‘Colonization: The Vicious Circle’ (Nicosia, 1980) and ‘Turkish Demographic Manipulations in Cyprus’ (Nicosia, 1989). Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 344–6). See also Council of Europe: ‘Report on the Demographic Structure of the Cypriot Communities’, Doc. 6589 (Rapporteur: Alfons Cuco), Cyprus PIO (ed.) (2000: p. 35, § 90 and pp. 36–7, §§ 95–6). Cyprus PIO (ed.): ‘Turkish Cypriot Political Parties’, Sept. 1980, p. 13. Mete Hatay (2005: 23–4). The three opposition parties, i.e. The Republican Turkish Party (CTP), on the Left, the Communal Liberation Party (TKP), Left-of-centre, and the Populist Party (HP), nationalist Left, polled 12.8 per cent, 20.2 per cent and 11.7 per cent respectively. Ahmet Cavit An (2004: 16–17). Niyazi Kizilyurek (1999: 100–1) elaborates on the complete indifference of Turkish officials to the distinct identity of the Turkish Cypriots and on how they looked on the occupation of Cyprus as if it were a Turkish province. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 4–12). Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 16). Ref.: Ozgur’s interview with OLAY, 18 June 1979. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 16). Ref.: Ozgur’s interview with the Turkish News Agency, published in Halkin Sesi, 10 Sept. 1979. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 17). Ref.: Cyprus Bulletin, 22 Dec. 1979. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 17). Ref.: Ulus, 26 Oct. 1979, 21 Dec. 1979. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 24–5). Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 17). Ref.: Bozkurt, 13 Sept. 1979. Cyprus PIO (ed.) (1980: 18). Durduran and Ozgur felt the heavy presence of Ankara when, having won the majority

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197

198

199 200 201 202 203 204

205

206 207 208 209 210 211 212

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of seats in the general elections of 1981, direct intervention by the Turkish government foiled a coalition government of the two parties. See accordingly Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 370–1). With regard to settler voting patterns in all election contests from 1981 until 2005, see Mete Hatay (2005: 23–47). Rauf Denktas (1988: 304–12). Rauf Denktas (1988: 119–23). Rauf Denktas (1988: 123–4). At the meeting of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot political parties in London (12– 17 Sept. 1988), Mustafa Akinci (TKP) spoke of a homogeneous Turkish region within the framework of federation, while Ozgur (CTP) insisted on equality and security of the Turkish Cypriots, adding the safeguard that the Turkish Cypriots should be the dominant element in their region. As for Denktas’s positions, they were clearly marked in a document sent to the meeting by Denktas’s ‘adviser’, Ahmet Aker. In that document it was suggested that the two states should first establish economic cooperation, which would proceed gradually along the course followed by the EEC and, at a very late stage, after a ‘preparatory period of about ten years’, to examine political integration of the two states. See accordingly Report by C. Pericleous to EDEK Political Bureau (Sept. 1988), C. Pericleous personal archive, File No. 184. This is the conclusion drawn by Oliver Richmond (1998: 235–6) on how the opposition faced the situation at the time, from interviews he had with Mehmet Ali Talat, Mustafa Akinci and Alpay Durduran, as well as on how Denktas used the talks. In the Luxembourg Presidency Conclusions (Dec. 1997), Cyprus had been included in the group of ten for the next wave of enlargement, while Turkey was not even recognized as an accession candidate country. One of the reactions of Turkey and Denktas was officially to project, for the first time, the position for confederation of two sovereign states. PIO: TPress, 19 July 2000. PIO: TPress, 25 July 2000. Hurriyet, 23 July 2000: column by Ferai Tinc. PIO: TPress, Yeniduzen, 1 Aug. 2000. PIO: TPress, 4 Aug. 2000. A not exhaustive study of the Turkish Cypriot press of July–Dec. 2000 shows thirteen mass mobilizations (demonstrations, marches, rallies, strikes) along with a flurry of declarations and announcements of both the Platform ‘This Country is Ours’ and other social groupings, all directed against the Denktas regime. The culminating event in this direction was the general strike of 4–8 Dec. 2000, with daily demonstrations accompanied by warnings of new, more dynamic mobilizations. See accordingly PIO: TPress, 11 Dec. 2000. Yeniduzen, 20 Sept. 2000. PIO: TPress, 5 Mar. 2001. PIO: TPress, 29 May 2001: Avrupa, 29 May 2001. PIO: TPress, 27 Aug. 2001: Avrupa, 26 Aug. 2001. Afrika, 20 Mar. 2002. PIO: TPress, 14 May 2002. See in this regard Avrupa, 22 June 2000: editorial signed by the chief editor, Sener

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213 214 215 216 217 218 219

220

221 222 223 224 225 226 227

228

229 230

231

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The Cyprus Referendum Levent, titled ‘Occupation’; 11 July 2000: editorial signed by Sener Levent, titled: ‘Imprisoned in our own country’; 23 Mar. 2001: in reply to Ismael Cem’s threat in the event that Cyprus acceded the EU, Ali Osman pointed out: ‘The reality which came up after 1974 is nothing but occupation. Occupation has brought with it assimilation and demographic changes, as well as the annihilation of the Turkish Cypriots’; 4 Apr. 2001: article by columnist Kazim Deninci, titled ‘Tortures and occupation’; 8 May 2001: article by Ali Osman, titled: ‘Occupation and Minority’. Under the pretext of saving the Turkish Cypriots, Ali Osman writes that Turkey ‘has brought us to the state of being under occupation and a minority’ and adds: ‘We cannot see occupation because we are forced to believe so.’ See in this regard TPress, 17 May 2000, 10 July 2000, 4 Aug. 2000, 28 Nov. 2000, 1 Dec. 2000 and 21 Nov. 2001. In its 15 Dec. 2001 publication, Avrupa announced suspension of its publication and its succession by Afrika. Yeniduzen, 7 June 2001. PIO: TPress, 18 Oct. 2000. Yeniduzen and Avrupa, 30 Jan. 2001. Avrupa, 10 Nov. 2001. Turkish Daily News, 15 Nov. 2001: Mehmet Ali Birand, writing in his column ‘opinion’, commented on the interview he had had with Turkish Cypriot Students, informing readers of the astonishing things they would see in the CNN Turk that evening. Turkish Daily News, 16 Nov. 2001: Mehmet Ali Birand further comments on the situation in northern Cyprus, highlighting the reaction of Turkish Cypriot youths against Turkey and the Denktas regime, the tension between Turkish Cypriots and settlers, and Denktas’s failure to grasp the crux of the matter. Kibris, 25 June 2000. PIO: TPress, 31 Jan. 2001. Ortam, 1 Feb. 2001. PIO: TPress, 1 Feb. 2001. Avrupa, 7 Feb. 2001. PIO: TPress, 1 Feb. 2001. Apart from separate positions taken by parties and organizations, all opposition party leaders and trade-union leaders were present at the first mass rally following the submission of the Annan Plan, in support of the solution, organized by the Platform ‘Common Vision’, on 27 Nov. 2002. The Platform ‘Common Vision’ was founded on 9 Aug. 2002 by 86 parties and organizations including the 41 organizations of the Platform ‘This Country Is Ours’ (see accordingly Kibris, 10 Aug. 2002). On 31 Aug. 2002 a delegation of the new Platform visited Turkey to explain their ‘common vision’, which was ‘solution-accession’ (Kibris, 1 Sept. 2002), and, on 10 Sept. 2002, the delegation flew to Brussels, where they had contacts with Verheugen and other EU officials. PIO: TPress, 28 Nov. 2002. PIO: TPress, 27 Dec. 2002. The rally was preceded by a mass rally in Famagusta (Yeniduzen, 21 Dec. 2002), another rally in Morfou (Kibris, 23 Dec. 2002) and a hunger strike by a group of Turkish Cypriots, which had lasted from 23 to 28 Dec. PIO: TPress, 15 Jan. 2003, Politis, 15 Jan. 2003: G. Alexandrinou: ‘Sixty thousand

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Turkish Cypriots have sent clear message to Denktas: “Sign or resign”’. 232 PIO: TPress, 28 Feb. 2003. 233 As to reliable opinion polls for the period of 2000–3, see Kibris, 7, 9, 12 Sept. 2000 (carried by COMAR), Yeniduzen, 1 Apr. 2002 (by TUSIAD), Yeniduzen, 2–3 Oct. 2002 (by KADEM), Ortam, 1–2 Dec. 2002 (by KADEM-AMER in the Turkish and the Greek Cypriots respectively), Yeniduzen, 1 Jan. 2003 and Kibris, 8 Jan. 2003 (carried out in villages of the Morfou area, which, as provided by the Plan, would have been returned, and where 59.9 per cent answered, YES ), Kibris, 25 Feb. 2003 (by KADEM), Kibris, Yeniduzen, Kibrisli, Ortam, 29 Aug. 2003 (by KADEM), Ortam, 16 Nov. 2002: the first opinion poll carried out by the EU Commission, which covered Turkish Cypriots as well. 234 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 357). 235 Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 358). 236 The Eastern Mediterranean University, the Near East University, the University of Lefka, the American University of Kyrenia and the University of Nicosia. See accordingly Sia Anagnostopoulou (2004: 358). 237 According to a ‘Report on Higher Education’, the Turkish Cypriot students at these universities in the year 2000 numbered 12,000. See accordingly Kibris, 14 Nov. 2000. 238 Mehmet Ali Birand interrupted that programme following a row created by mainland Turkish nationalist students in reaction to positions taken by Turkish Cypriot students (see accordingly Yeniduzen, 23–4 Nov. 2002).

Chapter 7 1 All UNSC resolutions are found on webpage: www.un.org/documents/scres.htm. 2 Aristos Katsis (1979: 72–8) and Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 457–63). For the full text of the Report, see ‘Report of the UN Mediator on Cyprus to the Secretary General’, issued by the PIO, Nicosia, Cyprus. 3 The first UN mediator, Sakari Tuomioja, had been appointed by the UN Secretary General on 25 Mar. 1964. Faced with the unbridgeable positions of the two sides (geographical federation vs unrestrained independence including the right to self-determination enosis), he requested, through the Secretary General, the intervention of the United States, which, with the consent of George Papandreou, assigned Dean Acheson to work together with the UN mediator. On his arrival in Geneva (5 July 1964), where the UN mediator had already installed himself, Acheson actually replaced him by taking up the initiative to promote contacts with the parties involved. Having secured the silent consent of the UN mediator and the Secretary General himself, he put forward what came to be known as the Acheson Plan. See accordingly Miltiadis Christodoulou (1987: 406–8, 416–22). Following the death of Tuomioja (9 Sept. 1964), the Secretary General designated Galo Plaza, until then his Special Representative in Cyprus, as new mediator (16 Sept. 1964). 4 See in this regard interventions by Ozorio Tafall and U. Thant in Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, pp. 228–31, 328). 5 See accordingly Resolution 367 of the UNSC (12 Mar. 1975), §§ 5, 6, 7, and Resolution 3212 of the UNGA (1 Nov. 1974), § 4.

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6 Oliver Richmond (1998: 25–6). 7 Waldheim’s ‘Evaluation’ was submitted at the talks following the deadlock of Aug. 1981. A general reference to the ‘Evaluation’ and a comment to the effect that it contained ‘both positive and negative elements’ are found in PIO (1995: 29). Kurt Waldheim (1985: 92), briefly comments on the ‘Evaluation’ and concludes that ‘among less passionately committed opponents [it] might have aroused some interest’. The full text of the document was revealed by Simerini, 8 Nov. 1981: ‘The full text of Waldheim’s ideas’. 8 Annan Plan I was submitted to the parties on 11 Nov. 2002. With slight changes, it was submitted to the parties as version II on 10 Dec. 2002. As a result of intensive deliberations in the months between the Copenhagen European Council and the end of Clerides’s term of office, version III of the Plan was submitted by the UNSG to Papadopoulos and Denktas in Cyprus on 26 Feb. 2003. The short-lived version IV at Burgenstock was succeeded by final version V, which was submitted by the UNSG to the sides at Burgenstock on 31 Mar. 2004. The full texts of Plans I, III and V were given on the UNFICYP website and were published in the mainland Greek and Greek Cypriot press. Plan V was also published in Greek by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). It was also circulated in Greek by the Cyprus PIO in a limited number of copies intended mainly for the needs of the government service. 9 Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 219–20). 10 The full text of Waldheim’s ‘opening statement’ is given in PIO (1995: app. 14, p. 110). 11 Simerini, 8 Nov. 1981: ‘The full text of Waldheim’s ideas’. 12 Kurt Waldheim (1985: 206). 13 Kurt Waldheim (1985: 218). 14 Kurt Waldheim (1985: 220). 15 Oliver Richmond (1998: 227). 16 Oliver Richmond (1998: 169–71, 230). 17 Oliver Richmond (1998: 235). Ref.: the positions of Talat, Akinci and Durduran, as expounded in interviews they had with the author. 18 Oliver Richmond (1998: 231). 19 Oliver Richmond (1998: p. xii). 20 Harriet Martin (2006: 30). 21 Kurt Waldheim (1985: 92). 22 Gunter Verheugen: interview with G. Stylianou: Fileleftheros, 20 Apr. 2004: ‘Gunter Verheugen: We can guarantee democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights’: ‘We have certainly been part of the preparation of this plan because it has always been important to us to guarantee that the new Cyprus state functions properly, speaks with one voice, and contributes effectively in the EU decision-making process.’ 23 David Hannay (2005: pp. vii, 239). 24 See Chapter 3.6: ‘Holbrooke’s strategy’. 25 Oliver Richmond (1998: 25). 26 The stand adopted by President Kyprianou led to friction with his Foreign Minister, Nikos Rolandis, and the resignation of the latter. A resolution of the House of Representatives, passed with the votes of AKEL and DISY (22 Feb. 1985), held President Kyprianou responsible for the fact that ‘his refusal to accept Cuellar’s “indicators” had contributed to the protraction of the deadlock which the Turkish side had

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exploited to declare a “state”’. See accordingly Greek Cypriot press, 23 Feb. 1985. 27 The first document was entitled ‘Preliminary Draft for a Joint High-Level Agreement on Cyprus’, Nov. 1984. The second, ‘Draft Agreement on Cyprus’, 21 Mar. 1985, and the third, ‘Draft Framework Agreement on Cyprus’, 29 Mar. 1986 (see copies of original texts: C. Pericleous personal archive, Files 107, 108, and 109). The Nov. 1984 document was published in AGON, 24 Jan. 1985. The document of 21 Mar. 1985 was published in Alithia, 21 June 1985, and that of 29 Mar. 1986 in Simerini, 1 Apr. 1986. 28 See: C. Pericleous personal archive, File 107: Ref.: minutes of a meeting of President Kyprianou with party leaders on 12 Nov. 1984. The meeting was intended to prepare the positions of the Greek Cypriot side that were to be presented at the Kyprianou– Denktas meeting that took place in New York on 17–20 Jan. 1985. 29 See: Minutes of a meeting of President Kyprianou with party leaders on 12 Nov. 1984, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 107. 30 See C. Pericleous personal archive, ibid. Ref.: minutes of the second meeting, 13 Nov. 1984. 31 Such fears were confirmed a little later by a long letter from Denktas to the Secretary General (8 Aug. 1985) relating to the second draft of 21 Mar. 1985. In that letter, Denktas actually rejected the implementation of the three basic freedoms, linking them again with the ‘security’ of the Turkish Cypriots. He also rejected any withdrawal of troops before the establishment of a transitional government. Finally, he rejected the ratio figure of 29 per cent relating to the territorial issue, as well as any reference to ‘a substantial number’ of returning Greek Cypriot refugees. See accordingly C. Pericleous personal archive, File 108. 32 See C. Pericleous personal archive, File 107. 33 Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 225). 34 With regard to ‘defence’, § 1.1 (L), it suggested that this be discussed ‘in connection with international treaties on Cyprus’ instead of ‘international guarantees’ in the first draft. On the territorial issue it suggested 29 per cent for the territory under Turkish Cypriot administration (§ 6.1) but enlarged the list of matters to be subject to separate majorities (§ 2.1) or to vetoes (§ 3.2), and introduced weighted majorities in the Council of Ministers (§3.3). 35 In a letter to the Secretary General (10 June 1986) in which he explained the reasons why he had rejected the former’s third draft, President Kyprianou rejected provisions in the constitution he had accepted in the second draft, considering them now ‘contrary to the federal concept and unworkable’ (p. 7). He also rejected guarantees on the model of those of 1960. He argued accordingly: ‘The combination of Turkish troops, the unilateral right of Turkish intervention, and an unworkable federal government are a certain prescription for the extinction of the independent state of Cyprus’ (p. 9). ‘These reasons above all others’, he concluded, ‘demonstrate the Greek Cypriot side’s justifiable anxiety that the question of withdrawal of all Turkish troops and settlers and the matter of guarantees must be resolved first’ (see accordingly C. Pericleous personal archive, File 109). 36 PIO (1995: 41). 37 Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 228), commenting positively on the ‘informal and urbane’ personality of George Vassiliou, concludes: ‘I found him to be a breath of fresh air after Kyprianou.’

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38 See ‘The unanimous proposals of the National Council’, Jan. 1989, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 198. 39 See Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ C. Pericleous personal archive, File 200. 40 Emphasis added. 41 ‘The Greek Cypriot side, of course, accepts that there is a question of “practical difficulties” to be taken into account in the initial implementation of the three freedoms’. (See Greek Cypriot proposals, p. 9, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 198.) The Greek Cypriot proposals linked the implementation of the three freedoms with the territorial issue by noting that ‘the greater the number of Greek Cypriot refugees who can be resettled in their homes under Greek Cypriot administration, the less the extent of any practical difficulties to be overcome as a consequence of Greek Cypriot refugees resettling in the Turkish Cypriot province’ (ibid., p. 11). Finally, the Greek Cypriot proposals acknowledged the reasoning for the Turkish Cypriots ‘to constitute a majority’ in their area by linking again the territorial issue with that of displaced Greek Cypriots returning to the area to be administered by the other community (ibid., p. 14).The logic of the Turkish Cypriots being the majority in the area under their administration had been recognized by the Greek Cypriot side as early as 1977. At the intercommunal talks in Vienna (31 Mar.–7 Apr. 1977), Tassos Papadopoulos, the Greek Cypriot negotiator at the time, noted the following on submitting the Greek Cypriot proposals on the territorial aspect: ‘According to our proposal on the territorial aspect, about 120,000 Cypriots will be returning to their homes in the region under Greek Cypriot administration. Another 50,000 Greek Cypriots will have the option to return to their homes in the region under Turkish Cypriot administration. Some of them might not wish to return, but even if they all decided to return, the effective majority of the Turkish Cypriots in the region under their administration would still be maintained’ (PIO (ed).: 1981, pp. 29–30, §7). 42 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas: p. 7. 43 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas: p. 7. 44 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas: p. 8. 45 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas: p. 9. 46 PIO (1995: 41). 47 See accordingly the openly hostile attitude of Eleftherotypia and Ta Nea (July–Aug. 1989), mouthpieces of DIKO and EDEK respectively, as well as the rejectionist positions taken by DIKO and EDEK leaders Kyprianou and Lyssarides, and by party collective organs. Hard-line rejectionist positions were also taken by Tassos Papadopoulos, who, in a series of articles in Kirikas (23 July–13 Aug. 1989), signed ‘Democritos’, vehemently attacked President Vassiliou, accusing him of having accepted Cuellar’s document as ‘the SOLUTION of the Cyprus problem’ (Kirikas, 6 Aug. 1989). 48 Contrary to the rejectionist positions taken by DIKO, EDEK and Tassos Papadopoulos, AKEL and DISY accepted the Cuellar ‘Set of Ideas’ as a basis for negotiation and supported President Vassiliou’s handlings (see accordingly Haravgi, 1 and 6 Aug. 1989, for AKEL, and Alithia, 1, 4, and particularly 18 and 26 Aug. 1989, where DISY denounces the ‘rejectionists’ and gives open support to Vassiliou). 49 See Cuellar’s report of 8 Oct. 1991, § 17. See also Chapters 3.3 and 4.7 (this book) on how Yilmaz, apparently in coordination with the Kemalist establishment, reneged on commitments his government had made to the United States and the EU at the

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81

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meeting with his Greek counterpart Mitsotakis in Paris (12 Sept. 1991). Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 231–2, 235–6). Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 225–8). Javier Perez de Cuellar (1997: 225, 228, 233, 235). See Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ and Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 4. See Cuellar’s report to the UNSC, S/23121, 8 Oct. 1991, § 7. See Cuellar’s report to the UNSC, S/23121, 8 Oct. 1991, § 12. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 15. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 29. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 29. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, §§ 30–3, 34. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, §§ 18–27. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 17. See Resolution 750 of the UNSC, 10 Apr. 1992, § 4. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, §§ 4–13. See C. Pericleous personal archive, File 223, for a copy of the ‘Set of Ideas’. Proina Nea, 5 Sept. 1992, published in full text Greek translations of Ghali’s report of 3 Apr. 1992, Resolution 750 of the UNSC, Ghali’s report of 21 Aug. 1992, Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, and Resolution 774 of the UNSC of 28 Aug. 1992. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, §§ 18 and 25. See Map of Ghali. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, § 22. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, § 21. As to Denktas’s preconditions, see §§ 19, 20. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, §§ 28, 29, 30. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, § 37. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, §§ 31, 32. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24472, 21 Aug. 1992, § 33. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, §§ 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 24, 34, 40. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, §§ 44, 45. The UNSC, having endorsed the Secretary General’s Report with Resolution 789 (24 Nov. 1992), blamed the Turkish Cypriot side for the deadlock ‘in particular because certain positions adopted by the Turkish Cypriot side were fundamentally at variance with the Set of Ideas’ (§ 5). See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, § 21. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, § 41. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, § 9. Indicative in this regard are the attitude of Denktas at the talks of 7–14 Sept. 1991 and the reneging of Yilmaz at his meeting with Mitsotakis in Paris on 12 Sept. 1991. Emphasis added. See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/24830, 19 Nov. 1992, § 46. All references to the Annan Plan, unless otherwise specified, refer to the final text (‘The Comprehensive Settlement of the Cyprus Problem, 31 March 2004’, here below referred to as ‘Annan Plan V’), which was put forward at the referendum of 24 Apr. 2004.

