MISTAKES AND DECEPTION

The following issues are mistakes: First of all there’s no clear agreement. The final version of the plan isn’t a package on which the parties ever agreed. It is a mass of coercions written by aides to the UN secretary-general saying, ‘this meets you halfway’ and then communicated to the parties. Secondly, there’s no precedent in international law of bringing such a blueprint to a referendum. A referendum should be based on a definite text prepared by an authority, or it should be a text on which the parties are agreed so that the people know that the agreement will be accepted if they vote in its favor. None of these conditions now exists. The UN General Secretariat, whose authority is controversial, exercised its ‘goodwill mission’ granted by the Security Council and made the parties accept it through threats and deception. The text is devoid of compromise. Thirdly, setting aside judicial disagreements on various issues, this ‘map of zones’ is a map being presented to those who’ll live there without any discussion.

The deceptive issue is as follows: The exceptions (derogations) brought to the plan to protect the rights of the Turks on the island lack strong guarantees and can be invalidated by the courts of the European Union or the European Council. These exceptions should be guaranteed. In addition, reservations should be added to guarantee the exceptions in the European Convention of Human Rights, while ending the European Council membership of the Republic of Cyprus and admitting a united republic of Cyprus as a new state. More importantly, an absolutely justified Turkey is being made to hand over land and a country, forced to reach an agreement, as if it’s paying the price for being the party which started a war and then lost it. In all of world history there is only one other example of this: The Ottoman Empire, which had to grant Crete to Greece after a victory against a massacre by the island’s Greeks.”