The future of Cyprus

This process actually began at the December 1999 Luxembourg summit and was confirmed by then Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and our government at the Helsinki summit where Turkey was also declared an EU candidate country. In response to Ecevit’s objections to Nicosia’s candidacy, an official appendix was added, saying, ‘While the negotiations on the paragraph on Cyprus continue, it is not aimed at admitting Cyprus to the EU; the aim is that the EU will review the conditions at that time.’

It’s been four years since the Helsinki summit. Southern Cyprus will become EU member on May 1. After a 65% ‘yes’ vote, the Turks in the North are watching this with sadness. For despite TRNC President Rauf Denktas’s advocates saying, ‘The EU won’t admit the Greeks alone in any case, and even if they do, this would work to the TRNC’s favor,’ we can see that victories can also be won through diplomacy. If Denktas and his group had accepted a solution at the 2002 Copenhagen summit and negotiations at The Hague, then the Greek Cypriots wouldn’t have been able to exclude the TRNC. The assumption that Cyprus could be taken from the Turks via the UN plan proved baseless. To the contrary, as a result of the Greek’s ‘no’ vote, the TRNC has been left to the Turks forever! But what if this situation, which seems to be advantageous, brings about a solution pulling Turkish Cypriots, who will carry EU passports, into the south? Also, income inequality within the TRNC will grow once the embargo is lifted. Will Cyprus then lose?

A new political settlement on the island seems inevitable. The TRNC could also be pulled into an early election after Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat’s pressure, which says that there’s no place for Denktas in the process after these events. But Denktas won’t quit now. Denktas believed that the EU would find a solution for Cyprus by May 1, but this didn’t happen. The Greeks who rejected the plan will become EU members and the Turkish Cypriots, which accepted it, are being left outside. We have to be cool-headed in discussing the future of the island.”