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82 Annan Plan V: Main Articles, §§ i–iv. 83 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 1, §§ 1–4. See also Annex IX, ‘Coming into being of the new state of affairs’, Articles 1–6, and attachments 1, 2, 3. 84 On 28 Dec. 1967 the Turkish Cypriot leadership proclaimed the establishment of the ‘Temporary Turkish Cypriot Administration’ (see Rauf Denktas 1988: 35). On 13 Feb. 1975, Denktas established the ‘Turkish Federated State of Cyprus’ (TFSC) and, on 15 Nov. 1983, he unilaterally declared a separate secessionist state, the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ (TRNC). 85 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 2: The United Cyprus Republic (hereafter: UCR) 86 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 8, § 1. 87 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 8, § 2. It is worth noting that the Republic of Cyprus, confusing the national anthem – the symbolic expression of state entity – with the concept of the national entity, has been using the national anthem of the Greek state since 1964. 88 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 13, § 3. 89 For the full text of the letter, see Annan Plan V: Annex IX, Attachment 1. 90 David Hannay (2005: 151). 91 Claire Palley (2005: 25) bears witness, accompanied by criticism, to this concession of Clerides in Paris. Clerides’s concession on the ‘new state of affairs’ is also corroborated by the report of the Secretary General to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, §§ 62, 63. Finally, Clerides himself confirms acceptance of this formulation in his letter to the Secretary General of 21 Oct. 2002, cited in C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 39). 92 David Hannay (2005: 182) notes accordingly: ‘The agreement would establish a new state of affairs, not a new state.’ 93 Claire Palley (2005: 25–6). Palley also refers to the opinion given to this effect by two members of the International Law Commission, Professors Crawford and Hafner, according to which ‘the Plan provision that the UCR is a member of the United Nations made it clear that the state of Cyprus as it would emerge from the settlement would not be a new state nor would there be a succession of states’. Had there been a new state, the above professors added, ‘the UCR would have had to acquire UN membership as did Serbia and Montenegro’ (p. 43, n. 3). 94 The 1979 high-level agreement, known as the 10-Point Agreement, was reached between Kyprianou and Denktas on 19 May 1979 and reiterated conformity with the 1977 Guideline Agreement between Makarios and Denktas. For the full text of the 10-Point Agreement, see PIO (ed.) (1981: 46–7). 95 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 3, §§ 6–7. See further ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 2: ‘Residence of Cypriot citizens’. 96 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Article 16, § 8. 97 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 10, § 3 b, c. See further Annex VII, Article 16, §§ 1–2. 98 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Article 17. 99 Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 1. 100 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’: Chapters: ‘Guiding Principles’, ‘Bi-Communality’.

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101 The Secretary General’s ‘opening statement’ referred to above was attached, as Annex I, to his report to the UNSC, S/21183, 8 Mar. 1990. 102 UNSC Resolution 716 (11 Oct. 1991): § 4. 103 See Ghali’s report to the UNSC, S/23780, 3 Apr. 1992, § 11. 104 Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’: §§ 3, 5. 105 Annan Plan V: Main Articles, Article III, Foundation Agreement: Article 2. 106 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Articles 30, 31. 107 In the Annan Plan, the Upper House is termed ‘The Senate’ and the Lower House ‘The Chamber of Deputies’. 108 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 5, § 1a. The 4:1 ratio was the one that existed between Greek and Turkish Cypriots at the time of the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus and remained the same until 1974. 109 Cuellar’s Draft Agreement (21 Mar. 1985): § 2.1 and § 3.2. Draft Agreement (29 Mar. 1986): §§ 3.1, 4. 2. 110 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989): Chapters: ‘The Legislature’ and ‘The Executive’. 111 Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1992): §§ 32, 40. 112 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 5, § 2b. 113 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 5, § 1b. As for the matters requiring special majorities, see Annex I, Article 25, § 2. 114 See in this regard ‘Main Aspects of the Turkish Cypriot Proposals’ (Apr. 1978), Article H, §§ 26–8, p. 16, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 195. 115 See ‘Draft Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cyprus’ (Turkish Cypriot Proposals, Jan. 1981), Introduction: p. 3, Article 22, § 2, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 196. ‘Memorandum by the Turkish Cypriot Side Presented on 9 Jan. 1989 at the Intercommunal Talks, in Lefkosa’, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 197. See also Turkish Cypriot Proposals of 1978, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 195. 116 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 18. 117 Cuellar’s Draft Framework Agreements 1984: § c(i), 1985: § c(i), 1986: § 1c(i). 118 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 2, § 1a, b. Cf. Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’, §§ 10, 11, 26. 119 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 3 §§ 1, 2. See further Annex I, Article 12, §§ 1, 2, 3. 120 Emphasis added. See in C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 39), letter of President Clerides to Secretary General Annan, 21 Oct. 2002, § II. 121 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 2, § 1c. See further Annex I, Article 15, § 1. 122 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 2, § 1b. 123 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 14: ‘Competences and functions of the federal government’. 124 Nikos Kranidiotis (1985: vol. I, app. 2): Makarios’s 13-point document, point 3, p. 593. 125 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 244). 126 Polyvios Polyviou (1980: 69, 71). 127 Glafkos Clerides (1988: vol. II, p. 248). 128 Unanimous Proposals of the National Council (1989): ‘Federal Executive’, pp. 16–17, § a (ii). 129 Cuellar’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989): ‘Constitutional aspects of the federation’, § b (ii).

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130 Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 36) cites without comment the Greek Cypriot position vis-àvis the election of the President by universal suffrage and the Turkish Cypriot position vis-à-vis rotating presidency. 131 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 25, § 2e. 132 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 5, § 2a. 133 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 22, § 3. 134 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 26, § 1. 135 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 26, § 2. 136 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 26, § 6. 137 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 27, § 1. Taking into account the five-year term of the Presidential Council, the Greek Cypriot member elected to the rotating presidency will hold Office for forty months as compared with twenty months for his Turkish Cypriot counterpart. 138 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 2, § 1. 139 Symptoms of an ‘ethnarchic’ posture adopted by Tassos Papadopoulos (see declaration of 7 Apr. 2004 to the people, and speech on the occasion of DIKO’s 30th anniversary on 10 May 2006) indicate that ‘ethnarchic’ notions are still dormant in the exercise of politics. 140 Politis, 2 Mar. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘This is the constitution of the Greek Cypriot state’. 141 According to the Annan Plan (Annex I, Article 14, § 3), ‘the federal government shall, as appropriate, entrust the implementation of its laws, including the collection of some form of taxes, to constituent state authorities’. Cf. Ghali’s ‘Set of Ideas’, § 27: ‘The federal powers and functions will be executed or, in accordance with agreement, through delegation to the federated states.’ 142 Makarios–Denktas Four Guideline Agreement (1977), 2nd Guideline: ‘The territory under the administration of each community will be discussed in the light of economic viability and productivity and land ownership.’ 143 Makarios–Denktas Four Guideline Agreement (1977), 3rd Guideline: ‘Questions of principle like freedom of movement, freedom of settlement, the right to property and other specific matters are open for discussion taking into consideration the fundamental basis for a bi-communal federal system and certain practical difficulties which may arise for the Turkish Cypriot community.’ 144 The talks were held in Vienna between 31 Mar. and 7 Apr. 1977, with Tassos Papadopoulos and Umit Onan as interlocutors. The reasoning behind the 20 per cent was strongly supported by the percentage of Turkish Cypriot landownership, which was somewhat lower than their population percentage. According to data from official censuses, which covered the period of British rule as well, Greek Cypriots owned 82.7 per cent of the privately owned land and Turkish Cypriots 16.7 per cent. Out of the overall area of Cyprus, state land was taken to be 26.3 per cent, Greek Cypriots owned 60.9 per cent and the Turkish Cypriots 12.3 per cent. See Presentation of the Greek Cypriot proposals on the territorial aspect by the negotiator, Tassos Papadopoulos: PIO (ed.) (1981: 28–9, §§ 2, 3). 145 See Section 5.7. 146 PIO (ed.) (1981: 32–3). 147 See ‘Explanatory Note of the Turkish Cypriot Proposals on the Cyprus Problem’, Apr. 1978, Part II: ‘The Territories of the Federated State’, pp. 25–7. As for the exact data

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153 154 155

156 157 158 159

160 161 162

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with respect to the natural and economic resources of the Turkish-occupied areas that disclaim Denktas’s figures, see statistical tables based on the economic censuses of 1972 and 1973 in PIO (ed.) (1979). This was a phrase repeatedly used by Denktas in order to stress the separate ‘state entity’ and the separate ‘national security’. ‘Main Aspects of the Turkish Cypriot Proposals’, Apr. 1978: Part II: ‘Proposals on the Territories of the Federated States and a Joint Water Project’, §§ I, 2, 7, p. 20. For the map of the Turkish proposals of 1981, see C. Pericleous personal archive, File 196. Denktas’s letter to Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, dated 8 Aug. 1985, § 14. p. 16: see C. Pericleous personal archive, File 108. The Agreement referred to was that between Clerides and Denktas during the third round of talks in Vienna (31 July–3 Aug. 1975). What was agreed was permission for the Turkish Cypriots living in the south to proceed north if they wanted, while, at the same time, it was also agreed that ‘the Greek Cypriots at present in the north are free to stay’ and that ‘they will be given every help to lead a normal life, including facilities for education and for the practice of their religion, as well as medical care by their own doctors and freedom of movement in the north’ (see PIO (ed.) 1981: 20). It should be noted that not only did Denktas not keep his Vienna commitments but he created such unbearable conditions for the Greek Cypriots enclaved in the Karpas that their original number of 10,000 dropped to a few hundreds in less than ten years. See Memorandum by the Turkish Cypriot side presented on 9 Jan. 1989, at the Intercommunal Talks’, Annex A, pp. 2–4, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 197. See Chapters 3.3 and 4.7. The map attributed to the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative Hugo Gobbi was reportedly prepared in 1981 but was never officially submitted at the talks, obviously because of Turkey’s and Denktas’s refusal to discuss territorial concessions. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, §§ 21, 36, 114. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 142. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, §§ 22, 98, 107. The Turkish Cypriots who, for any reason, moved to the north numbered approximately 4,000 during the intercommunal clashes of 1963–4 and around 44,000 in 1974, making a total of 48,000 out of 115,000 according to census data for 1973 (see PIO (ed.) 1989: 5, 7 ). At first glance, the inflated numbers of Turkish Cypriot displaced persons given by the Secretary General most probably includes Turkish Cypriots who had lived in the north until 1963 and had abandoned their homes owing to the intercommunal clashes, but returned there in 1974. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 108. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 113. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 118. The Secretary General calculates the returning Greek Cypriots as numbering, in round figures, 120,000 on the basis of 86,000 in 1974 plus the population increase since then. Claire Palley (2005: 169) quotes data issued by the Statistics Department of the Republic of Cyprus, according to which the number of Greek Cypriots in the areas to be returned were calculated in 2001 to be 106,820 on the basis of 82,170 at the census of 1973. Claire Palley (2005: 61).

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175 176 177 178 179

180 181 182

183 184

185

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The Cyprus Referendum Claire Palley (2005: 151). Claire Palley (2005: 61). Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 117. Kormakitis, as shown in the map (see App. 1), is an ‘island’ within the Turkish Cypriot constituent state. Map of the Annan Plan: App. 1. Map of the Annan Plan: App. 1, and Map of the ‘Set of Ideas’: App. 2. Map of the ‘Set of Ideas’: App. 2. Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Article 16, § 8. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 9, §§ 2, 3. All six phases of the return of territory are shown in the Annan Plan Map, App. 1. As to what exactly is meant by ‘territorial responsibility’, this is defined in the Annan Plan (Annex VI, Article 3, §§ 3, 4) as follows: ‘3. During the last months of phases three to six, when supervision by the United Nations of the activities relating to the transfer of areas subject to territorial adjustment shall be enhanced in the relevant areas, the United Nations shall assume territorial responsibility for those areas, without prejudice to the administration of the daily lives of the local population by the entrusted authorities. The United Nations may issue directives to local officials, and, should it be necessary, preclude a local official from duty in the area; United Nations police shall have full powers in the area and the right to give operational instructions to local police. However, the United Nations shall not assume responsibility for local finances or personnel. 4. Areas subject to territorial adjustment shall be vacated of any forces and armaments no later than two weeks prior to: (a) the specified date for transfer to the entitled constituent state (in phases one and two); or (b) the specified date for assumption of territorial responsibility by the United Nations (in phases three to six); and no forces and armaments, except those of the United Nations, shall be located thereafter in that area or within 1000 metres of it.’ Annan Plan: Annex VI, Article 3, § 1. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 3, §§ 6, 7. See further ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’: Article 2, §§ 1, 2. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 3, § 7. Annan Plan: Annex VII, Article 16, § 8. Annan Plan: Annex I, Article 11, § 5. The same rights as those of the Karpas villages are correspondingly safeguarded for the Turkish Cypriot villages of Tilliria and of the western and the eastern plain that will come within the Greek Cypriot constituent state. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 10, § 2. Annan Plan: Annex VII, Attachment 4, Articles 1–5. The whole of Annex VII of the Annan Plan V, pp. 95–133, deals with the conditions of implementation of property reinstatement and with the procedural organs that will decide on disputed cases and on the implementation of decisions in relation to property reinstatement. Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment 4, Articles 5–22, Attachment 1, Article 1, ‘Definitions’. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 10, § 3e, Annex VII, Articles 6 and 14, See further Annex VII, Attachment 1, Article 1, ‘Definitions’, § 15, for ‘significant improvement’. Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Part 2, Article 12.

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186 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 10, Annex VII, Part II, Article 16. 187 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 10, § 3a. 188 The Compensation Fund will be an independent legal entity to succeed the Compensation Bureau five years after entry into force of the Foundation Agreement. It will operate within the framework of the Property Board and will be competent on matters relating to compensations and property portfolio management (See accordingly Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment 2, Section A, Articles 1 and 2). 189 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment 2, Section E, Articles 17 and 18. 190 Stelios Platis et al. (2005); see also Stelios Platis et al. (2006). 191 Stelios Platis et al. (2006: 43–5). 192 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003, § 101. 193 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Part II, Section B, Article 17. 194 Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’: Article 1, §§ 1, 2, 3. 195 Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’: Article 1, §§ 1, 2, 3. 196 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment 2, Articles 1–18. 197 The Governing Council of the Property Board is to be composed of seven members: two from each constituent state and three non-Cypriots who will not be citizens of Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, or Britain (see accordingly: Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment II, Section A, Article 2, §§ 2, 3). 198 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Attachment 2, Section A, Articles 3–5. 199 According to a provision of the ‘Set of Ideas’ (§ 37), ‘for the initial eight years, the President and the Vice President (of the Federal Republic) will also be the heads of their respective federated states’. 200 As to the criteria of bi-communality and bi-zonality, see Chapter 7.4.2. 201 Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 1. 202 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 14, § l. 203 Annan Plan V: Annex VII, Part I, Article 4: ‘Religious sites’. 204 Francis Fukuyama (1999) makes use of the terms gemeinschaft (community) and gesellschaft (society), with which Ferdinand Tonnies describes the transfer from a rural community to the industrial society, to portray the ‘great disruption’ to the social network in the United States in the course of the move from the industrial to the information society. If these ‘swift’ – by comparative historical measures – social changes caused the great disruption described by Fukuyama in the metropolis of capitalism, one might have imagined the volume and the intensity of the social convulsion and the disruption of the social network among the people of Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot community in particular as a consequence of massive violent displacement and dispersion by the winds of war within a matter of days. 205 The restriction of non-Turkish-speaking residents in the Turkish Cypriot constituent state to one third of its total population relates only to citizens of the UCR who acquire internal citizenship of the Turkish Cypriot constituent state. Beyond that percentage, a Greek Cypriot may settle in reinstated or purchased property, or may even rent a house. The only restriction in such cases is connected with the exercise of voting rights in parliamentary elections.

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206 This is made amply clear by Toumazos Tselepis (member of the negotiating team of President Papadopoulos) in an interview with Radio ASTRA, 10 Apr. 2004 (published by Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004 in a special supplement: ‘Toumazos Tselepis: All the truth as regards the Annan Plan’, p. 9). See also relevant provision in the Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 4. 207 Annan Plan V: Annex IX, Attachment 3: on the entry into force of the Foundation Agreement, the two transitional Co-Presidents are to send a letter to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in which they will state that ‘the Foundation Agreement provides a domestic remedy for the solution of all questions related to affected property in Cyprus’ and to inform him that ‘the UCR shall be the sole responsible State Party concerning such matters’. Moreover, they will ask the ECHR ‘to strike out any proceedings currently before it concerning affected property in Cyprus, in order to allow the domestic mechanism established to solve these cases to proceed’. 208 Toumazos Tselepis (Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 6) is of the opinion that the ECHR, acting on mainly political considerations, would most probably have rejected such appeals following the solution in order not to endanger the smooth functioning of the political settlement. 209 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 22, § 3. 210 Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 5. 211 See Europa Direct, website: http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/124404.htm. 212 Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 3, § 2. See also Declaratory Introduction of ‘Draft Act of Adaptation’, § xvii. 213 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 11, § l. 214 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 11, § l. 215 Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee, which is incorporated in the 1960 Constitution as Annex to Article 181, stipulates the following: ‘In the event of a breach of the provisions of the present Treaty, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom undertake to consult together with respect to the representations or measures necessary to ensure observance of those provisions. In so far as a common or concerted action may not prove possible each of the three guaranteeing Powers reserves the right to take action with the sole aim of re-establishing the state of affairs created by the present Treaty.’ 216 See accordingly Greek Cypriot Proposals of 1989, chapter: ‘Guarantees’, p. 10. 217 At the London Conference (Jan. 1964), the Cypriot Foreign Minister, Spyros Kyprianou, demanded the abolition of the Treaties of Guarantee and Alliance and asked for a framework that would have precluded foreign intervention. In the official proposals that the Greek Cypriot side submitted at the Conference (21 Jan. 1964), it put forward the demand for the abolition of the Treaties (see accordingly Miltiadis Christodoulou 1987: 367–70). During the talks Makarios had with the US Under-Secretary of State George Ball (Feb. 1964), ‘he made it clear to the American Secretary that he did not recognize to any of the Guarantor powers the right of either joint or unilateral intervention in the internal affairs of Cyprus’. However, in his written reply to Ball (13 Feb. 1964), in which he stated the intention of the Government of Cyprus to appeal to the UNSC and request a decision calling upon all member states to refrain from any violent action against Cyprus, he made no mention of any intention to denounce the Treaties (see Nikos Kranidiotis 1985: vol. I, pp. 122–3). Acting along the same lines during the

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discussion at the UNSC (18 Feb. 1964), Spyros Kyprianou refrained from denouncing the Treaties and instead confined himself to an attempt ‘to demonstrate that the right of intervention invoked by Turkey on the basis of the Treaties was legally unfounded’ (see Nikos Kranidiotis 1985: vol. I, p. 142). Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 6, § l. Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 8, § lb. Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Alliance’, Article 3, § 3, and Article 4. Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Guarantee’, Article 1. Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 8. Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Treaty between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom Related to the New State of Affairs in Cyprus’, Article 2, §§ 1, 2, 3, 4. Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 8. Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Treaty between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom Related to the New State of Affairs in Cyprus’, Preamble, § iii. See Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus, Article 181. See Chapter 6.5. See Report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe by Jaakko Laakso, Rapporteur of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography: ‘Colonization by Turkish Settlers of the Occupied Part of Cyprus’, Doc. 9799, 2 May 2003, p 5, § 42: ‘Change in the demographic structure of Cyprus, already underway, creates a real threat that in the long term the considerable increase in the numbers of the Turkishspeaking population might be used for a justification of the inordinate claims of the Turkish side regarding territorial arrangements and political powers in a final settlement of the Cyprus problem.’ (http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/doc03/ EDOC9799.htm). See also: ‘PULSE’, 19 Aug. 1975, in PIO ed. (1978), p. 5. See in this regard PIO (1980a), SOZ, 13 Apr. 1980: Kerem Aldi: ‘Our destiny is being played with’, SOZ, 14 Apr. 1980: leading article: ‘Our people’s historic choice and a call to end a disgrace’, Aydinlik, 18 Apr. 1980: Erdogan Ozbalikci: ‘14,000 Turkish Republic citizens were made “Cypriots” in five days in Cyprus’. See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention#Section_III:_Occupied_ territories. See Alfons Cuco (1992): Report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe ‘on the demographic structure of the Cypriot communities’(§ 104): ‘The establishment of Turkish settlers in the northern part of the island is an undisputed fact, although there is controversy over the figures.’ See also Recommendation 1608 (2003) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, made on the basis of the Laakso Report, p. 1, § 2: ‘It is a well established fact that the demographic structure of the island has been continuously modified since the de facto partition in 1974, as a result of deliberate policies of the Turkish Cypriot administration and Turkey.’ The Laakso Report (2 May 2003) and the Recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly that followed (24 June 2003) may, at first glance, be a unique exception to the ‘diplomacy’ that guides similar previous reports on Cyprus (1987, 1992). However, the direct criticism of Turkey and even more of Denktas (see Recommendation, §§ 2, 5, 6, and Report, §§ 42, 44) is inseparably linked with Denktas’s rejection of the Annan Plan at The Hague (13 Mar. 2003). The fact that the Rapporteur postponed the submission

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The Cyprus Referendum of the Report until after the UN Secretary General’s deadline for acceptance of his Plan (10 Mar. 2003) letting it be understood that he was not annoyed at all by the provisions of the Plan relating to the settlers, strongly indicates the political considerations both of the timing of the Report and, even more, of the direct criticism of the Turkish side and of Denktas in particular (see Report, §7, and §§53–6). UN General Assembly Resolutions 33/15 (1978), 34/30 (1979), 37/253 (1983). The ‘Recommendation Presented by the Committee on Migration, Refugees, and Demography’ (30 Mar. 1987), in PIO (ed.) (1998: pp. 31–3, § 18): ‘Recommends that the Committee of Ministers: (c) ask the leaders of both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities not to alter the demographic structure of the island and especially to avoid untimely migratory movements’. The Recommendation was endorsed unchanged by the Parliamentary Assembly (Recommendation 1056, on 5 May 1987. See ibid., p. 37, § 18). PIO (1998): ‘Recommendation 1197 (1992) on the Demographic Structure of the Cypriot Communities’, 8 May 1992, pp. 39–41. Emphasis added. Cuellar proposals: 1984: § 7, 1985: § 7.1, 1986: § 8.1. The above quotation, ostensibly borrowed from the Recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (May 1992), is cited in the 13th paragraph of an annex to the Ghali ‘Set of Ideas’, which commences with the following introductory note: ‘As soon as the Overall Framework Agreement has been approved by the two communities in separate referenda, the following programme of action to promote goodwill and close relations between the two communities will be implemented.’ Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 3, § 5. Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 4. Annan Plan V: ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 3, § 2. Mete Hatay (2005: app. I, p. 63) cites a table showing citizenships granted to settlers from 1974 to Feb. 2003, according to which the total number of settlers who had been granted citizenship up to that time was 45,689. Annan Plan III: Annex III, Attachment 4, ‘Federal Law on Citizenship of the UCR’, Article 3 (a, b). Annan Plan III: Annex III, Attachment 5, ‘Federal Law on Aliens, Immigration, and Asylum’, Article 2, § 2, and Attachment 4, ‘Federal Law on Citizenship of the UCR’, Article 5 (b), The Laakso Report (2003: p. 4, § 25), estimates the total number of indigenous Turkish Cypriots at 87,800 by the end of the year 2000 and at 87,600 in 2001 (p. 1, § 4). The same criteria are valid for Greek nationals, i.e. 45,000 plus mixed marriages plus 10 per cent of the Greek Cypriots. However, there are not that many Greeks in Cyprus to cover such figures. Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 4. See interview of President Papadopoulos with ‘VIMAGAZINO’ (a supplement of the Sunday edition of To Vima), 11 May 2003, p. 38. (The President had in mind Annan Plan III. In Annan Plan V the provisions on the settlers remained unchanged.) Annan Plan III: Annex III, Attachment 5, Article 2, § 2. The number of 115,000 is also confirmed by the Laakso Report (2003: p. 1, § 2).

