The leaders of both parts of Cyprus have agreed to new negotiations on the future of the island in the most serious diplomatic effort since talks in Switzerland collapsed in 2017. But they won’t start just yet.
Trying again in Cyprus
When United Nations secretary general António Guterres visited Cyprus this week, he first met Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman separately and then later together over dinner in the UN buffer zone in Nicosia. The following morning, he said he was convening a “5+1” meeting with the two Cypriot leaders and representatives from Greece, Turkey and Britain, the three guarantor powers for the island since the end of British rule in 1960.
“No timetable has been fixed. We will work together as quickly and as effectively as possible,” he said.
Guterres’s caution is informed by the history of failed attempts to reach a settlement on the island, which has been divided since Turkey invaded the north in 1974. That invasion was in response to a Cypriot National Guard coup backed by the military dictatorship in Athens aimed at unifying the island with Greece.
The Republic of Cyprus, which controls the southern, Greek-speaking part of the country, is a member of the European Union and is internationally recognised as the sole legitimate government of the entire island. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which controls the northern part of the island and declared independence in 1983, is recognised only by Turkey.
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The fresh impetus behind the effort to find a settlement has two main sources, one of them an opportunity and the other a threat. The opportunity comes from Erhürman’s election victory in Northern Cyprus last year on a platform backing a more flexible approach to negotiations.
Since the failure of talks in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana in 2017, Turkish Cypriot leaders have retreated into a hardline position of demanding a two-state solution based on sovereign equality. Erhürman supports a bi-zonal, bi-communal solution based on political equality and a continued role for Ankara as a guarantor for Turkish Cypriots.
The threat comes from the increasingly dangerous security situation in the Middle East that saw Iran strike one of Britain’s two sovereign military bases on the island earlier this year. Guterres referred to the regional context when he met Christodoulides this week.
“If there is a moment in which a solution for the Cyprus problem is important, it is this moment of chaos in the region,” he said.
“And with some geopolitical changes that could all of a sudden put Cyprus more in the centre of unnecessary events, so we are very much interested in finding solutions.”
Populated by Greek-speaking communities since classical antiquity, Cyprus was annexed by the Ottoman Empire in 1571 after which Turkish speakers began to settle on the island. It became a British colony in the 19th century until independence in 1960, with Britain, Greece and Turkey named as guarantors of a new, powersharing constitutional arrangement and retaining the right to intervene militarily.
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Designed to balance power between Greek Cypriots, who made up 80 per cent of the population and Turkish Cypriots who accounted for 18 per cent, powersharing collapsed within three years. Greek Cypriots complained it gave Turkish Cypriots disproportionate influence, with veto power on taxation, security, foreign affairs and local government.
Greek Cypriot attempts to reduce the minority’s rights in 1963 sparked intercommunal violence that prompted the deployment of UN peacekeepers, including Irish soldiers, the following year. The Turkish invasion that followed the 1974 coup saw the island divided, with a UN buffer zone becoming a permanent, militarised strip running 180km across the island.
A UN-brokered plan that was put to the people of Cyprus in a referendum in 2004 would have seen the creation of a new, bi-zonal, bi-communal federation called the United Cyprus Republic. The federal government would have been responsible for foreign affairs, defence, federal budget, central bank, citizenship, with most other functions devolved.
Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of the deal by 65 per cent to 35 per cent but Greek Cypriots rejected it by 76 per cent to 24 per cent. Because it needed the support of both communities, the referendum result meant that the deal was dead.
The talks in Crans-Montana in 2017 collapsed after 10 days over the issue of Turkey’s role, with Ankara agreeing to withdraw all its troops but seeking a residual security role during a transition period. Turkey will be central in the forthcoming talks too, as it links the future of Cyprus to its relationship with the EU.
The EU is not a formal participant in the negotiations but all sides agree it will play an important role in shaping technical and legal arrangements for any transition as well as in dealings with Ankara. Turkey is expected to seek changes to its customs union with the EU, visa liberalisation for its citizens and access for its arms companies to the EU’s Safe defence initiative.
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