Shotgun deal for Cyprus could backfire
By Clement Dodd
The Cyprus dispute is reaching a crisis point. The European Union summit in Copenhagen next week is expected to make a decision on the divided island's membership of the EU. Turkey will also be looking for the promise of a starting date for its own accession negotiations. The new Turkish government is inclined to strike a deal. Yet Ankara cannot easily force a solution on the democratically elected Turkish Cypriot government. It cannot ignore the will of the people of northern Cyprus, who enjoy much popular support in Turkey, including that of the influential military.
The United Nations has at the last minute produced a complex and detailed plan for a Cyprus solution. It provides for the creation of a federal state. Both the Greek and Turkish Cypriots would have their own "component states" that would be sovereign in a wide range of functions. In addition there would be a "common state" responsible for external and EU relations, monetary policy and immigration. The presidential council, elected by a central parliament, would decide by majority vote. There is no effective provision for vetoes by each community's representatives. In short, the central institutions would be dominated by the Greek Cypriots. This denies the perpetual Turkish Cypriot demand for an "equal partnership state", enjoyed under the 1960 constitution and in subsequent UN proposals.
The UN plan also proposes a reduction of Turkish Cypriot held territory. This is not in itself unreasonable but it includes the cession of the only really fertile area in northern Cyprus. This territorial change, together with acceptance of the general right of Greek Cypriots displaced in 1974 to return to their properties, could produce some 50,000 Turkish Cypriot refugees, a quarter of the population. Up to a third of the residents in the north could eventually be Greek Cypriot. Also, there are no serious restrictions on the likely Greek Cypriot domination of the Turkish Cypriot economy. Under EU norms it would be difficult to prevent Greek Cypriots investing in the north.
The Greek Cypriot government has declared itself willing to treat the plan as a basis for negotiations but polls show that most Greek Cypriots are against it. They believe it does not give them back the political control that is their due. Nor does it return enough of the territory and property they abandoned in 1974. They also fear violence if they live among Turkish Cypriots.
It is unlikely that the Turkish Cypriots will accept the plan. They fear they will be turned into a minority and will be dominated economically, even bought up, by Greek Cypriots determined to regain the north. In the absence of President Rauf Denktash, still recovering from surgery, Dervish Eroglu, the Turkish Cypriot prime minister, has roundly condemned it.
Would it be a disaster if the plan were rejected? On the contrary, if the UN and EU pushed the two sides into a shotgun marriage the mixing of the two communities might result in inter-communal strife of the sort seen recently in the Balkans but not in Cyprus since 1974. Violence on the island could not be easily restrained. It would undermine the good relations now established between Greece and Turkey. And the membership of a deeply disturbed island would not be beneficial for the EU.
A better and simpler way forward would be for the Greek Cypriots to renounce their claims to sovereignty over a state that has governed itself for 27 years, in return for the surrender of territory and satisfaction over property claims. Freed from onerous international embargoes, the Turkish Cypriots would then be able to develop their impoverished economy through international tourism, as the Greek Cypriots have done. A way would then be open, outside the EU, for a less problematical and baleful relationship than the UN plan promises.
Will the lack of a settlement cause a crisis? Will it really put an end to Turkey's ambitions to join the EU? That must surely depend on whether the leading European states see a liberal and democratic Turkey as an important safeguard of Middle Eastern energy supplies, particularly from the Caspian, and for combating terrorism based in the Middle East. The pressures now being exerted on Turkey to oblige the Turkish Cypriots to accept the UN plan are ill-considered. A development as historic as Turkey's accession to the EU must depend on an evaluation of Turkey's economic and strategic value to Europe and the extent to which its political norms converge with those of the Union. The Cyprus issue should not be allowed to dominate the scene. (Our italics)
FINANCIAL TIMES 05/12/2002
By Jean Christou
By Jean Christou
A Christmas vote for Turkey
At its Copenhagen summit next week, the European Union must decide whether to give Turkey a date to begin EU accession negotiations. The new Justice and Development party (AKP) government elected last month, and a clear majority of about three-quarters of Turks, fervently want a date. The US is also irritating EU leaders by pressing them hard to let Turkey in. In the short term, Washington wants Turkey, Nato's only Muslim member, to provide extra bases and perhaps open a northern front against Iraq in the event of a war to topple Saddam Hussein. Its strategic goal, however, is to tie Turkey into a democratic club. This would demonstrate that Islam and democracy can co-exist and would provide a beacon to autocratic Muslim countries to Turkey's east and south - countries currently in danger of sinking into the miasma that incubates Osama bin Laden and his kind.
The EU should swallow its resentment at US pressure and embrace that strategic goal. The Turkish experiment might just tip the balance in the Islamic world towards a more hopeful political future.
In essence, the question is whether the AKP, a party with Islamist roots now ruling from the centre under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its charismatic leader, can pioneer a fully democratic Turkey with a Muslim identity. It would become, in effect, a Muslim Democrat party analogous to the Christian Democrats who dominated Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries in the postwar era - and contrast with Islamists elsewhere, who are often hostile to democracy and thus provide an alibi to entrenched despots anxious to hold back democratic change. Mr Erdogan has a historic chance to leap these barriers, both for Turkey and for the wider Muslim world.
It is not an easy choice. Although the EU offered Turkey membership all of three decades ago, EU leaders have since dissembled behind layers of procedural waffle. But Ankara now knows what is required of it: pressure on Turkish Cypriot leaders to compromise on a power-sharing system with Greek Cypriots on the divided island; reforms in human, democratic and minority rights; and an end to military tutelage of government. If Ankara sticks to this course, it is hard to see how the EU can deny Turkey eventual entry.