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251 Mete Hatay (2005: viii). 252 Mete Hatay (2005: viii). 253 Annan Plan III: Annex III, Attachment 4, Article 5 (b) and Attachment 5, Article 2, § 4. 254 Claire Palley (2005: 69–70). 255 Claire Palley (2005: 70–1). 256 Didier Pfirter: member of the UN negotiating committee in Cyprus. 257 Claire Palley (2005: 70). 258 Regarding Pfirter’s statement in question, a report by C. Venizelos in Fileleftheros, 14 Sept. 2003: ‘No settler will be forced to leave Cyprus after the solution: Revealing statement by Didier Pfirter, one of the authors of the Plan’, shows Palley’s claim to be totally unfounded. According to Venizelos, Fileleftheros ‘has secured the full text of the minutes of the discussion at the Bogazici University, on 17 July 2003, on the subject: “The Annan Plan: Myths and Realities”’. ‘The Swiss Diplomat, Didier Pfirter’, Venizelos writes, ‘commenting on the issue of the settlers, referred to the number given by Denktas as being in all 60,000’. ‘The last figures we have been given are 60,000,’ he was quoted as saying. On the basis of this figure, Venizelos concludes, Pfirter apparently ‘tried to relieve his Turkish audience on stating that those figures in themselves were within the numbers of settlers allowed to stay’. However, if the real number of settlers was 115,000, as the government of Cyprus maintained (Venizelos writes that ‘the security agencies of the Republic consider that the settlers may amount to 129,000’), then a substantial number of settlers would have been forced to leave. Beyond the questions raised about Palley’s intentions, further questions are raised by the title Fileleftheros gave, which does not in any way support Venizelos’s reportage. 259 Angelos Syrigos (2005: 362). 260 See in this regard Laakso Report (2003: p. 6, § 46). 261 See in this regard: Recommendation 1608 (2003) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, p.1, §3, as well as the Laakso Report (2003), p. 5, §§ 41, 43. 262 According to the population census carried out by government authorities in the government-controlled areas of Cyprus in 2001, the total population was 689,565. Of these, 624,754 were citizens of the Republic and the remaining 64,811, among whom were 17,459 Greeks, were aliens (see: www.mof.gov.cy/cystat). If one estimates that, on the basis of annual population increase, the Greek Cypriot population would have been slightly more than 640,000 in 2004 (including the Greek nationals who would have been granted citizenship according to the provisions of the Plan), then the total population of 160,000 Turkish-speaking people in Cyprus would have constituted 20 per cent of the total population of Cyprus (800,000) as against 80per cent Greek-speaking people. According to the 1960 population census, Greek Cypriots (442,521), together with the Armenians (3,628) and the Maronites (2,708), constituted 80.63 per cent and Turkish Cypriots (104,350) accounted for 18.74 per cent of the total population of Cyprus (3,453 ‘others’ were 0.62 per cent). 263 See Recommendation 1608 (2003) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, p. 1, § 4. 264 See accordingly minutes of a two-session meeting of President Kyprianou with party leaders, on 12 and 13 Nov. 1984, 12 Nov. Session, § 1 (C. Pericleous personal archive, File 107).

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265 Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Coming into being of the new state of affairs’, Article 1. 266 Annan Plan V: Annex IX, ‘Coming into being of the new state of affairs’, Articles 1– 6, and Attachments 1 and 2. 267 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Part VII ‘Transitional Provisions’, Articles 38–46. 268 See Chapter 6.6.

Chapter 8 1 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: §§ 43–6. 2 The second act, following EU decision on enlargement in Copenhagen (13 Dec. 2002), was to be the signing of the Treaty of Accession (16 Apr. 2003) in Athens. The third and final act was to be the official accession on 1 May 2004. 3 Haravgi, 3 Nov. 2002: ‘They are leading us to zero hour’. 4 Haravgi, 4 Nov. 2002: ‘Blackmail rejected: Christofias: “We are not going to sacrifice the Republic of Cyprus for the sake of accession”’. 5 Haravgi, 5 Nov. 2002: ‘Christofias: Why the haste for a solution Plan?’ 6 Haravgi, 7 Nov. 2002: ‘Christofias: We are not going to sell out for the sake of accession’. 7 Haravgi, 10 Nov. 2002: ‘Katsourides: We’ll not consent to Clerides’s remaining’. 8 Haravgi, 10 Nov. 2002: ‘Fresh popular mandate’. 9 See indicatively Haravgi (leader), 12 Nov. 2002: ‘NO to a Plan that writes off the crime’; Haravgi (leader), 13 Nov. 2002: ‘Blackmailing timeframes and security limits’; Haravgi (editorial), 14 Nov. 2002: ‘Link between solution–accession’, warns of the Helsinki ‘tail’ and criticizes ‘those in power’ ‘here and in Athens’ for declaring that there was no link between solution and accession; Haravgi (leader), 15 Nov. 2002: ‘Historic responsibilities’, accuses Anastasiades, Papapetrou, Markides and Vassiliou of ‘trying to mislead public opinion by creating an atmosphere of euphoria and illusions’; Haravgi (leader), 21 Nov. 2002: ‘Disrespect for supreme law’, accuses Anastasiades of ‘embellishing’ the Plan; Haravgi (leader), 26 Nov. 2002: ‘Fake justifications’, attacks President Clerides’s advisers for attempting to thwart elections through the timing of the submission of the UN Plan. Not by accident did Haravgi become the forum for all plan rejecting demonstrations, statements and manifestations, both in Cyprus and in Greece at the time. 10 Haravgi, 12 Nov. 2002: ‘D. Christofias: We should face the Annan Plan in a calm and determined spirit’. 11 See indicatively Haravgi, 16 Nov. 2002: ‘D. Christofias: NO to coercion and to ultimatums’; Haravgi, 17 Nov. 2002: ‘AKEL Polit Bureau: NO to binding intervention by the Secretary General’; Haravgi, 28 Nov. 2002: ‘AKEL Central Committee Decision: Criticizes “embellishment” and “demonization” of the Plan. 12 See indicatively Haravgi, 26 Nov. 2002: ‘Christofias–Tassos: “They wanted to thwart elections”’; Haravgi, 30 Nov. 2002: ‘Cyprus Problem-Presidential Elections a package’: ‘Christofias: “Cypriot political circles that fear they will lose power, having made a package of solution and presidential elections, have pressed for the submission of the Plan at this particular time [. . .] so as to thwart elections.”’ See also Haravgi, 8 Dec. 2002: Interview with AKEL MP, Kikis Yiangou: ‘The elections will be held – Full stop’.

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13 See indicatively Haravgi, 20 Nov. 2002: ‘Clerides has led us to the worse’ (from an election campaign speech by Papadopoulos); Haravgi, 21 Nov. 2002: ‘Drastic improvements necessary’ (from a press conference by Papadopoulos): ‘Neither the President [Clerides] nor those around him have ever informed the National Council on such negative developments’. 14 See indicatively Haravgi, 8 Dec. 2002: Andreas Angelides: ‘Signing the Plan unconstitutional and illegal’; Haravgi, 15 Dec. 2002: Andreas Angelides: ‘The Republic of Cyprus and Constitutional Law’; Fileleftheros, 8 Dec. 2002: Marios Karoyian: ‘National dignity prevails’; Fileleftheros, 22 Dec. 2002: Christos Mesis: ‘Responsibilities do exist’. 15 Simerini, 21 Nov. 2002: ‘Tassos: The Plan is no basis for a solution’. 16 Christos Georgiou, an informed and reliable commentator on party politics, in a penetrating analysis of AKEL’s attitude during those days (Politis, 17 Nov. 2002: ‘AKEL’s dilemmas and shock’), saw AKEL’s ‘embarrassment’, ‘confusion’ and ‘panic’ as linked to the fear that ‘its goals, strategies and generally a planning focused solely on returning to power through the election of Tassos Papadopoulos, might take a tumble’. 17 In an article in Politis, 17 Nov. 2002, that was headed in English: ‘New state of affairs . . . but this is not fair’, Vassos Georgiou chastised those who ‘woke up in the morning and had their milk in cups made in Helsinki’, and recalled that ‘those who did not daydream but rationally assessed realities and warned, unfortunately in vain, that the cost of accession would be heavy, were called danger mongers, euroscepticists and politically immature’. In a second article (Politis, 8 Dec. 2002: ‘Will they destroy the . . . perfect plan?’), Vassos Georgiou recalled ‘our assessments and timely warnings that EU accession would not be a simple process and that, at the opportune moment, the blackmail would be cynical, unveiled and would carry no respect for basic rules’. He again chastised those who believed in the European perspective by suggesting that ‘the much publicized acquis communautaire – what a word – is very much like sales at times of [. . .] bankruptcy’. 18 See Chapter 5.10. 19 To Vima, 24 Nov. 2002: interview with Aleka Papariga: ‘The Communist Party General Secretary speaks about her opposition to the Annan Plan’. 20 See indicatively Fileleftheros, 19 Nov. 2002: ‘NO by the Prelates to Annan’. 21 Politis, 12 Nov. 2002: ‘Messages by Clerides and Simitis’. 22 Costas Simitis (2005: 117). 23 Politis, 12 Nov. 2002: ‘Clerides: It will be assessed as a whole’. 24 Fileleftheros, 14 Nov. 2002: ‘International moves in support of the Plan’. 25 Fileleftheros, 14 Nov. 2002: ‘International moves in support of the Plan’. 26 Kathimerini, 13 Nov. 2002: K. Kallergis: ‘Prodi: Even divided Cyprus will enter the EU’. 27 Kathimerini, 13 Nov. 2002: K. Kallergis: ‘Prodi: Even divided Cyprus will enter the EU’. 28 Fileleftheros, 14 Nov. 2002: K. Kallergis: ‘Prodi: Even divided Cyprus will enter the EU’. 29 Fileleftheros, 20 Nov. 2002: ‘Annan Plan unique opportunity for a solution’. 30 Fileleftheros, 20 Nov. 2002: ‘Opportune moment for a solution’. 31 See indicatively Politis, 17 Nov. 2002: M. Ignatiou: ‘The great patient’. See also Chapter 6.4.

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32 The small, single-seat parties, NEO and KOP, demanded outright rejection of the Plan. (See accordingly Politis, 18 Nov. 2002: ‘The Parties take positions on the Annan Plan’, and Politis, 19 Nov. 2002: ‘Not a word about timeframes’.) 33 Simerini received the Plan with the following banner headlines in chronological order from 12 to 16 Nov. 2002: ‘Nightmare solution Plan’, ‘Three-pronged confederation’, ‘Ultimatum for dissolution’, ‘Accession captive’. The following titles in Alithia, 12–17 Nov., revealed a diametrically opposite approach: ‘Basis for negotiation but pressing timeframes’, ‘Two maps: Territories to be returned’, ‘Plan positively received in Turkey’, ‘Urgent return of Denktas’, ‘Bush moves in for Cyprus–Turkey’, ‘Athens– Nicosia fully prepared for negotiation’. 34 See indicatively Fileleftheros, 19 Nov. 2002: Prodromou: ‘The Plan unacceptable without improvements’; Fileleftheros, 24 Nov. 2002: Prodromou: ‘Let’s look at truth directly’ (here, Prodromou, instead of accepting the Plan, clearly suggests partition, though he does not name it). See also Politis, 24 Nov. 2002: interview with Taramountas: ‘We have all been deceived’; Politis, 1 Dec. 2002: K Zorba: ‘Delicate balances in DISY’, K. Pierides: ‘Parties on shifting sands’; Politis, 5 Dec. 2002: ‘Anastasiades: Harsh criticism of Syllouris’. 35 See indicatively Simerini, 24 Nov. 2002: interview with Lyssarides: ‘Which Greek hand would sign such a solution?’ 36 K. Pierides simply refers to these two trends in EDEK, in Politis, 1 Dec. 2002: ‘Parties on shifting sands’. 37 See Chapter 5.10: ‘Return to the logic of “absolute solution”’, and Chapter 5.11: ‘Helsinki and the reunification perspective’. 38 Politis, 15 Nov. 2002: ‘Mobilizations of Kyrenia people’; Fileleftheros, 16 Nov. 2002: G. Frangos: ‘DIKO Kyrenia Branch rejects Plan’, G. Stylianou: ‘Kyrenia people say NO to the Plan’. 39 Fileleftheros, 19 Nov. 2002: ‘Displaced: NO to discussion of the Plan’. 40 Politis, 23 Nov. 2002: ‘Tomorrow’s action against the Plan’. 41 Fileleftheros, 19 Nov. 2002: ‘Thinking Citizens: Adamant NO to Plan’. 42 From an interview of Foreign Minister Kasoulides with Politis, 22 Dec. 2002: ‘I. Kasoulides: Historic junctures not always there’. 43 Fileleftheros, 19 Nov. 2002: G. Stylianou: ‘Cypriots divided and confused’. 44 Politis, 16 Nov. 2002: ‘Cypriots negative towards the Plan’. 45 Politis, 17 Nov. 2002: ‘Opinion poll by Nielsen/Amer for Politis: ‘Cypriots’ fears in the face of solution’. 46 In the third version of the Plan the restriction was to be removed on Turkey’s accession to the EU, while in the fifth and final version all restrictions would be removed in nineteen years or on Turkey’s accession, whichever was the earlier (see accordingly Annan Plan III, Annex III, Article 6, and Annan Plan V, ‘Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU’, Article 2, § 2). 47 Politis, 24 Nov. 2002: ‘Opinion poll by Nielsen/Amer: 64 per cent against the Plan’. 48 See indicatively the role of Arsenis and Tsovolas in Greece, of Angelides, Prodromou, Syllouris, L. Mavros and others who made the rounds of TV channels in Cyprus. It was precisely this climate that made Honorary Ambassador C. Zepos ask ‘whether the Greek Cypriots (. . . ) continued to hold reunification, among other objectives, to be a historical imperative’ and researcher Ph. Savides note the existence of ‘two schools of

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50

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thought’ in Cyprus (see accordingly Fileleftheros, 30 Mar. 2003: ‘The new prospects of the Cyprus Question’, and Politis, 23 Mar. 2003: ‘Following The Hague: How to keep up the momentum’, respectively). It should be recalled that prior to Copenhagen there would simply be an initial agreement on the basic principles of the Plan and that negotiations for finalization of the agreement would continue until 28 Feb. 2003. Following his meeting with Clerides under the auspices of the UN Secretary General in New York (3 Oct. 2002), Denktas was admitted to hospital for a scheduled heart operation, which was performed on 7 Oct. He was discharged from hospital on 7 Dec. and came to Cyprus. But three days later he left for Ankara for medical treatment and stayed there until 29 Dec. (see accordingly Politis, 8 Dec. 2002: ‘Warm welcome in occupied Cyprus: Denktas does not see solution’, and PIO: TPress, on respective dates). See indicatively C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 49, 59): statement by Erdogan: ‘Non-solution is no solution’. See also report by A. Kourkoulas from Istanbul on Turkmen’s warning: To Vima, 26 Jan. 2003: ‘If we say NO we should forget accession’. Veteran diplomat, Ilter Turkmen, in parallel to the above warning, notes that ‘the first moves of the AKP on Cyprus were correct but it did not manage to build on them (. . . ) due to the inheritance of a heavy historical blunder’. See further Chapter 4.10. In a statement immediately following the Hague deadlock, Jean-Christophe Filori said: ‘Without a solution on Cyprus, a part of EU territory will be, from 2 May 2004 onwards, under illegal occupation.’ (See accordingly Politis, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Commission statement a slap on Turkey: Occupied Europe’.) Politis, 13 Mar. 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Verheugen comes back: a new slap’ (in Dec. 2004 a decision would be taken on a date for EU accession talks with Turkey). Politis, 13 Mar. 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Verheugen comes back: a new slap’. Politis, 18 Mar. 2003: M. Antoniadou (Brussels): ‘EU Parliament: Verheugen a catapult’. PIO: TPress, 3 Oct. 2003, Kibris, 2 Oct. 2003: ‘Interview with CNN Turk’. Politis, 14 Nov. 2003: ‘Britain: New message to Turkey’. Politis, 17 Nov. 2003: ‘Verheugen: No to accession talks without a solution’. Politis, 5 Nov. 2003: M. Antoniadou (Brussels): ‘Cyprus solution a precondition for accession: Sine qua non for Turkey’; Politis, 6 Nov. 2003: M. Antoniadou (Brussels): ‘Turkey’s accession through Cyprus: European NO to Turkey’. Presidency Conclusions, Brussels, 12–13 Dec. 2003, p. 11, § 40 (www.cosilium.europa. eu/ueDocs/). Presidency Conclusions: Brussels, 12–13 Dec. 2003, p. 12, § 42. See Chapter 8.1, n. 33. See Presidency Conclusions, Helsinki European Council, 10–11 Dec. 1999, The Enlargement Process, §9 a, b. (a) The European Council welcomes the launch of the talks aiming at a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem on 3 December in New York and expresses its strong support for the UN Secretary General’s efforts to bring the process to a successful conclusion. (b) The European Council stresses that a political settlement will facilitate the accession of Cyprus to the European Union. If no settlement has been reached by the completion of accession negotiations, the Council’s decision on accession will be

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The Cyprus Referendum made without the above being a precondition. In this the Council will take account of all relevant factors.’ Politis, 11 Dec. 2002: N. Megadoukas (Athens): ‘The “tail” recalled by Rasmussen in Athens’. Politis, 4 Dec. 2002: N. Megadoukas (Athens): ‘Danish Foreign Minister coerces with “tail”’. Kathimerini, 13 Nov. 2002: K Kallergis (Brussels): ‘Cyprus to accede even divided’. Kathimerini, 13 Nov. 2002: K Kallergis (Brussels): ‘Cyprus to accede even divided’. Costas Simitis (2005: 110). Costas Simitis (2005: 109–10). See Chapter 5.10: ‘Return to the logic of “absolute solution”’, and Chapter 5.11: ‘Helsinki and the reunification perspective’. Costas Simitis (2005: 111). Costas Simitis (2005: 112). Presidency Conclusions, Nice European Council, 7–9 Dec. 2000, § 58. Costas Simitis (2005: 112–13). The National Council convened a second time on 18 Nov. so that Party leaders might express their views and take positions on the Plan. During the first meeting of 12 Nov., President Clerides had provided members with copies of the Plan and a brief document prepared by Attorney General Alekos Markides, which highlighted the basic features of the Plan (see Politis, 19 Nov. 2002: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Not a word about timeframes’, and Politis, 18 Nov. 2002: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Sharp reactions, in the National Council, to timeframes . . . ’). Denktas, who was still recovering in New York, was admitted again to hospital because of post-operative problems (?). On expiry of the deadline for reply, his Spokesman Ergun Olgun stated that Denktas, because of health problems, had not been able to study the document, and that he would reply to the Secretary General if and when he returned to Cyprus; the old delaying tactics, aided now by ‘health reasons’ (see Politis, 19 Nov. 2002: M. Ignatiou: ‘No reply by Denktas . . . ’). Denktas finally replied to the Secretary General on 27 Nov., stating readiness to negotiate but simultaneously expressing ‘deep concern’ with regard to certain provisions of the Plan (see Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: § 44). Politis, 19 Nov. 2002: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Not a word about timeframes’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 64). Copenhagen European Council, 12–13 Dec. 2003, Presidency Conclusions, Cyprus: § 10 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 69). Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: § 48. Tassos Papadopoulos was elected President on 16 Feb. 2003, having beaten Clerides, Markides and Koutsou, and he assumed office on 1 Mar. 2003. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: § 53. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: § 55. The document is attached in Claire Palley (2005), as app. 3, pp. 265–9. Annan’s Report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: Chapter: ‘Observations’, § 140. Annan’s Report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: Chapter: ‘Observations’, § 139.

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88 Politis, 12 Mar. 2003: S. Paroutis: ‘T. Papadopoulos: Committed to continue’. As for the President’s statement in full, see PIO: Press Releases, 11 Mar. 2003. 89 President Papadopoulos, talking to C. Venizelos (C. Venizelos et al. 2005: 113–18) at an unspecified point in time but which, judging from the context, was after the referendum, gives a version of events completely incompatible with the Secretary General’s report, which he never disputed. In particular, he speaks about the last meeting at The Hague with the Secretary General and Denktas at 3.30 a.m. on 13–14 Mar. 2003 (author’s note: The Hague meeting lasted until 11 Mar. and the President returned to Cyprus the same day; see accordingly Greek Cypriot press 12 Mar. 2003), during which: ‘I insisted on the changes I had demanded in the document I had submitted to the Secretary General, dated 28 February 2003, in which I stated that, if those changes were accepted and no other substantive provisions of the Plan were reopened by the Turkish Cypriot side, I was prepared to accept the Plan.’ If matters had been such, then the Secretary General’s report gave an irrelevant to the facts and inexplicable cover to the Cypriot President. On the other hand, if the report was really not true to the facts, Denktas would promptly have refuted it the following day. But no one of those directly involved questioned the facts as described in the Secretary General’s report. This leads to the conclusion that President Papadopoulos was not telling the truth. The reasons are explained by the facts cited in Chapter 8.5. 90 See Chapter 6.6. 91 PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 12 Mar. 2003. 92 PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 12 Mar. 2003. 93 PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 12 Mar. 2003. 94 PIO: TPress, 24 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 23 Mar. 2003: Their attempt to implement their decision, three days later, beginning with the village of Elia, was violently prevented by the Denktas regime authorities, which also proceeded with arrests. These resulted in further escalation in reaction against Denktas (see accordingly PIO: TPress, 27 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’ and ‘Afrika’, 27 Mar. 2003). 95 See: PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’ 12 Mar. 2003. As for the continuation of the campaign of terror against differing opinion and the branding of opponents with the accusation of bribery, see further Fileleftheros, 30 Mar. 2003: C. Venizelos (‘Open line’): ‘Denktas, terrorism, and the syndrome of persecution’. 96 See indicatively PIO TPress, 13 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 13 Mar. 2003. 97 PIO: TPress, 14 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 14 Mar. 2003. 98 Fileleftheros, 22 Mar. 2003: C. Venizelos: ‘The EU calls for continuation of the process with the Annan Plan: Suggestions to Denktas – Talat’s letter and Iakovou’s reaction’. See also PIO: TPress, 21 Mar. 2003: ‘Yeni Duzen’, 21 Mar. 2003. 99 Cyprus Weekly, 21–7 Mar. 2003: Ph. Stylianou: ‘Mustafa Akinci and Andros Kyprianou duel at Ledra Palace’. 100 Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having been triumphantly elected MP at the Siirt by-elections (9 Mar. 2003), was given the mandate to form a government on 11 Mar. 2003, and on 15 Mar. he announced his government. 101 See indicatively PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘NTV’, 11 Mar. 2003: statement by Erdogan: ‘The Annan Plan cannot be accepted as a whole nor be rejected as a whole (. . . ) Both our Turkish Cypriot brothers in the North and the Greek Cypriots in the South have to make mutual sacrifices.’

