ON TO SWITZERLAND

In his stead, TRNC Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat and Foreign Minister Serdar Denktas will accompany Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis are also set to weigh in a few days later.

What’s the picture on the Turkish side in the runup to Switzerland? Denktas’s decision not to go shows that he doesn’t expect anything positive to emerge for his side from the summit. The lack of progress in the talks so far and the Greek Cypriots’ unyielding stance have led him to this view. Denktas said that if the Turkish side’s sine qua nons are absent from the final UN plan, the TRNC will urge its citizens to reject the plan in a referendum. Denktas’s support for the plan depends on getting the sine qua nons accepted in Switzerland. If he gets this, Denktas will say ‘yes’ and call on the nation to do the same.

On the other hand, Premier Talat has been arguing from the very beginning that accepting United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s plan even as it is would be preferable to rejecting it. Serdar Denktas’s stance is different. He argued that Ankara and the TRNC should take a united stance on the sine qua nons before going to Switzerland, indicating that he thinks these planks must be taken in at the Swiss talks. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that Serdar Denktas will say yes to Annan’s current plan and campaign for the referendum that way. In addition, if Serdar Denktas is at odds with Talat, this could create a TRNC government crisis.

As for Ankara’s stance, following yesterday’s meeting between Erdogan, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok and Gul, it was stressed that Turkey would hold firm on the sine qua nons. Gul stated that this line would be pursued and defended in Switzerland. If this stance yields results and Annan’s plan is changed to include the sine qua nons, there will be smooth sailing. Then it would be easy to hold a referendum with Denktas’s support to get a ‘yes’ result. Otherwise, defending the unaltered plan and seeking a yes vote won’t be easy for Erdogan or Gul either. Let’s hope that Switzerland sees the changes in the plan that proved elusive on Cyprus, namely the Turkish side’s sine qua nons, and that the Greek Cypriots and European Union see the light and relent.”