The very prospect gave Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, chairman of the convention on the EU's constitutional future, the vapours last month, when he said Turkish entry would be "the end of Europe". There are real problems about Turkish entry: its size, its relative poverty, its political traditions. The EU will need to look at these issues with open eyes - and consider afresh in the process how an already unwieldy union would function with a new giant from the east. But it will have time: any transition period to membership would last 10-15 years.
And however much Mr Giscard's distasteful outburst reflects the thinking of some EU leaders, what it really demonstrates is how much Europe has still to learn about being multicultural.
FINANCIAL TIMES 05/12/2002
Britain will use all its influence to ensure a date is agreed next week for Turkey to start negotiations on membership of the European Union, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, promised the country's new political leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last night.
Mr Straw urged Mr Erdogan to secure parliamentary ratification for a new raft of human rights reforms – approved by the Turkish cabinet yesterday – in time for the EU summit in Copenhagen, on Thursday and Friday next week, which will consider Turkish candidacy.
But Mr Straw went his furthest yet in making clear that Britain would be taking a lead in seeking to secure a firm date for negotiations to start. He went out of his way to praise Turkey for the "significant progress" it has made on human rights.
Turkey is widely criticised for its record of torture in prisons and other abuses, but last year it introduced 34 measures to improve human rights, followed by another 14 in August, including the abolition of the death penalty. Yesterday the cabinet approved a 36-point package aimed at meeting EU criteria for entry.
Mr Straw, who signed a joint UK-Turkey action plan to help Ankara fulfil EU entry criteria, said: "The point I keep making to my colleagues in Europe is that they have got to think strategically, as Mr Erdogan is doing, about the best future for this very large country on our eastern flanks.
"Ultimately, the future of Turkey is in the hands of the Turkish people but we can be a force in securing a good future for it."
Turkey will dominate much of the Copenhagen summit because its support is pivotal in two areas. Ankara can help secure an agreement between Nato and the EU on pooling command and control assets for Europe's security and defence policy – and, more crucial still, its support is needed for reaching political agreement on the UN-brokered plan for the future of Cyprus.
Britain and the US – which wants an early start to EU negotiations for Turkey as part of its efforts to secure Ankara's support for possible war in Iraq – are hoping for agreement on Cyprus, Nato and EU membership, which are heavily interdependent.
In talks with Mr Straw yesterday Mr Erdogan appeared to be warming rapidly to the UN plan for Cyprus which would make the Greek and Turkish sectors autonomous within a light federal structure. But negotiations involving the Greek and Turkish Cypriots are expected to continue right up to the deadline at the end of next week.
One key human rights measure EU leaders are hoping Mr Erdogan will have pushed through before the summit is a retrial of five Kurdish politicians who were expelled from parliament in 1995 and jailed for 15 years after what is widely regarded as a mistrial.
Mr Straw insisted he was "not in the least complacent'' about Turkish human rights records but added: "Human rights have not always been perfect either in applicant states or in the past in a number of existing EU states.''
Supporters of Turkish EU entry believe that the negotiating process is the best guarantee that its new government will persist with far-reaching human rights reforms.
In London on Monday Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said the continued exclusion of Turkey from the EU was "unthinkable''. Mr Wolfowitz was meeting Mr Straw in Ankara last night.
France blunts German move on Turkish entry
Mr Schröder emerged from a dinner with Mr Chirac near Berlin to announce that they would take a joint stance at next week's EU summit in Copenhagen and that it would send Ankara a "clear signal". But he declined to provide any information about the purported agreement, saying that other EU members had to be informed first of their position.
Sources close to the talks, however, said the Franco-German proposal was for a meeting of EU states at the end of 2004 -and then only to discuss Turkey's progress towards achieving the membership criteria. The new government in Ankara, which wants the EU to set a firm date for the start of accession talks, would regard such an outcome as disappointing, if not downright humiliating.
Speaking in Slovenia, en route from talks in Ankara, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said Turkey's role in guaranteeing European security over the past half century as a crucial Nato member meant Ankara's ambitions should be fulfilled. "We want to see a firm date for the start of accession negotiations. I hope we get one in Copenhagen," said Mr Straw. "We support them very strongly."
Turkey's application has implications for a wide range of issues. A mutually agreeable outcome would ease the difficulties the EU has brought on itself by agreeing to take in Cyprus, which is partly occupied by Turkish forces. It would also clear a path to defence coordination between the EU and Nato, which Ankara is currently blocking.
The reported outcome of last night's Franco-German talks fell far short of expectations Chancellor Schröder himself had raised on Tuesday when he declared that he wanted the summit to send the Turks "a strong, positive signal".
Germany's leading newspapers yesterday carried front-page stories heralding a major Franco-German initiative and, shortly before leaving for his meeting with Mr Chirac, the chancellor came under attack in parliament for his enthusiasm for Turkish entry.
Michael Glos, a leading Christian Democrat, told MPs that "Turkey is neither economically nor politically ripe for entry into the European Union". He said an expansion of the EU beyond the Bosphorus would "destroy the European project".
Mr Schröder defended early membership, saying it would ensure Turkey "didn't drift off into Islamic fundamentalism".
The German chancellor has a keen interest in promoting Ankara's cause as a way of repairing relations with the US which is the foremost supporter of Turkey's EU candidacy. Mr Schröder was re-elected in September after a controversial campaign that focused on opposition to US policy towards Iraq and left President Bush reportedly seething with indignation.