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102 Turkish Daily News, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Turkey, TRNC to face bitter consequences of collapse of talks’. 103 PIO: TPress, 13 Mar. 2003: ‘Vatan’, 12 Mar. 2003: Deger Akan: ‘It would be like East Germany’. 104 PIO: TPress, 14 Mar. 2003: Yeni Cap, 14 Mar. 2003: ‘Alvaro de Soto talks to CNN Turk’. 105 Turkish Daily News, 18 Mar. 2003: Mehmet Ali Birand: ‘We are making Turkey go under’ (Mehmet Ali Birand’s articles were simultaneously published in Posta, Hurriyet, Milliyet and in the website of Turkish Daily News). 106 Turkish Daily News, 1 May 2003: Mehmet Ali Birand: ‘Are you prepared to launch a mobilization drive for the EU?’ 107 CTP-BG: Cumhuriyetci Turk Partisi – Birlesik Gucler (Republican Turkish Party – United Forces). 108 BDH: Baris ve Demokrasi Hareketi (Peace and Democracy Movement). 109 PIO: TPress, 30 June 2003: ‘Kibris’, 29 June 2003. 110 PIO: TPress, 22 Aug. 2003: ‘Erel establishes a new party’. 111 Mete Hatay (2005: 40): ‘The December 2003 Parliamentary Elections’. See also relevant statement by Talat to ‘Milliyet’, 18 Nov. 2003 (PIO: TPress, 19 Nov. 2003): ‘Turkey cannot force us to do anything’. 112 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: §§ 130–4. 113 Politis, 15 Jan. 2003: M. Ignatiou (New York): ‘US and UN in support of Turkish Cypriot uprising: They call on Denktas to listen to the voice of his people’. 114 Politis, 15 Jan. 2003: M. Ignatiou (New York): ‘US and UN in support of Turkish Cypriot uprising . . . ’. 115 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 89). 116 PIO: Press release (on white paper), 6 May 2003: ‘Former US Ambassador to Cyprus, Richard Holbrooke, speaks on Cyprus’. 117 PIO: TPress, 21 June 2003: ‘Halkin Sesi’, 21 June 2003: ‘Denktas has been put aside like Arafat’. 118 PIO: TPress, 2 Oct. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 2 Oct. 2003. 119 PIO: TPress, 18 Nov. 2003: ‘Afrika’, 18 Nov. 2003. 120 PIO: TPress, 25 Nov. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 25 Nov. 2003. 121 PIO: TPress, 22 Oct. 2003: ‘Milliyet’, 21 Oct. 2003, ‘Weston’s contacts in Ankara’, PIO: TPress, 27 Oct. 2003: ‘Party leaders met with Weston’, PIO: TPress, 27 Oct. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 25 Oct. 2003. ‘Weston: Ankara and Athens want solution . . . before the island becomes member of the EU’. 122 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 101–3). 123 See Chapter 8.2. 124 Politis, 4 Apr. 2003: ‘Enlargement on the European Parliament Agenda’. 125 Fileleftheros, 8 June 2003: ‘Turkey’s EU accession through Nicosia’. 126 PIO: TPress, 19 June 2003: ‘Kibris’, 19 June 2003: ‘Exclusive Interview with Verheugen’. 127 See: PIO: TPress, 7 Mar. 2003: ‘Milliyet’, 7 Mar. 2003: ‘Denktas: ‘I shall not sign’, Erdogan: ‘It blocks EU path’’. See also Politis, 6 Jan. 2003 (from To Vima): Alkis Kourkoulas: ‘New approach on Cyprus: Denktas’s positions questioned’, and Fileleftheros, 2 Feb. 2003: K. Soteriou: ‘Erdogan’s outburst against Denktas’. 128 PIO: TPress, 12 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 12 Mar. 2003.

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129 PIO: TPress, 7 Apr. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 6 Apr. 2003. 130 PIO: TPress, 14 Apr. 2003: Turkish Daily News, 12 Apr. 2003: ‘Interview with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’. 131 PIO: TPress, 26 Sept. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 26 Sept. 2003. 132 PIO: TPress, 20 June 2003: ‘Ankara Anatolia News Agency’, 19 June 2003: ‘Turkey accepts to abide by the decision of the ECHR on Titina Loizidou’. 133 PIO: TPress, 7 Oct. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 7 Oct. 2003. 134 PIO: TPress, 20 Oct. 2003: ‘Ankara TRT2 Television’, 17 Oct. 2003: ‘Press Conference by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Brussels’. 135 PIO: TPress, 22 Oct. 2003: ‘Milliyet’, 21 Oct. 2003. 136 PIO: TPress, 19 Mar. 2003: ‘Kibrisli’, 19 Mar. 2003. 137 PIO: TPress, 3 Apr. 2003: ‘Bayrak Television’, 2 Apr. 2003. 138 PIO: TPress, 22 Apr. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 22 Apr. 2003. The checkpoints were opened on 23 April 2003 and thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots passed through them. 139 See accordingly Politis, 23 Apr. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘What Denktas’s targets are’. 140 PIO: TPress, 18 Aug. 2003: ‘Yeni Duzen’, 17 Aug. 2003: ‘Rauf Denktas is ‘Mr NO’ for Washington’. 141 See Chapter 6.5. 142 According to data published by ‘Yeni Duzen’ (26 Nov. 2003), the number of voters had risen, from 120,758 in 1998, to 137,500 in Sept. 2003. From September to November, the number rose to 141,471. These figures could not be explained by natural rate of population increase. The only plausible explanation was the massive enrolment of settlers. 143 Politis, 20 Nov. 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Harsh language by Verheugen during meeting with Turkish Cypriots: No more with Denktas’. 144 PIO: TPress, 17 Nov. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 17 Nov. 2003. 145 PIO: TPress, 18 Nov. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 18 Nov. 2003. 146 PIO: TPress, 2 Dec. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 2 Dec. 2003. 147 PIO: TPress, 11 Dec. 2003: ‘Yeni Duzen’, 11 Dec. 2003. 148 PIO: TPress, 10 Dec. 2003: ‘Milliyet’, 7 Dec. 2003. 149 PIO: TPress, 20 Nov. 2003: ‘Ortam’, 20 Nov. 2003, PIO: TPress, 10 Dec. 2003: ‘Kibris’, 10 Dec. 2003. 150 PIO: TPress, 8 Dec. 2003: ‘Afrika’, 7 Dec. 2003. 151 PIO: TPress, 8 Dec. 2003: ‘Afrika’, 7 Dec. 2003. 152 PIO: TPress, 26 Nov. 2003: ‘Haberci’, 25 Nov. 2003: ‘The mass media in occupied Cyprus and the forthcoming “elections”’. 153 Mete Hatay (2005: 40). 154 Mete Hatay (2005: 40–4). 155 It is worth noting that, as emerges from research into electoral behaviour, in villages inhabited by settlers the UBP (Eroglu) polled 45 per cent compared to 40 per cent in 1998, while in villages of purely indigenous Turkish Cypriot population, it polled 33.7 per cent compared to 53.1 per cent in 1998. In contrast, the CTP (Talat) polled 14 per cent in the settlers’ villages compared to 3.4 per cent in 1998, and 36.2 per cent in Turkish Cypriot villages compared to 16.1 per cent in 1998 (see Mete Hatay (2005: 43–4): ‘Voting patterns in the “settler” and “native” villages’). 156 See relevant statements by Foreign Minister G. Iakovou: Politis, 15 Apr. 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Weston after a new round of talks’.

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157 See Fileleftheros, 23 Mar. 2003: Leontios Ierodiakonou: ‘We should lock the Annan Plan’. Mehmet Ali Talat, in his letter to Pat Cox (PIO: TPress, 21 Mar. 2003), granted the possibility of changes to the Plan. Later, when Papadopoulos’s insistence on changes became clear, Talat clarified that changes could be made to the Annan Plan to make solution more functional (PIO: TPress. 17 Sept. 2003, ‘Kibris’, 17 Sept. 2003: ‘Talat supports changes to the Annan Plan which will make the solution practical’). 158 PIO: Press Releases, 11 Mar. 2003: ‘Statement by the President of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos’. 159 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2003/398, 1 Apr. 2003: §§ 56, 139, 140. 160 Emphasis added. 161 Fileleftheros, 22 Mar. 2003: C. Venizelos: ‘EU calls for continuation of process on the basis of the Annan Plan: Letter by Talat – Iakovou reacts’. On a visit to Brussels, Iakovou promptly rejected relevant suggestion in Talat’s letter to Pat Cox (see Chapter 8.4). 162 Fileleftheros, 30 Mar. 2003: C. Venizelos: ‘Behind-the-scenes diplomacy in New York for adoption of Annan Plan in pending UNSC resolution’. See also Fileleftheros, 29 Mar. 2003: ‘Shots by Christofias against those who demand adoption of Plan by UNSC and EU’. UNSC Resolution 1475 (14 Apr. 2003) ultimately adopted the Annan Plan, describing it as ‘a unique basis for further negotiations’. 163 Politis, 12 Apr. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Change of path’. 164 Politis, 15 Apr. 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Weston after new round of talks’. 165 See relevant analysis: Chapter 7.4.1: ‘A New state of Affairs’. 166 Politis, 4 May 2003: Clerides: ‘I would have called Annan’. Moreover, Greek and Turkish Cypriot parties, meeting at the Ledra Palace, called on the President to send a letter to the Secretary General requesting a resumption of talks on the basis of the Annan Plan. Serdar Denktas was the only one to disagree among those present at the meeting (5 May 2003). 167 Fileleftheros, 7 May 2003 (Athens News Agency): ‘President Papadopoulos refuses to send letter to Secretary General’. 168 PIO: Press Releases, 6 May 2003: ‘Meeting of Government Spokesman with reporters’. 169 Politis, 8 May 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Government Spokesman: Letter to Secretary General unproductive’. 170 Politis, 9 May 2003: ‘Klosson: Yes to changes but no to drastic ones’. 171 ‘VIMAGAZINO’ (a magazine supplement attached to the Sunday edition of To Vima), 11 May 2003. 172 ‘VIMAGAZINO’: 11 May 2003, p. 36. 173 ‘VIMAGAZINO’: 11 May 2003, p. 36. 174 ‘VIMAGAZINO’: 11 May 2003, p. 38. 175 Fileleftheros, 11 May 2003: ‘Tassos Papadopoulos: Initiatives in the EU and the UN on Cyprus’. 176 PIO: Press Releases, 14 May 2003. 177 The Spokesman’s reply: ‘The position of the government has not changed. It continues to be the one expressed at The Hague by the President of the Republic, the one that was endorsed by the National Council at its last meeting, the one included in the President’s letter to Denktas dated 2 April 2003. As regards other issues, they are included in the President’s letter to the UN Secretary General dated 28 February 2003.

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179 180 181 182

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185 186 187 188 189

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191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198

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The position of the Greek Cypriot side continues to remain the same as before.’ (See accordingly PIO: Government Spokesman’s Briefing, 15 May 2003.) PIO: Press Releases, 20 May 2003: Presentation of Credentials by the Ambassadors of Cuba and Slovenia. See also PIO: Press Releases, 22 May 2003: speech by the President at the opening of the Cyprus International Fair. See further Politis, 22 June 2003: ‘Tassos Papadopoulos: The Annan Plan needs to be changed’. See Papadopoulos’s interview with Fileleftheros, 11 May 2003. See Papadopoulos’s interview with To Vima, 11 May 2003. See UNSC Resolution 1475. Alithia, 25 May 2003: Adriaan van der Meer’s interview with A. Pimbishis: ‘The EU Ambassador in Cyprus speaks out on the UN Plan and the acquis: The Plan fulfils our minimum requirements’. See Chapter 5.10. The author, through a series of articles in the local press, pointed to the President’s hidden agenda of escape from The Hague, and warned of the deadlocks to which this course would lead. See articles by C. Pericleous in Fileleftheros, 16 Mar. 2003, 4 May 2003, 11 May 2003, 20 May 2003, 3 Aug. 2003, 21 Sept. 2003, 30 Nov. 2003, and 7 Dec. 2003. Politis, 24 Aug. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Concern in Athens over study of the Plan: A committee that never worked’. Politis, 24 Aug. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Concern in Athens over study of the Plan . . . ’. Politis, 16 Sept. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘The Annan Plan in the Simitis–Papadopoulos agenda: Changes to be prioritized’. Politis, 21 Sept. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Simitis–Tassos: They have not agreed on what they want: Yes to changes but with whose support?’ Politis, 18 Sept. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘The 4 changes to be discussed by the UN’: De Soto: ‘Forget changes on substance’. See also Politis, 21 Sept. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Simitis–Tassos . . . ’. Politis, 27 Nov. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Simitis–Tassos raise measure of demands: Possibility of solution remote till May’. See also Politis, 30 Nov. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Why Simitis has changed: Has the President finally persuaded the Greek Premier?’ Politis, 23 Nov. 2003: ‘Exclusive interview of the President with Politis: Euro-partition a nightmare’. PIO: Press Releases, 15 July 2003: speech by the President on the anniversary of the 1974 coup. Politis, 17 July 2003: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Sword crossing on the Annan Plan’. See Chapter 5.7: ‘The perception of federation by Makarios’. PIO: Press Releases, 30 Sept. 2003: speech by the President of the Republic on the Republic’s national day, p. 3. PIO: Press Releases, 29 Oct. 2003: speech by the President of the Republic on the occasion of the anniversary of 28 Oct. 1940, p. 1. See: Fileleftheros, 7 Dec. 2003: C. Pericleous: ‘The ghost of the Hague dilemma’. See indicatively Papadopoulos’s interview with Politis, 23 Nov. 2003, in which, judging exclusively from statements by officials of the Erdogan government, makes the following typical of his mindset evaluation: ‘I have received no indication that Ankara and the Erdogan government have changed. On the contrary, all indications

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199 200 201

202 203 204 205

206 207

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The Cyprus Referendum lead us to the conclusion that, over time, they are becoming more and more identified with Denktas.’ PIO: Press Releases, 8 Apr. 2004: ‘Declaration by the President of the Republic Mr Tassos Papadopoulos regarding the referendum of 24th April 2004’. Emphasis added. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 94). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 221–2). The authors give the impression of mutual attraction and trust between Weston and Papadopoulos. ‘For a long time they walked hand in hand’ (p. 216). It was through Weston’s decisive intervention that Tassos Papadopoulos’s name was taken off the State Department ‘black list’ on Milocevits in summer 2002 (p. 216). Tassos Papadopoulos himself admits, following the referendum: ‘Since the very first moment, I had, and I still maintain a high regard for Mr Weston; for his warm personality, his human approach of political problems (. . . ) I simply believe that he as well has been stricken by what I call “author syndrome”. (. . . ) As he was one of the main co-authors of the Annan Plan, I understand why he considers it the best plan ever made for a solution on Cyprus’ (p. 217). Weston had tried to persuade President Papadopoulos of the different approach to the Cyprus problem by the new Turkish government and had also tried to convince him to take the initiative following Turkish Cypriot elections on 14 Dec. 2003. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 121). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 131). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 160). See indicatively Politis, 23 Apr. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘The political leadership suggests restraint to Greek Cypriots: Better NO’, Politis, 24 Apr. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Both sides froze in the face of yesterday’s explosion: Everything around is changing’. Politis, 24 Apr. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Both sides froze in the face of yesterday’s explosion. . . ’. Comment entitled: ‘The hour of initiatives’. See indicatively Politis, 13 Sept. 2003: G. Kaskanis: ‘Government unyieldingly against: DISY says YES to observers’, 14 Sept. 2003: K. Pierides: ‘A question on Turkish Cypriot elections’; 23 Sept. 2003: ‘When will the government consent?’; 27 Oct. 2003: ‘Hints against observers’. In a way otherwise inexplicable unless acting as the President’s ‘alter ego’, Claire Palley (2005: 43, n. 5, 124, n. 6, 132, n. 3) is infuriated at the attempt to bypass Denktas; she admits that ‘many Greek Cypriots opposed to the Plan as unlikely to be functional described Mr Denktas “as the best Greek Cypriot we have”’. ‘Irrespective of whether one agrees with Mr Denktas’ views,’ she further comments, ‘it is extraordinary that the UN and the United states should treat him as a roadblock to be removed on the path to a settlement [. . .] because new roadblocks tend to emerge – in this case the foolish impatience of the UN, the US, and the EU to rush matters so they would be settled before 1 May 2004’. Later, Palley does not hide her annoyance at the amendment, in Annan Plan V, whereby Denktas was precluded from being elected as Co-President during the transitional period. She describes the effort to put Denktas aside as a ‘demonstration of the UN team’s determination to shape Cyprus’ governmental arrangements, ignoring agreements between the Cypriot sides and irrespective of the wishes of Turkish Cypriot people who had “elected” Mr Denktas by substantial majorities over the years’. It is worth noting that Palley bypasses the elections of 14 Dec. 2003 and she keeps silent over the fact that, for the first time, these elections put an end to the legitimacy

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212

213 214 215 216

217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226

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of Denktas’s ethnarchic role as well as to his capacity as sole representative of the Turkish Cypriot community. From the President’s interview with Politis, 23 Nov. 2003. Politis, 30 Nov. 2003: M. Drousiotis: ‘Four answers: What we suggest to Tassos’. Complaint no. 20652/92, lodged with the European Commission of Human Rights on 8 Sept. 1992. Verdict was given by the Court on 20 Feb. 2003: see www.echr.coe.int/eng/Press/2003/feb/DjaviAnvTurkey. Politis, 13 Apr. 2004: V. Vassiliou: ‘Tassos–Serdar secret meetings: Centred round postponement of referenda’. Claire Palley (2005: 123), following a reference to ‘a couple of private discussions at Bürgenstock between President Papadopoulos and Mr Serdar Denktas at the former’s initiative’, speaks of additional such meetings both prior to Bürgenstock and after the referenda. Fileleftheros, 21 Sept. 2003: C. Pericleous: ‘Solution Strategy’. Politis, 3 Aug. 2003: M. Chrysanthou: ‘Euro MP, Myrsini Zorba, speaks to Politis: The hour of initiatives’. Politis, 30 Nov. 2003: M. Drousiotis: ‘Four answers: What we suggest to Tassos’. The management of the NO-to-the-Plan strategy by Denktas and the ‘deep state’ in Copenhagen had respectively conveyed to the Greek Cypriot community, which was midway towards the presidential elections, the message that there was no solution prospect. This message had undermined Clerides’s proposition of a period until I May 2004 to finalize the solution and leave, and made voters fall back on party patriotism. This had greatly contributed, among other factors as well, to the victory of Tassos Papadopoulos. See the President’s interview with Politis, 23 Nov. 2003. PIO: Press Releases, 27 Nov. 2003: Press Conference of President Papadopoulos with foreign correspondents in Athens, Greek text, p. 17. PIO: Press Releases, 27 Nov. 2003: ‘The President of the Republic has returned from Greece’. Politis, 5 Dec. 2003: Mustafa Akinci: ‘We genuinely want a solution: Tassos not clear’ (from Akinci’s interview with CNA). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 117–18). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 117). Fileleftheros, 9 Nov. 2003: C. Venizelos: ‘Personal involvement of Verheugen for solution’. Report of the Secretary General on the UN Operation in Cyprus, 12 Nov. 2003: Part ΙV, § 14. See the President’s interview with Politis, 23 Nov. 2003. See Press Releases, 27 Nov. 2003: Press Conference given by President Papadopoulos to foreign correspondents in Athens, and statements by the President on his return from Greece. Presidency Conclusions, 12–13 Dec. 2003: Part V: Cyprus, § 42. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 100–1): ref.: meeting between Weston and Papadopoulos in New York (23 Sept. 2003): Weston: ‘I advised him to make use of this advantage. Utilization by the Greek Cypriot side of what was happening in Ankara would be the safest path towards an agreement which would have favourable prospects to pass through a referendum.’ See also p. 110: new meeting of Weston with Papadopoulos

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235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254

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The Cyprus Referendum (17 Dec. 2003): ‘He discussed with Papadopoulos the issue of sending a letter to Annan. Once again he stressed the need for the Cypriot President to act first.’ C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 112). Glafkos Clerides (interview with Fileleftheros, 28 Sept. 2003) suggested that ‘we should not allow the initiative to pass to the Turkish Cypriot side’. Politis, 20 Dec. 2003: ‘Letter by Tassos: YES to talks, NO to referendum’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 123). The Secretary General’s letter to President Papadopoulos, dated 8 Jan. 2004, is cited by C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 122–3). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 142). A decision by the Turkish National Security Council (23 Jan. 2004) on the eve of Davos confirmed ‘Turkey’s commitment to a settlement on Cyprus through negotiations, on the basis of the Annan Plan and the realities on the island’. The NSC decision also stated that ‘Turkey and President Denktas and the new coalition government under Talat, leader of CTP, will continue, in close cooperation, the search for a solution’. See accordingly Turkish Daily News, 24 Jan. 2004: ‘Ankara urges resumption of talks’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 152–3). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 154). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 154). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 154). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 155). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 169). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 164). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 164). See indicatively C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 142, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 180, 181, 182, 189, 191, 192, 194, 199, 206, 208, 212). The Secretary General’s letter is given in full text by C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 170– 6). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 181). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 181). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 182). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 186, 188–9). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 200). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 207). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 202–6). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 215). As for Erdogan’s role in Denktas’s change, see C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 231–2, 251– 3). Annan’s report to the UNSC S/2004/437, 28 May 2004, § 12: ‘I then proposed a draft press statement which retained the core elements of Mr Denktas’s proposal, incorporated the clarifications sought by Mr Papadopoulos, and built in other elements contained in my 4 February letter.’ See full text of the Secretary General’s press statement in his report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, Annex I. C. Venizelos et al. (2005:. 244). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 225).

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258 Costas Simitis (2005: 121), notes accordingly: ‘The Secretary General’s discretion to propose and integrate diverging positions helped to overcome chronic and persistent Turkish Cypriot rejectionist attitude. After all, the solution plan was the outcome of this type of procedure. There was no other way.’ 259 Claire Palley (2005: ch. 2: ‘The Good Offices Framework for Secretariat Action’, pp. 5–12) presents the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides bluntly to refuse a mediating–arbitrating role to the Secretary General and confine his ‘good offices mission’ simply to ‘facilitating negotiations’ through presenting ‘constructive ideas’. ‘This fusion of the concepts’, she further observes, ‘was useful in affording the Secretary General greater scope to insert his own ideas of what was appropriate, but was unacceptable to parties who did not want an arbitrator and had not agreed to appointment of one’. Later in her book, while she recognizes that during the 6 Sept. 2002 meeting in Paris ‘the two sides agreed with the Secretary General that he should make “bridging proposals” between the positions advanced by the two sides’, and to ‘formulate a written proposal to provide the basis for a comprehensive settlement’, she invokes perennial rejection by Turkey and Denktas of a mediating role to the UN Secretary General, in order to argue against the exercise of such a role by Kofi Annan (see accordingly pp. 29–30). 260 See Chapter 9.3. 261 PIO: Press Releases, 14 Feb. 2004. 262 PIO: Press Releases, 27 Feb. 2004. 263 PIO: Press Releases, 23 Mar. 2004. 264 Demonstrative of the political climate of the time is an article by M. Drousiotis, in the Cyprus Mail, 17 Mar. 2004: ‘The psychological war is in full swing’. 265 As for statements by Denktas during the Nicosia talks, see PIO: TPress, 14 Feb.–23 Mar. 2004. On 22 Mar. 2004, he had the last meeting with Papadopoulos and De Soto. Following the meeting, he said he had not withdrawn from the talks, but he reiterated his refusal to proceed to Bürgenstock for the next phase of the four-part negotiations, so as to have the possibility of a NO campaign to the referendum if he did not agree with the final solution plan. 266 See Politis, 29 Feb. 2004: M. Ignatiou: ‘De Soto’s complaint to the leaders: “Your statements undermine solution”’. Writing on this matter, AKEL MP Takis Hadjigeorgiou (Politis, 7 Mar. 2004: ‘In the face of Denktas’s provocative statements’), after pointing out that Denktas’s provocative statements aimed at the rejection of the Plan, made the following suggestion that touched upon Papadopoulos’s policy: ‘I do not think we are doing a service to our country, in the struggle for reunification, if we reproduce Denktas’s statements just to stress our opposition to them. (. . . ) It would have been better to look beyond the first reading of reality and avoid serving Denktas’s purposes by imitating his statements.’ For further criticism on this attitude, see Fileleftheros, 14 Mar. 2004: C. Pericleous: ‘No more manoeuvres’. 267 See Greek Cypriot press of the period. See indicatively Politis, 16 Mar. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘The agenda of Arbitration: Greek Cypriot side speaks of partial treatment by UNSG’s Special Adviser’. 268 See accordingly C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 353). 269 For publicly stated positions of Papadopoulos during the Nicosia talks, see PIO: Press Releases, 14 Feb.–23 Mar. 2004. See also James Ker-Lindsay (2005: 89–95), for the confrontational atmosphere created during the talks. See further C. Venizelos et al.

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The Cyprus Referendum (2005: 280–1, 284, 313, 316–17), on hard-line positions by members of Papadopoulos’s negotiating team, as well as for attributing responsibility to the President for the failure of the talks. Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: §§ 15–29. See C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 307–8). PIO: Press Releases, 9 June 2004: ‘Letter by the President of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos, to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, dated 7 June, which circulated as an official document of the UNSC’. See accordingly: Politis, 25 Apr. 2004: C. Hadjiyiannis (Lecturer, University of Cyprus): ‘The failure of public electronic media’. PIO: Press Releases, 19 Mar. 2004: ‘Speech by the President of the Republic, Tassos Papadopoulos, at the official dinner in honour of the President of Hungary, Ferenc Madl’. Through a letter to the UN Secretary General, Denktas authorized Mehmet Ali Talat (‘Prime Minister’) and Serdar Denktas (‘Foreign Minister’), to represent the Turkish Cypriot community at the talks in Bürgenstock. C. Venizelos et al. (2005) speak of ‘continual clashes’ between the two men, which had started during the New York meeting (pp. 231, 259–61) and continued throughout the talks in Nicosia (pp. 307–8, 314, 315, 316–17). Claire Palley (2005: 116–17) also gives indications of confrontational relations between the two men when she refers to De Soto’s insistence on priorities and the equally insistent refusal of Papadopoulos to respond.

Chapter 9 1 See Katia Hadjidemetriou (2007: 246–98). 2 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 328). 3 See indicatively Politis, 19 Mar. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘While the President was still thinking of how to deal with Denktas’ attitude, Karamanlis gave direction’, and K. Zorba: ‘Karamanlis preempted National Council decision: Shots over Athens bows’. See also Politis, 20 Mar. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘Greek Cypriot side does not recognize any other interlocutor unless . . . ’, and K. Zorba: ‘Karamanlis spoke to Tassos before answering on Four-Part meeting’. 4 Claire Palley (2005: 122). 5 ‘The first contact of the mediator with the Cypriot leader was turbulent,’ C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 331) write, and add: ‘The Peruvian diplomat pressingly asked for a meeting with Papadopoulos at 7 p.m. The Cypriot President, being aware of the mediator’s intentions, tried to “freeze” him from the start. The meeting was finally held at 10.45 p.m. The climate was not the best as the two men had never been on good terms.’ 6 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 338). 7 On his departure to Bürgenstock (PIO: Press Releases, 23 Mar. 2004), President Papadopoulos, in reply to a question on Denktas’s authorization, stated: ‘I have received a copy of Denktas’ letter by the Secretary General. I do not think there can be a more official confirmation than Denktas’ letter to the Secretary General and its acceptance.’ In previous statements in Nicosia (PIO: Press Releases, 12 Mar. 2004), the President

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had himself used the term ‘four-part meeting’ without clarifying that he gave it a different meaning from that in the New York Agreement. Claire Palley (2005: 137–8) claims that the UN Secretariat ‘had become hostile to President Papadopoulos, who stood up to Mr de Soto, who in turn became determined “to break” him’. In corroboration of her claim, she quotes Brian Urquhart as saying in his autobiography that “how particular leaders and sides in a dispute are perceived becomes a significant factor in the degree of sympathy they and their policies elicit from international civil servants who deal with them”. Conversely, one could suggest that a leader of a small and in particular weak country cannot afford the luxury of causing hostility in those international officials that he calls upon to mediate for the solution of problems that his country is not in a position to solve. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 416). Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: § 37. Claire Palley (2005: 124–5). PIO: Press Releases, 23 Mar. 2004: ‘The President of the Republic has departed for Bürgenstock’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 347). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 336–8, 342–3). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 342). Personal source of the author. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 407). See also James Ker-Lindsay (2005: 97–8). The writer notes Karamanlis’s failure to take the initiative and explains his inertia by saying that ‘Papadopoulos made it clear that he did not want Greece to take any steps to promote direct talks involving all the parties and there appeared to be little desire within the Greek team to force a showdown over the issue’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 342). Politis, 2 Apr. 2004: ‘Reserve in Athens: Cyprus problem in Parliament today’. Politis, 3 Apr. 2004: N. Megadoukas (Athens): ‘Athens murmurs YES’. Very telling in this regard is Palley’s concession that, in the face of the dense network of contacts conducted by Erdogan, ‘the Greek Cypriot and the Hellenic Republic negotiating teams were also present, but more separate from the diplomatic intriguing and also from each other’ (see accordingly Claire Palley 2005: 136). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 377). Evidence that has not been documented leaves it to be understood that the President, who took the initiative for the meetings, had suggested to Serdar that they jointly leave the conference, a suggestion Serdar turned down. C. Venizelos et al. (2005), who make reference to only one Tassos-Serdar meeting at Bürgenstock, cite, in two cases (pp. 383 and 385), the reply by Serdar that the Turkish side would not leave the talks, but leave the question to be inferred. Later (pp. 437–8), they refer to a claim, made by the Turkish Foreign Minister in an interview, to the effect that Papadopoulos had suggested to Serdar ‘to leave Bürgenstock and jointly undertake responsibility’. Papadopoulos’s counter-claim that the only object of his meetings with Serdar had been the postponement of the referenda (p. 438) is plausible for the meetings in Cyprus following Bürgenstock; but it is hard to believe that this had been the object of the meetings in Bürgenstock while negotiations were still ongoing. In so far as the evidence given by the Turkish Foreign Minister is true to the facts, it further verifies the assessment that

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The Cyprus Referendum President Papadopoulos went to Bürgenstock having already taken the decision to reject the UN Plan. James Ker-Lindsay (2005: pp. ix, 120, 157, n. 1) notes that, during interviews he had with politicians, diplomats, and other officials, who, for obvious reasons, did not wish to be publicly identified, ‘[he] was stuck by how many insisted that he simply did not negotiate in Bürgenstock’. ‘Almost no one’, he continues, ‘was prepared to try to excuse his behaviour or even to concede that he may have wanted to engage in discussions, but for some reason was prevented from doing so’. ‘They simply felt’, he concludes, ‘that he had no intention of negotiating and stuck to his game plan throughout the week in Switzerland’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 413–15): Tassos Papadopoulos reverses the accusation with hints aimed at De Soto for lack of interest in the negotiating process even during the first phase in Nicosia. However, the single fact that, during those talks, De Soto’s negotiating team supervised and coordinated the work of some fifty UN experts and some 300 Greek and Turkish Cypriots in the seven technical committees that produced a huge volume of work by preparing the laws and the list of treaties (the 9,000 pages of Bürgenstock) leads to completely different conclusions (see accordingly Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: § 29). It is worth noting that this attitude of Papadopoulos dates back to the previous phase of talks in Nicosia, and even further back to his deliberations with Papandreou and Simitis following The Hague. His obsession with this refusal would cause a major problem in his relations with the Secretary General, the United States, and the EU, when, following the referendum, a last-ditch effort was to be attempted in order to address basic concerns of the Greek Cypriot community. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 416–17). This is the theory Claire Palley (2005) desperately tries to prove, through a narrowly legalistic and intensely quarrelsome approach, and by putting the international community in the deck, as conspirators against Cyprus. In narrowly advocating the cause of Tassos Papadopoulos, I would humbly suggest, she does ill-service to the cause of Cyprus. ‘The Peruvian diplomat sought from the very start to “take the bull by the horns” and involve the parties in four-part negotiation,’ say C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 331). M. Ignatiou, reporting from Washington (Politis, 21 Mar. 2004: ‘Kofi Annan does not want to reach the point of arbitration’), notes: ‘The mediators hope that the final agreement is not an outcome of arbitration, as such a development would create the impression that the solution is imposed and this would be negatively received by the people involved.’ This logic runs throughout Claire Palley (2005), who, apparently confusing the constitutional adviser’s role with that of the President’s advocate, accuses, not only the UN Secretariat, the United States and Britain, but also the European Commission and Gunter Verheugen himself of conspiracy against Cyprus (concerning Verheugen in particular, see pp. 36, 56–8, 87, 250). ‘The final Plan was thus tailor-made for Turkey’s convenience, not for settlement of the Cyprus problem,’ runs Palley’s accusation, like a prosecutor’s verdict. ‘In the final analysis, this drafting and “finalization” had resulted from a political deal by certain Western Powers, the EU Commission and the Secretariat with Turkey’, she concludes (see accordingly p. 141).

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32 The Ziyal document, as leaked to the press, is appended by Claire Palley (2005: 259). De Soto, in commenting on that document, claims that the one submitted to him by Ziyal comprised ten and not eleven points. Point 10 of the document, which calls for ‘measures for effective implementation of bi-zonality’ and which, according to De Soto, had not been included in the document, is no more than a general formulation, which, in any case, does not change its substance (see accordingly C. Venizelos et al. 2005: 363, 371). 33 Some of the provisions of Annan Plan V to be commented on below have already been extensively elaborated on in chapter 7.4, in which, however, comparisons have been made with previous UN plans. 34 Annan Plan III, Foundation Agreement, Article 10, § 3e, Annex VII, Article 16, § 1. 35 Annan Plan III, Annex VII, Article 19, § 1. 36 The provision for reinstatement of properties to Greek Cypriot owners in the north, was also applicable in similar cases of Turkish Cypriot properties in the south in which current development exceeded their original value, or which current users preferred to keep by ceding property of proportionate value in the north, would be exempted from reinstatement. 37 In the territory that, under the Plan’s territorial arrangements, would remain under Turkish Cypriot administration, privately owned land amounted to 75 per cent of the overall area, and Greek Cypriot ownership amounted to 53 per cent of the whole. The figure of 18 per cent of the overall area is deduced from the one third of the 53 per cent (see accordingly Symeon Matsis: ‘The cost of compensation for properties that, according to the Annan Plan, are not reinstated, Revised Study’ (:«Το κόστος των αποζημιώσεων για μη επιστροφή περιουσιών με βάση το Σχέδιο Ανάν: Αναθεωρημένη μελέτη»), C. Pericleous personal archive, File 343. 38 An opinion poll by A. C. Nielsen carried out for Politis (21 Mar. 2004) revealed the following wishes on the part of displaced persons in relation to their properties: 10 per cent wished compensation, 2 per cent lease, 9 per cent DK/DA and 79 per cent full reinstatement. Writing on the property issue, George Vassiliou (Fileleftheros, 18 Apr. 2004: ‘In reply to President Papadopoulos’) referred to a comment made by President Papadopoulos at Bürgenstock to the effect that ‘the provision for reinstatement without limitations of one third to each displaced owner and the rest to be purchased by the Property Board, is far better for the Greek Cypriot side than previous provisions.’ 39 See Chapter 7.4.9. 40 Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession of the UCR to the EU, Article 3. For further comments, see Chapter 7.4.11. 41 Toumazos Tselepis, Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004, p. 4. 42 See, accordingly, EU Presidency Conclusions: Copenhagen (12–13 Dec. 2002), § 11; Thessaloniki (19–20 June 2003), § 39; Brussels (12–13 Dec. 2003), § 42. 43 Annan Plan III, Annex IX, Appendix V, Attachment 2, § iv, p. 177. 44 Politis, 29 Feb. 2004: interview with Adriaan van der Meer. 45 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 404–19) narrate the dramatic behind-the-scenes developments in this regard, taking into account evidence from people involved in the matter. 46 Annan Plan III: Main Articles, Article 12, § 2. See also Annex VII, Part III, Article 21. 47 Annan Plan III: Annex VII, Part II, Article 5, § 2. 48 Evidence for these matters is drawn from documents submitted by the Turkish Cypriot

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The Cyprus Referendum side at the Nicosia talks, dated 24 Feb. 2004 and 18 Mar. 2004. De Soto apparently draws on these sources to comment on the Ziyal document (see accordingly C. Venizelos et al., 2005: 308). See Chapter 7.4.10. For the provision for the ‘Monitoring Committee’, see also Annan Plan III: Annex IX, Attachment I, Article 2, and Annan Plan V: Annex IX: ‘Treaty between Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom related to the new state of affairs in Cyprus’, Article 2. See letter by President Papadopoulos to the UN Secretary General, dated 7 June 2004, pp. 2 and 14, § 39. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 449–51). In his letter to the UN Secretary General (7 June 2004, p. 2), President Papadopoulos gives the total number of settlers at 119,000. The same figure, attributed to data submitted by the President at the talks, is also used by the Secretary General in his report to the UNSC (28 May 2004) and is compared to the figure of 115,000 given by the government in 2002. The claim made by the President in his letter to the Secretary General (7 June, p. 3), that all settlers would be entitled to remain, contradicts a previous statement of his, in which he had said that the number of settlers to remain, according to the Plan, would be around 65,000 (see accordingly Papadopoulos’s interview with To Vima, 11 May 2003). See Chapter 7.4.11: ‘Settlers’. Until the end of the talks in Nicosia, Denktas refused to submit the list of 45,000 settlers, who, according to the Plan, would acquire citizenship on entry into force of the Agreement, on the argument over ‘sovereignty’ of his state. See letter by President Papadopoulos to UN Secretary General, 7 June 2004, p, 3. The lowering of Turkish demands on substantive issues becomes apparent when the Ziyal document is compared to the comprehensive document that the Turkish side had submitted at the talks in Nicosia on 18 Mar. 2004 and the one submitted on 22 Feb. The Turkish demands in the 18 Mar. document were referred to by DISY President, Anastasiades, while speaking at his Party’s Congress on 15 Apr. 2004. But most of the Turkish positions during the Nicosia talks surfaced either through statements by Papadopoulos or though leaks to the Greek Cypriot press of the period. For a similar assessment of Erdogan’s strategy, see Fileleftheros, 13 Apr. 2004 (reprinted from Ta Nea): Loukas Tsoukalis: ‘Seven small bitter truths on Cyprus’. See Politis, 1 Apr. 2004: G. Kaskanis (Luzerne): ‘Full YES from Erdogan, half from Karamanlis’. Back in Ankara, the NSC, having dealt with the Annan Plan in an extraordinary session, stated that, ‘despite positive elements, some of our demands have not been satisfied’. It stressed the need for ‘utmost care regarding a Turkish presence on the Island, Turkey’s right of guarantee, and the principle of bi-zonality’. Finally, the NSC left the government the responsibility of accepting the Plan (see accordingly PIO: TPress, 6 Apr. 2004: Ankara TRT2, 5 Apr. 2004: ‘The NSC of Turkey met to assess Annan Plan V’). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 431). C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 430). Toumazos Tselepis: Interview with Radio ASTRA, Alithia, 20 Apr. 2004,. p. 7.

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64 The safeguarding of what were termed ‘legitimate interests and concerns of both communities’ had always been a constant followed by all Secretary Generals involved in the Cyprus problem. 65 Claire Palley (2005: 6). 66 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: §§ 44–50. 67 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 26. 68 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 27. 69 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 39. 70 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 32. 71 Annan Plan V: Annex I, Article 36, § 7. 72 Annan Plan V: Annex III, Attachments 31–5. 73 An explanatory note sent by the UN Secretary General to the parties involved, following Bürgenstock, clearly stipulated that the provision for signing the Foundation Agreement by 29 April (Annex IX, Article 1, § 2, p. 137) presupposed completion of all necessary domestic procedures of verification provided for by the constitution of each Guarantor Power. In the case of Turkey, in particular, signing of the Agreement would follow verification enactment by the Grand National Assembly. The existence of the explanatory note was revealed by Alekos Markides, who accused President Papadopoulos of having concealed it, thus leaving the impression of inadequate safeguards in relation to Turkey’s irrevocable commitment to the Agreement (see Politis and Alithia, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘The President has concealed document by the Secretary General’). 74 Annan Plan V: Annex IX, Article I. 75 Annan Plan V: Annex VI, Article 3. 76 Annan Plan V: Foundation Agreement, Article 8. 77 See elaboration on provisions relating to properties in Chapter 7.4.7. 78 Annan Plan V: Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession, Article 1. 79 Annan Plan V: Draft Act of Adaptation of the Terms of Accession, Article 3, § 2. 80 UN Press Release, SG/SM/9239, 31 Mar. 2004: appended to James Ker-Lindsay (2005: 163–4). 81 PIO: Press Releases, 1 Apr. 2004 (on white paper): ‘Statements by Verheugen on Cyprus’. 82 PIO: Press Releases, 1 Apr. 2004: ‘Statements by EU Enlargement Commissioner, Verheugen, on Cyprus’. 83 PIO: Press Releases, 2 Apr. 2004: ‘President Papadopoulos’ statement on his return from Switzerland’. 84 Still vivid in my memory is the picture of a ‘panic-stricken’ CBC reporter spreading panic through TV channel in Cyprus. I still recall the dark thoughts that closed in upon me, even though rational knowledge of facts thus far had told me how impossible this could be. 85 Safety valves in the federal constitution (Annan V, Annex I, Article 48, which had been carried without any change from Annan III) provided for a procedure of annulment of treaties or provisions of treaties found to be incompatible with the Foundation Agreement. Moreover, a footnote had been added to the above article in Annan V, which provided that, ‘since the Foundation Agreement provides for the membership of Cyprus in the European Union, the term “Foundation Agreement” in this article includes obligations arising out of membership in the European Union’. Thus, there were full safeguards to ensure that, were any treaties between the ‘TRNC’ and Turkey to intrude and to be

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The Cyprus Referendum found later to be incompatible with the Foundation Agreement or Cyprus’a capacity as EU member state, they could not remain in the list. The President of OPEK (a Cyprus-based NGO), Larkos Larkou (Fileleftheros, 10 Apr. 2004: ‘Journalism in Post Luzerne Era’), writing on this issue, describes manipulation of news from Luzerne as ‘part of a scenario through which to impose on public opinion the refusal to enter dialogue’, and further notes: ‘The news existed only in Luzerne, and whoever controlled it also controlled public opinion. Such extreme forms of manipulation of information found willing servants in Cyprus journalism, which proved inferior to circumstances. There certainly were some exceptions, but just to confirm the rule.’ An opinion poll by A. C. Nielsen (Politis, 22 Feb. 2004), carried out on 19–20 Feb. 2004 – i.e. at the beginning of the talks – gave 40 per cent to NO, 31 per cent to YES and 29 per cent undecided. A second poll by the same company (Politis, 7 Mar. 2004), carried out on 5–6 Mar., gave 33 per cent to NO, 19 per cent to YES and 28 per cent to not decided yet. An opinion poll by RAI Consultants (Fileleftheros, 7 Mar. 2004), carried out on 2–3 Mar., gave 62 per cent to NO, 24 per cent to YES and 14 per cent not decided yet. Politis, 2 Mar. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Mutiny of MPs for the referendum’, and 3 Mar. 2004: K. Zorba, ‘Initiative by MPs causes turbulence’. Politis, 7 Mar. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘The hind side of the law proposal by the “5” for the referendum: Parties sound the alarm’. Alithia, 10 Mar. 2004: G. Kallinikou: ‘Rejection campaign by those around Tassos’: Reference to relevant statements by Nikos Cleanthous during a talk show by MEGA Channel, 9 Mar. 2004. See PIO: Press Releases, 8 Apr. 2004: ‘Declaration by the President of the Republic Tassos Papadopoulos regarding the referendum of 24 April 2004 (7.4.2004)’. On three more occasions when delivering his speech, he focused on the factor of uncertainty supposedly resulting from the lack of any guarantee that Turkey would fulfil its obligations. This claim is proved to be completely unfounded by the documented analysis in Stelios Platis et al. (2006). In fact, until AKEL and DISY took an official stand on the Plan following the President’s declaration, their leaderships refrained from either defending or attacking the Plan as a whole, or particular provisions of it, while negotiations were ongoing. The ‘silence’ of the two largest parties, the ones that might ultimately take a positive stand towards the Plan, actually left the field free for the rejectionist camp to promote, through TV channels, the idea of rejection. Public defence of the Plan by Markides, Papapetrou and Vassiliou did not succeed in exerting substantial influence. As for Vassiliou and Papapetrou, they had been politically ‘killed’ by systematic slander on the part of AKEL and DISY’S ‘patriotic’ wing, which had repeatedly accused them of being ready to ‘sell out’. As for Markides (the leading figure in Clerides’s negotiating team), although his positions had always been factual, documented and disconnected from political calculation, he had not had a ‘popular audience’. The opponents of the Plan had passed on the message that Markides had been ‘co-author’ of the Plan and thus equally ‘responsible’ for its ‘unacceptable’ provisions. This made him an ‘unreliable’ defender of the Plan.

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95 Politis, 15 Apr. 2004, published in full Christofias’s speech at AKEL’s Congress of 14 Apr. 2004. 96 Politis, 15 Apr. 2004, Christofias’s speech. 97 Fileleftheros, 10 Apr. 2004: A. Taramounta: ‘Detailed analysis of Plan and presidential declaration by Christofias in AKEL Central Committee’. 98 Haravgi, 13 Apr. 2004, published in full the Central Committee decision. 99 Fileleftheros, 14 Apr. 2004: G. Stylianou: ‘Turkish Cypriots reject proposal for postponement of referenda’. 100 An opinion poll carried out by A. C. Nielsen on 19–20 Feb. 2004 (Politis, 22 Feb. 2004: D. Dionysiou: ‘Indecisive the result of the referendum’), showed for AKEL 44 per cent YES and 32 per cent NO to the Plan, for DISY 32 per cent YES and 44 per cent NO. An opinion poll carried out by RAI Consultants on 2–3 Mar. 2004 (Fileleftheros, 7. Mar. 2004: A. Taramounta: ‘62 per cent insists on NO to Annan Plan’), showed for AKEL 34 per cent YES and 54 per cent NO to the Plan, for DIKO 19 per cent and 61 per cent, for DISY 20 per cent and 70 per cent and for EDEK 24 per cent and 67 per cent respectively. In the event that the President, the government of Greece and the leaderships of large parties in Cyprus called for a YES vote to Annan III (under the conditions of tension and suspicion described above), the poll showed for AKEL 51 per cent YES and 39 per cent NO to the Plan, for DISY 34 per cent and 56 per cent, for DIKO 45 per cent and 45 per cent and for EDEK 39 per cent and 52 per cent respectively. The same poll showed AKEL’s position on the Plan to weigh in the minds of the people much more than that of any other party. 101 Politis, 14 Apr. 2004: A.Viketos: ‘Minister resigned due to presidential declaration: Kikis does not believe in tears’. 102 Politis, 17 Apr. 2004: ‘Open letter to Demetris Christofias by a friend’. 103 See Chapter 5.8. 104 See Chapter 5.9. 105 See Chapter 8.1. 106 Takis Hadjidemetriou intimated to the author that, during a meeting he had with Simitis following the referendum, the former Greek Premier revealed to him that Papadopoulos had never shown him any intention of rejecting the Plan in the manner he did it on 7 Apr. 107 Politis, 22 Apr. 2004: M. Antoniadou (Brussels): ‘Discussion in Strasbourg turns a Slap on Tassos: Mass fire in Euro parliament’. The Director of the President’s Press Office, Marios Karoyian (Fileleftheros, 22 Apr. 2004: ‘Verheugen misinformed says the government’), replied to Verheugen’s statement: ‘We do not know when and by whom Verheugen was given such pledges; certainly not by the President.’ Furthermore, DIKO’s Deputy President, Nikos Cleanthous (Fileleftheros, 22 Apr. 2004: ibid.), hinted at commitments made be the previous government: ‘Mr Verheugen must have confused the President with somebody else. As facts themselves bear witness, some Cypriot politicians had made such commitments.’ 108 Fileleftheros, 8 Apr. 2004: ‘Sharp criticism against the President following the declaration’. 109 Fileleftheros, 13 Apr. 2004: ‘Christofias: “We are trying to avoid non-solution”’. 110 Fileleftheros, 14 Apr. 2004: ‘Christofias: “There’s no question of divorce”’. 111 During a telephone communication with US Secretary of State Colin Powel, Christofias

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The Cyprus Referendum clarified that ‘the matter of guarantees by Turkey constitutes a “red line” for him personally and his Party’ (Politis, 15 Apr. 2004: M. Ignatiou: ‘Intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy for AKEL’s demands: Powel plays first fiddle’). Politis, 15 Apr. 2004: M. Ignatiou: ‘Intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy for AKEL’s demands: Powel plays first fiddle’. Politis, 18 Apr. 2004: M. Ignatiou (Washington): ‘Interview with Powel: 1974 will not happen again’. Fileleftheros, 23 Apr. 2004: C. Venizelos: ‘Russian veto causes internal turbulence: Satisfaction in the government, criticism by the opposition’. See also Politis, 23 Apr. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘Resolution blocked by Russian “technical” veto’. Statements made in Moscow by Iakovou and Lavrov (PIO: Press Releases, 20 Apr. 2004: ‘Meeting of Foreign Ministers of Cyprus and the Russian Federation in Moscow’) left no doubt that there was a common political line shared by the two governments in the Security Council. Moreover, the reference by Lavrov to the serious blow to interests of Russian businessmen owing to Cyprus’s accession to the EU raises questions about possible ‘reciprocation’ by Cyprus in relation to the transfer of huge amounts of hard currency by Russians through Cyprus. As regards covert activities by Russian offshore companies in Cyprus, see Politis, 24 Apr. 2004: A. Viketos: ‘Comments by foreign media: What is hidden behind the Russian veto’. Politis, 23 Apr. 2004: A Viketos: ‘AKEL oriented towards a new referendum: We are saying “NO” now in order to say “YES” tomorrow’. Opinion polls prior to Bürgenstock showed EDEK, apparently influenced by Lyssarides’s ‘patriotic’ rhetoric, as counting the highest percentage of rejection of the Annan Plan (see Chapter 9.4.3, n. 98). Politis, 7 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘European Socialist Party shows EDEK the way’. Hadjidemetriou had intimated the facts concerning this meeting to the author prior to the EDEK Central Committee meeting of 9 Apr., which took a NO decision. The author also had personal evidence presented by Party cadres close to the President as to the latter’s line of thought and his intentions. Indicative of this climate in EDEK was an analysis in Politis, 4 Apr. 2004: Ch. Georgiou: ‘Three parameters shape EDEK’s position’. CNA, Nicosia, 17 Feb. 2004, 7.55.28 a.m: ‘EDEK: Political Bureau, Cyprus problem’. Politis, 27 Feb. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Omirou gives cover to his aide’, Alithia, 27 Feb. 2004: G. Kallinikou: ‘Confrontation of two lines of thought in EDEK: Omirou covers Protopapas against attack by Lyssarides’, Fileleftheros, 27 Feb. 2004: ‘Omirou covers Protopapas’. Politis, 8 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Omirou in tight grip’. Politis, 9 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Landscape clears up in EDEK’. Politis, 10 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘EDEK: Omirou put his views aside: Called for NO’, Fileleftheros (10 Apr. 2004: P. Kaskanis: ‘By 87% EDEK said NO to Annan Plan’) notes that, ‘despite expectations and information pointing to the opposite’, the EDEK President’s speech ‘moved within the spirit of President Papadopoulos’s declaration’. Alithia, 10 Apr. 2004: G. Kallinikou: ‘Clear YES from Hadjidemetriou’. See opinion polls, Chapter 9.4.3, n. 98. See indicatively Politis, 2 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Passion Week for Parties’, and 4 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘DISY heads towards YES but waits for Clerides and AKEL’.

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129 Politis, 8 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘DISY put forward its trump card’. 130 Kathimerini, 10 Apr. 2004: Nikos Anastasiades: ‘Why we vote YES’. 131 Fileleftheros, 13 Apr. 2004: ‘Christofias: “We are trying to avert non-solution”, Anastasiades: “If there are appropriate grounds for acceptance of AKEL’s proposal, we shall stand by”’. 132 Fileleftheros, 16 Apr. 2004: P. Kaskanis: ‘Glafkos Clerides: “A NO vote will lead to partition”’. 133 Following the referendum, DISY cadres who had aligned themselves with NO, including the MPs Syllouris, Prodromou, Erotokritou and Taramountas, as well the former Party President, Yiannakis Matsis, would detach themselves from the Party, would contest Euro-elections of 13 June 2004, and would elect Matsis to the European Parliament having polled 10.8%. Later, three of the MPs (except Prodromou) would cooperate with NEO in founding the ‘European Party’ and electing Syllouris as the first President. 134 For his speech in full, see Politis, 16 Apr. 2004: ‘Clear response to historic challenge by Anastasiades: YES to Cyprus’s reunification’. 135 A large, vociferous gathering of DISY supporters, which took place after the Party congress, with speakers Matsis, Ioannides (former Education Minister), Prodromou, Syllouris, Taramountas, Sampson and others, took the form of a ‘counter-congress’ (see Politis, 22 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘DISY supporters gathering took form of “countercongress”: They shouted NO and opened a front against the Party leadership’). 136 See Chapter 8.1. 137 Politis, 8 Apr. 2004: V. Vassiliou: ‘Formal YES by EDI’. 138 Politis, 4 Apr. 2004: C. Georgiou: ‘No dilemmas on the part of the small parties’. 139 Fileleftheros, 15 Apr. 2004: ‘The ballot box gave 355 NO votes in the Bastion’. 140 Christos Stylianides, a close friend of Yiannos Kranidiotis, experienced from within the shift of Greek Foreign policy on Greek-Turkish relations and Cyprus. Following his resignation from the post of Government Spokesman, he continued to enjoy the trust of President Clerides and played a discreet role in developments. 141 In 2004, Greek Orthodox Church celebrated Easter on 11 Apr. 142 The author has been witness to such Christian fundamentalism on Good Friday in St Nicolas Church in Lakatamia. At the Church entrance piles of leaflets and brochures calling for rejection were distributed to the faithful. In reply to a query of mine as to how it was that such political material came to be distributed in a church, a Church Board member who happened to be a friend of mine drew from a drawer and placed before me a letter bearing the seal of the Archbishopric, which authorized such distribution. 143 Fileleftheros, 10 Apr. 2004: ‘Holy Synod message on Easter occasion’. 144 Politis, 16 Apr. 2004: ‘Bishop of Kyrenia wants resounding NO’. 145 Politis, 20 Apr. 2004: A. Paraschos: ‘I’ll go to the Hell’. 146 Politis, 20 Apr. 2004: A. Paraschos: ‘I’ll go to the Hell’. 147 Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: A. Viketos: ‘The Turkish Guys’ (from an interview by the Bishop of Pafos with Athens daily Eleftherotypia). The author himself watched the Bishop of Pafos in a TV ‘window’ on Greek ERT with Greek Culture Minister, Marieta Yiannakou, and Maria Damanaki, speaking in the same spirit and using the same derogatory characterizations of Turkish Cypriots. 148 Politis, 20 Apr. 2004: ‘Church encyclical calls for resounding NO’.

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149 Fileleftheros, 22 Feb. 2004: Interview with G. Frangos: ‘On 2 May the Bishop of Kyrenia and I should be installed in our Bishoprics’, Selides, 4 Apr. 2004: interview with A. Solomonidou: ‘The cost of love’. 150 Politis, 17 Apr. 2004: ‘The strength of a united Cyprus’. 151 Politis, 22 Apr. 2004: V. Vassiliou: ‘The Square was full of dedicated Cypriots: The future is here’. See also Alithia, 22 Apr. 2004: C. Iakovides: ‘Thousands of YES to hope: Courageous coming together of citizens from all political alignments’. 152 Politis, 23 Apr. 2004: V. Vassiliou: ‘A. Christou and AKEL MPs at OPEK’s event: Silently said YES’. See also Fileleftheros, 23 Apr. 2004: ‘Through YES vote we reunify our country: Christou participated but evaded taking position’. See further Alithia, 23 Apr. 2004: ‘YES to reunification: No more tears’. 153 UN Press Release, SG/SM/9239, 31 Mar. 2004: appended to James Ker-Lindsay (2005: 163–4). 154 See Chapter 9.4. 155 Haravgi, 1 Apr. 2004: ‘Without negotiation to Annan arbitration’. 156 Politis, 2 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘Passion Week for the Parties’. 157 Politis, 2 Apr. 2004: K. Zorba: ‘The key in the hands of AKEL: “We are fed up with pressure”’. 158 See Chapter 9.3. 159 PIO: Press Releases, 1 Apr. 2004: ‘Statement by Verheugen on Cyprus’. 160 PIO: Press Releases, 2 Apr. 2004: ‘Statements by McClellan and Ereli on Cyprus’. 161 PIO: Press Releases, 2 Apr. 2004: ‘Statements by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Cyprus’. 162 Politis, 23 Apr. 2004: L. Adilinis: ‘Shadow on Tassos’s televised press conference the hints at Christofias: Great gaffe at conference’. 163 C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 422–7) seem to endorse the conspiracy approach as regards the British document. 164 According to the dates that were released by Cyprus PIO, the following leaders and officials made statements and urged acceptance of the UN Plan: the EU Commission Spokesman, Jean-Christophe Filori (1 Apr.); the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder (2 Apr.); the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer ( 2 Apr.); the British Foreign Minister, Jack Straw (2 Apr.); the EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana (2 Apr.); the President of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Peter Schieder (2 Apr.); the Council of Europe General Secretary, Walter Schwimmer (2 Apr.); Alvaro de Soto following the briefing of the UNSC (3 Apr.); the US Secretary of State, Colin Powel (5 Apr.); the UN Secretary General and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, following their meeting in Moscow on 6 Apr. (Lavrov supported the Annan Plan but refrained from urging acceptance, saying that ‘whatever the outcome of the referendum interest in the Cyprus problem will not be weakened’; see accordingly PIO: Press Releases, 6 Apr.), the British Foreign UnderSecretary, Denis MacShane (7 Apr.); Alvaro de Soto on arrival in Cyprus (7 Apr.); Commissioner Verheugen following adoption of the terms of the Agreement as Community Law by the EU Commission (8 Apr.); the UN Secretary General and his Deputy Spokeswoman, Marie Okabie, in relation to AKEL’s demand for postponement of the referenda, noting that this was not accepted by the other parties (13 Apr.); the EU Commission Spokesman in relation to the Preparatory Donors’ Conference

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166

167

168 169 170 171 172

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(14 Apr.); Commissioner Verheugen at the Preparatory Donors’ Conference (15 Apr.); the US Secretary of State (16 Apr.); the State Department Spokesman, Richard Boucher (16 Apr.); the President of the UNSC, Gunter Pleuger (17 Apr.), in order to greet the outcome of the Donors’ Conference and confirm the UNSC’s preparedness to support ‘through a new UN operation’ the ‘effective and full implementation of the UN Plan by all parties’ (17 Apr.). On top of all these came US President George W. Bush’s ‘catapult message’ (Politis, 13 Apr.), in which the US President, during a second telephone communication with the Greek Prime Minister, warned against possible consequences of rejection by the Greek Cypriots. The same day, Richard Boucher, speaking on behalf of the State Department, reassured the solution benefits and warned that all would be lost in the event of rejection (Politis, 14 Apr.). Participants at the Preparatory Donors’ Conference were to be, according to a statement by Verheugen, high-ranking delegations from all EU member states, the UNSC, the OSCE, the Gulf States Cooperation Council and other interested parties (Politis, 8 Apr. 2004: ‘Donors’ Conference’). And, while the Turkish Cypriot community was represented by ‘Prime Minister’ Mehmet Ali Talat, the Greek Cypriot community was represented by the Planning Bureau Director, P. Pouros. Planning Bureau: ‘Preliminary assessment of the financial needs in the event of a solution on Cyprus’ [«Προκαταρκτική εκτίμηση των χρηματοδοτικών αναγκών σε περίπτωση εξεύρεσης λύσης του Κυπριακού»] (a summary in Greek of the document that had been submitted to the EU in Sept. 2003): the report raised ‘total financial needs’ to the amount of C£15,775,750,000 and, on top of that, provided for C£620,000,000 ‘for other current financial needs’. Fileleftheros, 5 Oct. 2003 (G. Stylianou: ‘Government assesses solution cost to be a huge amount’), making direct references to this report, gave detailed data of the cost as presented in the Planning Bureau document and rounded up to the amount of C£16.6 billion. Politis, 17 Apr. 2004: K. Papachristodoulou: ‘The amount asked by Cyprus from the Donors: Oriental bargain’: ‘The day before yesterday, the government of Cyprus presented at the Preparatory Donors Conference in Brussels a document which gives the financial needs for the solution. These needs – for the Greek and Turkish Cypriot community – amount to C£4.8 billion. The document notes that this amount includes expenses of the public and the private sector, as well as development expenses for the coming ten years.’ Former Planning Bureau Director Symeon Matsis, speaking at the event organized at Ledra Palace in support of the solution (22 Apr. 2004), quoted the document referred to by Politis and gave exactly the same figures, clarifying that the amount provided in the document for development was C£1.9 billion. Therefore, the actual cost of the solution, according to the government document presented in Brussels, amounted to C£2.9 billion and not C£16.6, as leaked to the press months earlier. Politis, 15 Apr. 2004: L. Adilinis: ‘Donors start engines’, and Politis, 16 Apr. 2004: M. Antoniadou (Brussels): ‘Solution cost calculated to €2 billion: We’ll stand by’. Apart from the information given above, see further Chapter 9.7. See Chapter 9.4.2. See Verheugen’s interview with Fileleftheros, 20 Apr. 2004: ‘Gunter Verheugen: We can guarantee democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights’: At the core of the decision was Hadjidemetriou’s suggestion to Crespo (see Chapter 9.4.4.), who further discussed it with Papandreou in Athens. Following intensive

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behind-the-scenes deliberations and amendments, it was finally adopted in the form submitted by Jacques Poos. It touched upon all aspects that concerned EU role on Cyprus (Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Role by Verheugen-Council in today’s decision by Euro Parliament’). Specifically with regard to safeguarding implementation of the solution, the EU Parliament decision provided the following: §13: (The European Parliament) reassures both sides that the competent institutional organs of the EU will solemnly guarantee, in cooperation with other institutional organs, the implementation of the Agreement, as this matter touches upon the core of their reliability. §14: (The European Parliament) reiterates its intention to fully monitor the implementation of the Annan Plan through its competent committee and to contribute to providing guarantees for the Plan. (For the EU Parliament decision in full, see Alithia, 23 Apr. 2004: ‘EU Parliament resolution on Cyprus’). 173 Politis, 18 Apr. 2004 and 19 Apr. 2004: four consecutive opinion polls conducted by SRI for Politis between 14 and 17 Apr. revealed a NO vote, on a daily basis, to be 71 per cent, 62 per cent, 54 per cent and 58 per cent, and a YES vote to be 12 per cent, 13 per cent, 17 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. Apart from the ‘dangerous’ trend of YES and NO, those who ‘had not decided yet’, who were shown to be 17 per cent, 25 per cent, 29 per cent and 23 per cent in the same order, and who were credited more to YES than NO vote, because of the telephone type of the polls and the political atmosphere of the time, continued to be a considerable reservoir, which, though incapable of overturning NO, might have confined it to marginal prevalence. 174 According to data provided by the Radio and Television Authority, from 24 Mar. to 20 Apr., the four countrywide TV channels had given 100 hours to NO supporters and 66 hours to YES supporters. State Television (CBC) had the worst ratio: 43 to 26 hours (Politis, 23 Apr. 2004: ‘According to official data by the Radio and Television Authority: double TV time was given to NO’). Data for the last two days, 21 and 22 Apr., when the all-channel conference by the President was staged, must have crushingly favoured YES. According to data by AGB (TV-watching measurements) in relation to televised advertisements, from 17 to 22 Apr. 2004, televised advertisement in support of NO was 7,623 seconds as against 1,364 for YES, or 84.8 per cent to 15.2 per cent respectively. 175 Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: C. Manolis: ‘Censorship at the CBC on Presidential directive’. 176 Politis, 20 Apr. 2004: L. Adilinis: ‘Public denunciation of CBC and ANT1: They’ve cut Verheugen’. 177 See Verheugen’s interview with Fileleftheros, 20 Apr. 2004: ‘Gunter Verheugen: We can guarantee democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights’. 178 Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: § 71. See also Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: C. Manolis: ‘Censorship at the CBC on Presidential directive’. 179 Christoforos Christoforou, a political analyst and Council of Europe expert on matters relating to media and elections (‘The European tradition and principles: The Referendum, Information, and the Right to Freedom of Expression’, p. 2) notes the following in relation to the President’s 7 Apr. declaration and 22 Apr. conference: ‘The Declaration and the all-channel Conference by the President constituted clear violation of the principle of equal treatment. The decision to support a NO vote generated the obligation for the President to put himself and the government under the same rules with all participants

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180 181 182 183

184 185 186 187 188

189

190 191 192 193

194 195 196

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in the dialogue (equal time, form of intervention, means, etc.)’. Note: Christoforou’s document, entitled as above, was sent to the President of the Republic, the President of the House of Representatives and the Parties represented in the House, the Radio and Television Authority and the CBC Governing Board, the European Commission and the Council of Europe, on 24 May 2004. Later on, it was released to the press and published in full by Politis, 6 June 2004, under roughly the same headline. See indicatively C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 509). Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘AKEL: Excommunicating behaviour that touches upon political stifling’. Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘The Journalists Association calls on journalists to resist interference’. Politis, 20 Apr. 2004: M. Kaladzis: ‘Ambiguities in the Annan Plan in relation to federal police: Clarifications asked for’, Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: M. Kaladzis: ‘Police: Letters to all’, Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: M. Hadjivassilis: ‘(Policemen) reject transfer to federal police’. Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘Ministers propagandists of NO have gone out to the streets’. Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: M. Kaladzis: ‘Row over the National Guard’. Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: G. Kaskanis: ‘Ministers propagandists of NO have gone out to the streets’. Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘Goebbels’s methods seen by Markides’. C. Venizelos et al. (2005: 506–8) gives in full Anastasiades’s letter, which was addressed to the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, who referred the letter to the Chairman of the Political Freedoms Committee asking him to examine whether the government of Cyprus respected human rights and freedoms. For press coverage of the issue, see Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘DISY denounces “government interference” [. . .] to Europe’, Fileleftheros, 22 Apr. 2004: G. Stylianou: ‘Confrontation takes on new dimensions [. . .]: Denunciation by Anastasiades to EU institutions’, Fileleftheros, 23 Apr. 2004: P. Xanthoulis: ‘Free expression in Cyprus under scrutiny in EU Parliament’. Christoforos Christoforou (‘The European tradition and principles: The Referendum, Information, and the Right to Freedom of Expression’, p. 8) notes accordingly: ‘As regards substance, what may expose a country is the acts by themselves of individuals, institutions, or other authorities. Denunciations claiming violations of rights are an inherent right of every citizen, which cannot be suspended in any democratic society.’ Fileleftheros, 23 Apr. 2004: ‘Tassos: “They malign Cyprus for a handful of votes”’. Fileleftheros, 21 Apr. 2004: ‘EDEK: “Anastasiades defames Cyprus”’. Makarios Drousiotis (Politis, 28 May 2006: ‘The Bases will snatch our oil’) narrates the whole story of this mean farce. Annan Plan V, Chapter C: ‘Treaty on matters related to the new state of Affairs in Cyprus’, Annex II: Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Establishment’, pp. 150–3, Article 5. Fileleftheros, 6 Mar. 2005: T. Tselepis: ‘British oil searches and their repercussions’. Fileleftheros, 6 Mar. 2005: T. Tselepis: ‘British oil searches and their repercussions’. During my research in relation to this issue, I asked Alekos Markides for further information, when the oil row rekindled in 2005. He told me that Britain had protested to Cyprus’s Foreign Ministry during the Cyprus–Egypt talks at not being invited to

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199 200 201 202 203 204

205 206 207

208 209

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The Cyprus Referendum participate in the delineation of the sea areas that were off the Bases coastline. The Republic of Cyprus, in a reply written by Markides himself, pointed out to the British Foreign Ministry that, according to international law and relevant provisions in the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, the Base Areas were not entitled to territorial waters and certainly not to the continental shelf or to the zone of exclusive economic exploitation. Markides’s reply further suggested that Britain appeal to competent international organs if it questioned the above-cited position. But Britain did not do that, nor did it question the incorporation of the Cyprus–Egypt agreement in the Annan Plan. All these facts were certainly known to the President of the Republic and the Foreign Ministry. But no one intervened to refute the conspiracy allegations, even when this row was rekindled and continued two years after the referendum. PIO: Press Releases, 7 Apr. 2004: ‘Declaration by the President of the Republic’, p. 4 of 8. See ‘Economic Aspects of the Annan Plan for the Solution of the Cyprus Problem, Report by Barry Eichengreen, Riccardo Faini, Jurgen von Hagen, Charles Wyplosz, to the Government of the Republic of Cyprus, February 17, 2004’. It is worth noting that this report was never publicized by the government. ‘Economic Aspects of the Annan Plan . . . ’. Executive Summary, General Assessment, p. iii, C. Pericleous personal archive, File 311/11/2 The report was based on Annan III, which was the last version until Bürgenstock. Stelios Platis et al. (2006: 12–13). Stelios Platis et al. (2006: 47–54). Annan’s report to the UNSC, S/2004/437, 28 May 2004: §§ 44, 48, 49. In this regard, ‘warnings’ by Lilikas as to the ‘disastrous’ consequences for tourism in the event of solution owing to internal antagonism from the north are worth noting (see accordingly Fileleftheros, 22 Feb. 2004: ‘Danger of internal antagonism’, and Fileleftheros, 9 Mar. 2004: ‘Commerce Minister: I’m not going to change my views on the Annan Plan’). One year after the referendum, Politis, 13 Apr. 2005 (‘Findings of a report by Irish consultants that was kept secret: 76 per cent said YES and 24 per cent NO’), brought to light a report that the Irish Consulting Company ‘Tourism & Transport Consult International’ had prepared, after being commissioned by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and that predicted positive development in the tourism of Cyprus as a whole within the framework of a solution. PIO: Press Releases, 24 Apr. 2004: statement by the Chief Returning Officer for the Referendum on the final results. Exit poll by RAI Consultants for MEGA Channel: Politis, 25 Apr. 2004: ‘How Greek Cypriots ultimately voted’. Politis, 25 Apr. 2004: ‘Referendum results in all municipalities and communities’. Results in Pafos in particular cannot be unrelated to Lilikas’s ‘warnings’ about ‘disastrous’ consequences for tourism in the event of a solution (see Chapter 9, note 204). ‘The Party of fear won’, wrote Tassos Pappas in Athens daily Eleftherotypia, 25 Apr. 2004: ‘AKEL’s defeat’. See accordingly opinion poll by A. C. Nielsen (Politis, 7 Mar. 2004: ‘Referendum for solution: Ready for YES but to an amended Plan’: To the question: ‘How well do you think you know the Plan?’ replies were as follows: 57 per cent ‘not very well’, 14 per cent ‘not at all’, 21 per cent ‘fairly well’ and only 7 per cent ‘very well’. Even these have

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to be considered with reservation for the following reason: since replies to a previous question on whether they would vote YES or NO were 19 per cent to 53 per cent respectively (and 28 per cent ‘not decided yet’), it would be obviously inconsequential for those who had replied NO subsequently to admit that they did not know the Plan. 210 The RAI exit poll (Politis, 25 Apr. 2004: ‘How Greek Cypriots ultimately voted’) found AKEL voters to have polled 20 per cent YES and 80 per cent NO, with DISY voters 38 per cent to 62 per cent respectively. These findings were corroborated by a second exit poll by MRC (sample 5086), which gave to AKEL 20.4 per cent YES against 79.6 per cent NO and to DISY 38.8 per cent against 61.2 per cent respectively. The opinion poll of Feb. 2004 had shown AKEL voters voting 44 per cent YES and 32 per cent NO and DISY voters 32 per cent and 44 per cent respectively. The opinion poll of Mar. 2004 had shown 32 per cent to 54 per cent for AKEL and 20 per cent to 70 per cent for DISY respectively, while in the event that the President and the political leadership took a position for YES, the same poll gave AKEL 51 per cent YES to 39 per cent NO and DISY 34 per cent to 56 per cent respectively (see Chapter 9.4.3, n. 98). 211 See Chapter 6.5. 212 Politis, 21 Apr. 2004: G. Moleskis: ‘When we wake up the future will have gone’.

Postscript 1 The Turkish Embassy, stationed in the Turkish sector of Nicosia, which, in mainstream Turkish Cypriot opinion, was demonized as the centre of malevolent power. 2 Cf. the ‘land for peace’ slogan employed by Rabin and Peres in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. 3 Cf. holding the conference on the Armenian question at Bilgi University of Istanbul in Sept. 2005 (see accordingly Section 4.9; see also European Commission: ‘Turkey: 2005 Progress Report’, p. 26). 4 Pantelis Lekkas (2001: 22) notes in this regard: ‘If (social) theory aims not merely at mechanically describing reality but at helping us to comprehend it, it is imperative that our endeavour in this direction explore not only what has happened but also what might have happened. [. . .] Therefore, contemplation on history has to explore ‘missed historical opportunities as well.’ 5 See Presidency Conclusions, 17–18 June 2004, § 32. 6 Demetris Komodromos (writing from Brussels in Politis, 17 Dec. 2006: ‘Capable of making statements, incapable of serious negotiation’), spells out the depressing climate for Cyprus within European institutions, which, far from strengthening its position, portends worse to follow. 7 See accordingly Politis, 8 Dec. 2006: V. Vassiliou: ‘They have given the christening’. See also Politis, 8 Dec. 2006: statements on the matter by Alekos Markides, Ahilleas Demetriades, Christos Clerides and Andreas Angelides. See further Politis, 30 May 2007: ‘Turkey to pay one million Euro as compensation to Aresti’. 8 Report by the Secretary General on the UN Operation in Cyprus, S/2006/931, 1 Dec. 2006, § 52. 9 See accordingly European Commission: Turkey: 2005 Progress Report, 9 Nov. 2005, pp. 10–42, and Turkey: 2006 Progress Report, 8 Nov. 2006, pp. 5–25.

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10 This is what Under-Secretary General, Ibrahim Gambari, must have had in mind when inserting in the 8 July 2006 Agreement between Papadopoulos and Talat the reminder that ‘an end must be put to the so called “blame game”’ (see accordingly PIO: Press Releases, 8 July 2006: ‘Statement read by Under-Secretary General Ibrahim Gambari following today’s meeting [. . .] with H. E. Tassos Papadopoulos and H. E. Mehmet Ali Talat’). 11 Politis, 9 Apr. 2006: N. Trimikliniotis: ‘Do Greek Cypriots still want symbiosis-solution?’ 12 See http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unficyp/index.html. 13 Politis, 30 Jan. 2007: ‘Two-state solution favored by 65% of Turkish Cypriots: The YES has become NO’. 14 Alithia, 19 June 2007: C. Pericleous: ‘Are we heading towards partition?’ (The actual replies as to the ‘desired solution’ were 27 per cent ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’, 35 per cent ‘unitary state’, 14 per cent ‘two separate states’, 19 per cent the ‘status quo’ and 5 per cent ‘confederation’. The percentages given are calculated after the DNK/DNA percentages were stricken out). 15 See relevant reports and articles in Politis, 23–6 Nov. 2006. 16 Politis, 7 Aug. 2007: L. Adilinis: ‘Insistent questioning of bi-zonal-bi-communal federation: Dangerous games’, and Politis, 19 Aug. 2007: G. Kaskanis: ‘The “second best solution” on the table’. 17 Website: www.proeuro.gr: Takis Hadjidemetriou: ‘Why partition is impossible and why reunification is necessary’. 18 The 8 July 2006 Agreement, as set out by Under-Secretary General Ibrahim Gambari simply reiterated commitment to principles and referred discussion to technical committees ‘on issues that affect the day to day life of people’ leaving the two leaders to ‘meet further from time to time as appropriate to give directions to the expert bi-communal working groups (which will be working on issues of substance) as well as to review the work of the technical committees’. It is worth noting that nothing has come out so far. 19 Cf. G. Seferis: ‘In the manner of G. S’ (last verse): ‘They call the one ship that sails AG ONIA 937.’

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Acheson Plan: 95, 99, 100, 367N3 ADIK: 307, see also DIKO Agreement (6.3.1995): xvi, 18, 21, 31, 58, 67, 69, 127, 160, 174, 313 Agreement, Lisbon (4.6.1971): 107, 352N214 Agreement, Vienna (2.8.1975): 200, 375N152 Agreement, Zurich–London (1959): 90, 93, 100–1, 108, 148, 190, 198, 209, 210, 277, 346N91 AKEL (Progressive Party of Working People): 82–4, 87, 89, 98, 113–14, 116, 118–21, 122–3, 128–9, 145, 158, 167, 177, 222–3, 299, 344N39, 345N53, 348N148, 352N232, 354N253, 354N257, 356N291, 370N48, 382N9, 383N12, 383N15; 354N256 Akinci, Mustafa: 240, 241, 244, 246, 261, 310 AKP (Justice and Development Party): 40, 54–5, 58, 69, 72, 328 Akritas Plan: 93, 95, 347N97, 348N126 Aktan, Gunduz: 64 Alexandretta: see Iskenderun Alevis: 44, 48–50 Ali, Ihsan: 151 Amendment 1960 Constitution: 95, 98 An, Ahmet Cavit: 259–60 ANAP (Motherland Party): 47, 49, 51, 54 Anastasiades, Nikos: 264, 278, 298, 318, 409N188, 409N189 Angelides, Andreas: 385N48 Angolemli, Huseyin: 239, 240, 244, 245 Annan, Kofi (UNSG): 36, 200, 221, 227, 235, 262, 263–5, 269, 276, 278, 293, 300, 310,

395N259, 398N30; see also UNSC reports Annan Plan: xviii, 36, 117, 121, 128, 130, 166, 171, 175, 184–6, 200–201, 221–9, 265, 281–92, 294, 310, 312, 319; compensations: 189, 200, 204–6, 282–4, 295, 320–1, 377N188, 399N37, 399N38; donors conference: 407N164, 407N165, 407N167; map: 201–2; NO to 165, 226, 227, 234, 255–62, 269–72, 299–300, 302, 269, 274, 301–3, 306–9, 384N32, 404N111, 405N142; Presidential Council: 194–8; Property Board: 205, 377N188, 377N177, 378N207; provisions: 185–220, 226, 375N162, 376N174, 378N205, 381N257; submission: 165, 221, 368N8, 372N81, 382N9, 383N12; YES to: 278, 279, 287, 304–6, 310 323, 384N33, 402N94; virgin birth: 186–7, 372N92, 372N93, 400N60275, Annan III & V (comparison): 282–92, 318–19, 384N146, 399N36, 399N37, 399N38, 401N85, 410N196 ANT1 (Channel): 228, 316 Anthimos (Bishop of Kition): 91, 101 AP (Justice Party): 50 anti-Europe syndrome: 223–4, 383N17 Armenian genocide: 57, 68–9, 152, 326, 336N47, 341N121, 411N3 Arsenis, Gerasimos: 126, 227, 355N282, 385N48 Asia Minor War/Disaster: 138, 139, 140 ASTRA Radio: 316 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal: 11, 12, 40, 59, 138, 139, 152 Athenagoras (Patriarch): 347N105

Averof Tositsas, Evangelos: 90–1, 93, 96, 147, 348N105 Avrupa (Afrika): 161, 366N214 Bahceli, Devlet: 54–5, 62, 229, 328 Balkan Wars: 13, 41, 135, 136 Ball, George: 95, 378N217 Bastion for Reconstruction of the Center: 307 Bayar, Gelal: 146 BDH (Peace and Democracy Movement): 241 Berberoglu, Ahmet Mithat: 157 Bill, Hikmet: 146 Bitsios, Demetris: 110 bizonality: 108, 111, 115, 188–9, 370N41 Blair, Tony: 230, 244, 265, 312 Boucher, Richard: 240, 243, 407N164 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros: 24, 122, 174; map: 182–3, 185, 200, 201–2; ‘Set of Ideas’ (1992): 24–5, 27, 57, 122, 181–5, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 194, 200, 206, 207, 212, 214, 218, 377N199, 380N238 Boynt, Lennox: 146, 147 Britain: 13, 95–7, 124, 132, 137, 174, 275–81, 293, 312, 343N18; bases: 201, 318–19, 401N73, 410N196 ; partition: 146–8, 149 Bulgaria: 11, 13, 42, 230, 356N282 Bürgenstock: 260, 272, 275–81, 287, 293, 396N5, 397N7, 397N8, 397N21, 397N23, 398N24, 398N25 Bush, George H. W.: 25, 30, 58, 123, 180, 200, 344N9 Bush, George W.: 36, 74, 263, 311, 407N164 Caglayangil, Fuat Sapri: 103, 105, 110

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Carter, Jimmy: 23, Castle, Barbara: 148 CBC (Channel): 259, 271, 316, 328, 401N84, 408N174, 408N179 Cem, Ismail: 71, 304, 342N138, 366N212 China: 22, 25, 301 Chirac, Jacques: 232 CHP: (Republican Peoples Party): 50, 85 Christides, Christoforos: 13, 14, Christodoulou, Christodoulos: 318 Christofias, Demetris: 262; see also Annan Plan Christoforou, Christoforos: 310, 408N179, 408N179, 409N189 Christou, Andreas: 310 Chrysotomides, Kypros (gov/nt spokesman): 251, 255, 262, 307, 317, 391N177, 406N147 Chrysostomos I (Archbishop): 117, 118–19, 124 Chrysostomos II (Archbishop, Bishop of Pafos): 308–9 Church: 77, 80–2, 87, 101, 114, 117, 124, 131, 132, 140, 224, 306, 308–9, 322, 323, 357N2 Churchill, Winston: 81, 144, 145 Ciller Tansu: 53, 63 Clark, Arthur: 96 Cleanthous, Nikos: 194, 403N107 Clerides, Glafkos: 30, 33, 34, 35, 95, 98, 103–5, 110, 113–16, 121–3, 126–7, 153, 184–5, 222, 232, 317, 319, 323, 351N196, 354N258; see also Annan Plan Clinton, Bill: 33, 35, 36, 71 Committee on Turkish Affairs: 145, 150 Communist Party, Britain: 82, 344N41 Communist Party, Greece: 82, 120, 224 354N254 Consultative Assembly: 82–4, 145, 149–50 Cosan, Esat: 45 Cox, Pat: 225, 240, 244, 264 Crespo, Enrique Baron: 303, 304, 408N172 CTP (Republican Turkish Party): 157–9, 160, 161, 239, 241 Cuco: Report: 214, 379N231 Cyprus: 56, 58; annexation (by Britain): 137; coup (1974): 108, 109, 117, 286; Crown Colony: 138 Cyprus Problem: absolute solution: 82, 84, 87, 90, 95, 99, 101, 105, 106, 107,

122–6, 143, 154, 227, 229, 231, 274, 287, 293, 295, 306, 313, 323; anti-imperialist nationalism: 120, 122, 128, 224, 227; colonization: 24, 157, 159, 178, 213, 214, 217, 246, 294, 364N177, 366N220, 379N228, 379N231, 380N232, 380N234, 380N242, 381N257, 389N142; conspiracy syndrome: 95, 96, 97, 109, 124, 222, 229, 233, 270, 290, 293, 295, 299, 305, 308, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316, 318; convergence opportunities: 142–4, 149, 166–7; Crete syndrome: 78, 135–6, 137, 270; Cyprus decides: 117, 254, 278; ethnic conflict: 79, 132, 136; evolutionary process: 81–4, 143–4, 149, 343N23, 344N39, 344N41; irredentism: xv, 77; nationalism: 78–80, 99, 118, 124–6, 132, 133, 227, 296, 305, 343N12, 343N22, 343N23, 362N125; partition: 88, 90, 91, 99, 101, 146–8, 156, 352N221, 356N292, 361N108, 361N116, 361N119, 362N148; see also bizonality, dogma of National Center, enosis, protaxis Cyprus’s EU accession: xvi, 9, 18–19, 21, 24–31, 33, 36–7, 69, 71, 126–8, 130, 160, 174, 182, 184, 193, 219, 221–2, 225, 227, 229–32, 234, 248, 298, 382N2; Accession Treaty: 248–251, 284; AKEL: 224 383N17; Turkey: 240; Cyprus’s Turkish Party: 146 Cyprus Republic: 176, 182, 186, 187, 195, 199, 211, 218, 221, 222, 246, 250, 255, 285, 288, 292, 293, 294, 318, 319, 327, 363N155, 363N161, 410N196; national anthem: 372N87; population census (2001): 381N261 Cyrillos III (Archbishop): 79, 138 De Cuellar, J. Perez: 24, 121–3, 174–81, 185, 186, 187, 190–2, 199, 200, 368N26; 214, 354N257, 369N27, 369N34, 369N35; ‘Set of Ideas’ (1989): 123, 178–9, 180, 181, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 195, 212, 214; see also UNSC (reports to)

De Soto, Alvaro: 221, 235, 240, 254, 261, 264, 265, 269, 270, 272, 275, 276, 277, 278–81, 293, 316, 396N5, 396N276, 398N25, 406N164; CBC: 271 Demirel, Suleyman: 50 Denktas, Raif: 149 Denktas, Rauf: 24, 25, 33, 34, 57–8, 71–2, 99, 103–6, 110, 127, 135, 145–55,159, 161, 164, 165–6, 176, 177, 179–85, 190, 206, 215, 218, 223, 239–48, 258, 263, 264–5, 267, 269–71, 363N161, 363N162; heart operation: 385N50, 386N76; return and arrest (1967): 152–3, 363N155; Denktas, Serdar: 248, 390N166, 393N212 Dervis, Themistoclis: 83 DIKO (Democratic Party): 113–14, 116, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 129, 165, 177, 179, 184, 306, 355N280, 370N47 Dirvana, Emin: 146, 152, 363N154 DISY (Democratic Rally): 113, 116, 121, 123, 127, 129, 177, 184, 354N257, 370N48; see also Annan Plan Dodecanese: 12, 13, 60, 80, 136 dogma of National Centre: 77, 99, 117, 254 Dountas, Michael: 124, 354N264 Downer, Alexander: 406N164 DSP (Democratic Left Party): 54 Durduran, Alpay: 241 DYP: (True Path Party): 54 Ecevit, Bulent: 24, 32, 36, 47, 50, 54–5, 62, 66, 70–1, 108, 159, 200, 229 ECHR (European Court of Human Rights): 200, 208, 227, 245, 259, 284, 327, 378N207, 378N208, 389N132 EDEK: 113–14, 125, 129, 167, 177, 179, 184, 226, 302–4, 318, 356N288, 370N47 EDI (United Democrats Movement): 306, 310 Efthymiou, Timis: 318 Egypt: 137, 319, 333N25, 356N282, 410N196 Emre, Suleyman Arif: 50 enosis: 56–7, 61, 77–89, 91, 100, 117, 134, 136, 139, 141, 144, 145, 147, 308, 345N53, 349N167, 349N168, 359N53; double enosis: 95, 99; T/C reaction to: 85, 131–4, 137,

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INDEX 138, 140, 142, 144, 150, 357N12, 359N57 EOKA: 114, 128, 145, 146, 148, 150, 226 EOKA–B: 96, 107, 156, 158 Erbakan, Necmettin: 49–50, 53–4 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip: 40, 51, 55, 69, 72, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246, 248, 258, 263, 267, 275, 278, 279, 281, 286–7, 311, 326, 388N100; 394N234 Erel, Ali: 240, 241, 244 Ereli, Adam: 311 Erim, Nihat: 14, 108, 147, 361N119 Erk, Kutlay: 310 Erotokritou, Rikkos: 226, 294, 405N133 Ethnarchy: 82–4, 101, 124, 142, 145 EU: xvi, 1–5, 15; EU Parliament: 1–2, 71, 205, 230, 244, 303, 307, 408N172; monitor implentation of Annan Plan: 304, 315 EU Copenhagen Council (Dec. 2002): 70, 221, 222, 225, 231, 233, 234–5, 239, 240, 385N49 EU Helsinki Pres. Conclusions (1999): xvi, 7–9, 19, 36, 58, 62–3, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 122, 126–30,160, 174, 191, 192, 229, 231–2, 238; para 9 on Cyprus: 341N125, 385N63 EU Luxembourg Council (Dec. 1997): 33 EU Luxembourg Pres. Conclusions (Dec. 97): 36, 71, 160, 336N52, 365N198 EU Nice Pres. Conclusions (Dec. 2000): 233 Evdokas, Takis: 101 Evkaf: 140, 141 Evren, Kenan: 48 Evros Talks (1967): 218, 349N168, 350N176 Fantis, Andreas: 83 Filori, Jean Christophe: 230, 385N52, 406N164 First World War: 5, 41, 84, 157 Foot, Sir Hugh: 148, 361N116 Four–Guideline Agreement (1977): 111, 115, 116, 124, 160, 174, 180, 188, 192, 199, 206, 211, 256, 372N94, 374N142, 374N143 FP (Virtue Party): 54, 55 France: 1, 22, 30, 73, 75, 225, 301, 331N2, 336N47, 342N151 FYROM (Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia): 333N50 G8 Decision (June 1999): 35, 1, 22, 30, G/C positions (1968): 105–6; G/C proposals (1977):112, 115, 119, 199, 370N141 G/C proposals (1989): 124, 125, 178, 179, 194 Georgiou, Vassos: 224 Gecekondu: 47, 50, 53, 338N36 Germany: 1, 12, 22, 29, 30, 41, 42, 69, 75, 137, 240, 333N25 Ghali, see Boutros-Ghali, Boutros Glion talks (Aug. 1997): 33 Gobbi, Hugo: 25, 26, 171, 200, 334N8, 334N9, 375N155 Gokalp, Ziya: 40, 336N1 Greece: 7–19, 23, 25, 28, 58, 82, 85, 97, 100, 103, 110, 115, 117, 119, 137, 148, 153, 197, 231, 233, 235–8, 254, 264, 265, 267, 304, 315, 323, 328, 346N86; Aegean: 13–15, 28, 57, 61, 75, 108, 118; Great Idea: 11, 77, 78, 84; Greek–Turkish relations: 8–13, 56, 59–65, 350N176; Imia (crisis): 8, 31, 52–53, 62–3, 340N98; junta (1967–74): 59, 100, 103, 107, 117, 154, 156; western Thrace: 14, 23, 42; Greek Cypriot Proposals (1977): 199 Grivas, Georgios: 107, 154 Grossman, Mark: 35 Gul, Abdullah: 51, 69, 155, 245, 264, 267, 277, 279, 397N23 Gulen, Fetullah: 48, 49 Hadjidemetriou, Takis: 125, 303, 304, 310, 329, 403N106, 404N119, 408N172 Hadjigeorgiou, Takis: 125, 310, 395N266 Hague Meeting (10.3.2003): 230, 236–9, 240, 246, 248, 251, 387N89 Hami, Bey: 135 Hannay, Sir David: 34, 174, 254 Harding, Marshall: 89, 90, 149, 346N86 Helsinki: 36, 58, 67, 128, 231–2, 238 Holbrooke, Richard: 21–2, 28–33, 34–8, 58, 67, 72–4, 127, 233, 281, 243, 335N35, 336N46 Home, Sir Alec Douglas: 96, 348N135 Hopkinson, Henry (never): 88

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Iakovou, Georgios: 250, 258, 301, 390N161 Imia crisis: 8, 31, 52–53, 61–3, 127, 340N98 Inonu, Ismet: 13, 23, 94, 138, 152, 333N25 intercommunal talks: 13, 14, 58, 100, 103, 105, 110, 123, 127, 153–4, 156, 160, 170; see also G/C positions, G/C proposals, Glion talks, T/C positions, T/C proposals, Troutbeck talks, Vienna talks Ionian Islands: 77 Ioannides, Demetrios (junta): 107 Ioanoou, Fifis: 82 Iran: 23,28 Iraq: 23, 30, 36, 74 Irfan, Musa: 137, 140 Iskenderun (Alexandretta): 39, 146, 152 Islam: 43–6, 47–8, 51, 53, 67, 74, 337N14 Israel: 32, 75, 335N38, 356N282, 411N2 Istanbul: 12, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 55, 60–1, 65, 71, 134; patriarchate: 14, 315, 326, 328, 347N105 ; pogrom (1955): 57, 61, 64, 89, 146, 148, 339N79 Italy: 1, 13, 60, 62, 80, 136 Jackson constitution: 82–4, 149–50 Johnson’s letter: 23, 29, 100 Joint Defence Dogma: 70, 120, 122, 126, 227 Journalists Association: 317 Kappadokia: 77 Karadagi, Ismail Haki: 63 Karamanlis, Constantinos: 59, 90–1, 105, 110, 114, 117, 254, 277, 347N118; dogma Cyprus decides: 117, 254, 278 Karamanlis, Costas: 224, 264, 267, 275, 277, 279, 288, 305, 311, 323, 397N17 Karambelen, General: 150, 152 Karpas: 152, 183, 189, 201–2, 203, 236, 278, 284, 375N151, 376N179 Kasoulides, Ioannis: 228, 310 KATAK (T/C Minority Association): 144, 360N93 Katalanos, Nikolaos: 134, 343N12 Katsourides, Nikos: 222 Kazamias, Kikis: 298, 310 Kemal, Namik: 134

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Kemalism: 40–3, 47–9, 52–4, 59, 68139, 140, 141 Keravnos, Makis: 318 Kissinger, Henry: 110, 281 Klosson, Michael: 244, 251, 300 Koc, Rahmi: 63 KOP: (Ecologists– Environmentalists Party): 125, 167, 227, 234, 307, 384N32 Kosygin, Alexei: 349N165 Kotku, Mehmet Zahid: 45 Koutsou, Nikos: 110, 124, 234 Kranidiotis, Nikos: 86, 89, 94, 97 Kranidiotis, Yiannos: 7–8, 17–18, 21, 28–30, 58, 67, 127 KTKB (Union of T/C Organizations): 144, 150 KTMHP (T/C National Peoples Party): 144 KTOS (T/C Teachers trade union): 162, 164 Kucuk, Fazil: 105, 144–148, 150, 152, 154, 360N93 Kurds: 14 44–5, 48–50, 52, 55, 326 Kurdish Question: 54, 56–7, 62–3, 66, 68, 152 Kyprianos (Bishop of Kition): 78 Kyprianos (Bishop of Kyrenia): 89, 101 Kyprianou, Andros: 317 Kyprianou, Markos: 355N280 Kyprianou, Spyros: 16, 24, 94, 96, 97–103, 105, 114–17, 119–23, 177, 180, 353N252, 368N26, 369N28, 369N35, 370N37, 370N47, 378N217 Kyriakides, Phedias: 142 Kyrkos, Leonidas: 224 Kyrou, Alexis: 80, 84, 142, 343N23 Laakso: Report: 379N228, 380N232, 380N245 Lanitis, N. Cl.: 142 Lavrov, Sergey: 404N115, 406N164 Legislative Council: 79, 80, 81, 85, 131, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143 Letsky, Nelson: 25, 30, Levent, Sener: 162 Lilikas, Giorgos: 321, 410N204, 410N207 Loizidou, Titina: 245 Lyssarides, Vassos: 114, 115, 122, 125, 126, 129, 226, 302, 303 354N256, 354N258, 355N278

Macedonian question: 17, 18, 25 Makarios II (Bishop of Kyrenia, Archbishop): 80, 82 Makarios III (Archbishop): 13, 84–117, 120, 121, 149, 153, 268, 276, 295, 306, 349N166, 352N214, 352N217; death: 110, 113; and enosis: 84–9, 93–5; last speech: 112–13; leadership qualities: 87–9, 101–2, 112; oath at Faneromeni: 88, 347N118, 349N157; personality: 86–7, 89, 90346N86, 347N118, 347N119; 100; re–elected (1968): 101–2; talks with Harding: 89, 90, 149, 346N86, 346N89; tightrope tactics: 90, 94, 106, 107, 346N89 Markides, Alekos: 310, 318, 386N75, 401N73, 402N94, 410N196 Maurer, Leopold: 254 Mavronikolas, Kyriakos: 318 Maclellan, Scott: 311 MacMillan Plan: 90, 91, 101, 148 MacShane, Denis: 406N164 MEGA (Channel): 228, 321 Meler, Per Sting: 231 Menderes, Adnan: 14, 57, 146–7, 149, 152 Menon, Krisna: 14, 86 MHP (Nationalist Action Party): 42, 50, 54, 65–6, 328 Middle East: 21–3, 27–30, 73, 75 Minimum Program DIKO–AKEL (1982): 119–20, 121, 352N249, 353N252, 354N253 Mitsotakis Constantinos: 25–6, 334N9, 371N49 MNP (National Order Party): 50 Molyviatis, Petros: 275, 276, 277, 279, 323 Moses, Alfred: 35, Movement: ‘Free Thinking Citizens’: 227 Movement for Euro–Democratic Renovation: 307 Movement for Political Modernization: 307–308 MSP (National Salvation Party): 50 Mufti: 140, 142 Munir, Mehmet: 140, 144 MUSIAD (Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association): 46, 51, 337N29 Naksibendi: 44, 45, 48, 49, 50 National Council (Cyprus): 79,

111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119, 124, 125, 179, 225, 234, 258, 275, 276, 323, 353N233, 383N13, 386N75, 391N177 National Front: 107 NATO: 15, 22–3, 32, 59, 60–1, 85, 100, 112, 119–20, 348N135, 352N221 NEO (New Horizons Party): 124, 125, 227, 234, 306–7, 384N32 Neofytos (Bishop of Morfou): 207, 309 New Democracy (Party): 224 New Cyprus Association: 118 Nikodemos Mylonas (Bishop of Kition): 79, 81, 142 Non-Aligned Movement: 95, Nursi, Said: 45 Ocabie, Marie: 407N164 Ocalan, Abdullah: 18, 62 October (1931) uprising: 81–2, 132, 143, 144 Olgun, Ergun: 386N76 Omirou, Yiannakis: Annan Plan: 226, 298, 302–3, 317; NO: 302–3, 404N120 Oostlander, Ari: 244 OPEK: 309, 310 opinion polls: Cyprus elections 23, 126; EU–Turkey: 73, 342N149; G/Cs–solution: 328–9, 356N287; Greek–Turkish relations: 11; Helsinki accord: 129, 357N295; T/Cs–solution: 166, 247; Turkey: 52, 55, 67–8, 69, 70, 342N148; see also Annan Plan Orek, Osman: 105 OSLO (PRIO): 33, 335N38, 368N8 Ozal, Turgut: 15–16, 26, 46–9, 51–2, 57–8, 62, 68, 154, 155, 179–80, 200, 338N41; abrogation of 1964 decree: 17, 333N49; UN Cyprus initiative: 24, 26, 57–8, 179–80, 200 Ozgok, Hilmi: 286 Ozgur, Ozker: 158–9, 241, 365N196 Ozkan, Necati: 141, 142, 144, 344N32 Pact, Venizelos–Atatürk: 11–12, 59, 61, 80, 139, 142–3 Palmer, Herbert: 81 Pamuk, Orhan: 69 Palley, Claire: 216, 217, 276, 372N91, 372N93, 381N257, 392N208, 393N212,

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INDEX 395N259, 397N8, 398N28, 398N31 Panagopoulos, Christos: 258 Panaretos (Archbishop): 78 Pancyprian Citizens Movement: 227 Pangalos, Theodoros: 17–19, 21, 27, 58, 63, 127, 340N101 Papadopoulos, Georgios (junta): 103, 107–8 Papadopoulos, Tassos: 93, 116, 117, 121, 123–4, 222, 223, 246, 247, 276–77, 287–8, 299, 306, 327–9, 353N233, 354N262, 370N47, 392N201; donors Conference: 314, 315, 321, 406N163, 407N165; letter to UNSG (28.2.03): 236, 238, 387N89, 391N177; letter to UNSG (17.12.03): 251, 262, 264, 390N166, 394N228; letter to the UNSG (7.6.04): 271–2, 312, 400N52, 400N53; President: 386N82, 393N216; and Rauf Denktas: 247, 259, 261, 264, 392N208; and Serdar Denktas: 260, 255–62, 269–72, 275, 278, 279, 281, 289, 293, 299–300, 393N212, 397N23; the NO campaign: 315–321, 408N174, 410N196, 410N198, 410N204, 410N207, 410N208; see also Annan Plan, Bürgenstock Papagos, Alexandros: 13, 27, 85, 86 Papaioannou, Ezekias: 84, 89, 119, 120 Papanastasiou, Alexandros: 12 Papandreou, Andreas: 15–18, 114, 118, 120, 121, 124, 353N252, 354N256; visit to Cyprus: 118–19 Papandreou, Georgios: 59, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100 Papandreou, Giorgos A.: 7–9, 18, 36, 58, 65, 67, 70, 75, 121, 245, 260, 304, 307, 323 Papapetrou, Michael: 306 Papariga, Aleka: 224, 383N19 Paris, Mark (US Ambassador in Turkey): 32 Party ‘Union with Turkey’: 138 Party: ‘Cyprus is Turkish’: 146 PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement): 10, 17, 118, 120, 224, 278 Patriarchate (Ecumenical): 14, 315, 326, 328, 347N105 Patriotic Unity Movement: 161 Pavlos (Bishop of Kyrenia): 308

Peace Conference Paris (1919): 137–8 PEO (Pancyprian Labor Union): 144, 148 Perdikis, Giorgos: 234 Pfirter, Didier: 106, 107, 217; settlers: 392N201 Pipinelis, Panayiotis: 103, 105, 350N182 Plastiras, Nikolaos: 86, 345N64 Platform ‘Common Vision’: 165, 239, 366N228, 387N94 Platform ‘This Country is Ours’: 161–2, 164, 239, 310, 365N204, 366N228, 387N94 Platform ‘United European Cyprus’: 310, 316 Plaza, Galo: 99, 169–70, 351N195, 351N212, 367N3 plebiscites (for enosis): 81, 84–5, 145 Pleuger, Gunter: 407N164 Pollitt, Harry: 82, 344N41 Pontos: 77, 84 Poos, Jacques: 123, 244, 408N172 Powell, Colin: 225, 300, 312, 406N164 PRIO: 33, 335N38 Prodi, Romano: 71, 225, 231, 232, 263, 264 Prodromou, Prodromos: 226, 294, 385N48, 405N133 protaxis: 16, 121, 123–4, 177–8 Rasmussen, Anders Fong: 225, 231 Referendum 24 April 2004: xv, xviii, 95, 116, 117, 120, 121, 186, 278, 281 Rolandis, Nikos: 369N26 Rothe, Mechtild: 303 RP (Welfare Party): 31, 49, 51–4 Russia: 22, 30, 32, 35, 41, 62, 70–1, 275, 301–2, 404N115, 406N164; veto UNSC resolution on Cyprus: 301–2, 404N115 S–300 Missiles: 31, 32, 34, 62, 70, 71, 122, 127, 227, 356N288 Said, Ahmed: 142 Samaras, Antonis: 25, Sandys, Duncan: 96 Schieder, Peter: 406N164 Schroeder, Gerhard: 232, 406N164 Schumann, Robert: 1, 326 Schwimmer, Walter: 406N164 Second World War: 2, 5, 12,13, 29, 41, Seferis Giorgos: 90, 350N174

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Servas, Ploutis: 83 Sèvres syndrome: 57, 60 Sezer, Ahmet Necet: 54, 286 SIGMA (Channel): 318–19 Simitis, Costas: 7–10, 18, 36, 58, 67, 63, 75, 121, 128, 197, 224, 226, 231–2, 238, 232, 234, 253, 254, 267, 304, 307, 323, 395N258 403N106 Sofronios (Archbishop): 77, 78, 80 Solana, Javier: 225, 231, 264, 406N164 Soviet Union: 23–4, 41, 46, 72, 100, 105, 107, 119, 348N148, 349N165, 351N216 Soysal, Mumtaz: 57 Stefanopoulos, Costis: 224 Stoforopoulos, Efthymios: 124, 355N272 Storrs, Ronald: 139, 140, 141, 142 Straw, Jack: 244, 406N164 Stylianides, Christos: 307, 310, 405N140 syncretism (in Cyprus): 131–2 Sufi orders: 44–5, 51 Syllouris, Demetris: 226, 385N48, 405N133 Tafal, Ozorio: 103, 106 Talat, Mehmet Ali: 219, 239–40, 244, 245, 248, 261–264, 298, 407, 390N157, 394N234, 407N165; 390N155; Agreement (8 July 2006): 329, 412N10; see also Bürgenstock T/C positions (1968): 104–6, 351N195, 351N196, 351N212; T/C proposals (1978): 192, 199, 376N147; T/C proposals (1981): 171, 192, 199 T/C proposals (1989): 192, 200 Ten-Point Agreement: 372N94 TFSC (Turkish Federated State of Cyprus): 156, 157, 372N84 The Hague: 236–9, 248–54, 263 387N89, 391N177, 391N184 Themistocleous, Andreas: 134 Theodotou, Theofanis: 142 TKP (Communal Liberation Party): 157–8, 160, 239, 241 TMT (Turkish Resistance Movement): 93, 145, 146, 147–8, 152, 157–8, 361N117; character: 150–1; Deniz: 98; founded: 150; TMT–B: 247 Tornaritis, Criton: 151 Treaty of Alliance: 179, 212, 285, 286, 290

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Treaty of Guarantee: 179, 211–13, 285, 300, 378N215, 378N217 Treaty of Lausanne: 13–14, 138, 149, 359N60 Triantafyllides, Michael: 103 Tripartite Conference, London (1955): 14, 17, 57, 89, 101, 267 TRNC (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus): 71, 159–60, 163, 164, 166, 175, 176, 187, 218, 239, 245, 270, 293, 327, 372N84; National Coordination Council: 158, 162, 325, 411N1 Troutbeck talks (July 1997): 33 Tselepis, Toumazos: 213, 216, 283, 285, 288, 316, 319, 378N206, 378N208 Tsovolas, Demetris: 224 Tuomioja, Sakari: 170, 367N3 Turkes, Alparslan: 42, 47, 50 Turkey: xvi–xvii, 8, 19, 21–5, 28–30, 39–76, 95, 99–100, 103–5, 126, 127, 138, 145, 147, 148, 152, 256, 257–8, 260, 265, 270, 293, 328, 349N165, 361N119; agrarian question: 337N35; coup (1960): 47; coup (1971): 47–8, 50, 108; coup (1980): 47–8; earthquakes (Aug. 1999): 63–5; deep state: 39–40, 47, 58, 66, 69, 72, 76244, 298, 393N16; EU accession process: xvi, 9, 11, 16–17, 19, 21, 24, 29, 33, 36–7, 58, 66–76, 129, 174, 230, 239–41, 244; invasion/occupation of Cyprus: xvii, 14–15, 23–4, 50, 58, 61, 88, 89, 99, 100, 103, 107, 110, 112, 114, 117, 118, 124, 128, 154–8, 170, 172–3, 182, 208, 211, 255–6, 266, 269, 288, 292, 334N9, 363N152, 364N182, 365N191, 366N212, 366N220; Left movement: 47–8; nationalism: 12, 41, 49–50, 54, 56–7, 59, 62, 70; OYAK: 336N13; Pan-Turkism: 12, 41–2, 56, 59–60, 72, 85, 137, 144, 146, 336N1, 336N10, 339N77; Piri Reis: 15, 62; preemptive defence (enosis): xvi, 14, 28 56, 62, 148–9; Sismik: 15, 61; soft coup (1997): 53; NSC: 53, 54, 72, 286, 394N234, 400N60; state capitalism: 47, 337N33, 340N118; Young

Turks: 41, 45; see also Armenian genocide, Gecekondu, Imia crisis, Islam, Johnson’s letter, Kemalism, Kurdish question, Sèvres syndrome Turkish Cypriots: elections (14.12.2003): 241, 244, 245, 247–8, 260, 262, 389N142, 390N155; The Embassy: 162, 411N1; emigration to Turkey: 138, 140, 359N64; National Congress:141–2; reaction to enosis: 85, 131–4, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144, 150, 357N12, 359N57; separate administration: 372N84; solution/accession: 161, 162, 165, 166, 219, 239, 241, 243, 260, 324, 325; uprising against Denktas: 127, 130, 160, 161–7, 365N204, 365N205, 366N220, 366N227, 366N228, 367N230, 367N238 Turkmen, Ilter: 385N51 TUSIAD (Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association): 46, 63, 69 UBP (National Unity Party): 157, 158, 160 UNFICYP (United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus): 161, 169, 172, 228, 285, 289, 328 UNGA Resolution 3212: 170 UNSC reports to (8.10.1991): 179–82; (19.12.1991): 179–81; (3.4.92): 181, 182, 188, 190; (21.8.92): 182, 184; (19.11.92): 184; (1.4.03): 200–1, 215, 235, 236–8, 242–3, 262, 267, 271–2, 290–1, 387N89; (12.11.03): 261; (16.4.04): 300, 314; (28.5.04): 205, 395N254, 400N52 UNSC Resolutions: (186): 169; (244): 350N169; (353): 170; (367): 185; (541,550): 175; (649): 188; (716): 188; (750):188; (774): 184; (1217,1218): 34, 127, 356N289; (1250): 35; (1475): 243, 253 United States: xvi, 15, 21–38, 74, 293, 300, 311, 312–13; and Cyprus: 23, 31, 36–8, 75, 95, 97–8, 103, 110, 124, 126, 147, 173, 180, 233, 334N9, 336N46, 348N129, 352N221,

367N3; and Greece: 23, 31, 36, 75, 103, 233; Turkey: 21–4, 28–31, 35, 36–8, 74–5, 103, 171, 173–4, 233, 342N159, 343N161; hegemony: 36, 74–5; Johnson’s letter syndrome: 23–4, 26, 29, 173 Van den Brook, Hans: 27 Van der Meer, Adriaan: 253, 284 Vassiliou, Giorgos: 17, 25, 122, 156, 178–185, 190, 200, 306, 310, 370N37, 370N47, 370N48, 402N94 Vassiliou, Vassos: 14 Veniamin, Christodoulos: 107 Venizelos, Eleftherios: 11, 12, 59, 61, 80, 103 Venizelos, Sofoclis: 85–6, 95, 97 Verheugen, Gunter: 230, 240, 244, 247, 261, 261, 275, 278, 284, 291–2, 293, 311, 314, 316, 368N22, 406N164; CBC: 316; ‘Deceived’: 292, 300, 403N107 Vienna talks (1977): 370N41, 374N144 Volkan: 146 Vuruskan, Riza: 150–2, 362N137 Waldheim, Kurt: 170–3, 179; evaluation (1981): 368N7 Weston, Tomas: 243, 244, 245, 249, 249, 250, 251, 254, 258, 261, 262, 264, 275, 277; Tassos Papadopoulos: 392N201, 394N228 Williams, Jim: 30 Winster, Lord: 150 Yilmaz, Mesut: 8, 26, 180, 181, 334N9, 371N49 Yiorgadjis, Polykarpos: 93, 97–9, 102, 348N149, 362N148; murdered: 107 Young Turks: 133, 134, 135, 136, 137 Zahariades, Nikos: 82, 344N41 Zekia, Bey: 103, 142 Zepos, Costas: 385N48 Ziartides, Andreas: 344N41 Ziyal, Ugur: document: 282–7, 293, 399N32, 400N48, 400N57 Zorba, Myrsini: 260 Zorlu, Fatin Rustu: 91, 148, 150, 152, 362N137