Time running out for Cyprus settlement

By Delphine Strauss in Nicosia

Time is running out to reach a settlement on the divided island of Cyprus, where a 35-year conflict remains the biggest obstacle to Turkey’s progress towards European Union membership.

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders are intensifying negotiations following calls from the UN Security Council to “accelerate momentum” after nearly a year of limited progress.

Turkey faces a crucial year-end review of its EU accession bid, and there are fears that unless there is a breakthrough on Cyprus an opportunity for progress will have been lost.

Stepping up talks is a response to two new threats to hopes of a federal solution to Cyprus’s division – which dates back to 1974, when Turkish troops occupied the north after an Athens-engineered coup.

Elections last month in the breakaway Turkish north – recognised as a state only by Ankara – returned to power an old-style nationalist party, many of whose voters oppose reunification.

Shortly after that, the European Court of Justice issued a judgment affecting one of the most contentious areas of talks. It ruled that courts in the EU should enforce a Greek Cypriot judgment on disputed property.

“It is unbelievable, it caused a great blow to negotiations,” Mehmet Ali Talat, who is still leading negotiations in spite of his party’s electoral defeat, said.

Mr Talat has staked his political future on the drive for a “bicommunal, bizonal federation”, alongside Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot president . Their success or failure will reverberate outside the island, as without a settlement there is little prospect of Greek Cypriots lifting blocks on key areas of Turkey’s EU membership negotiations.

The EU considers the situation in Cyprus urgent because member states, not least the Greek Cypriots, must decide by December how to handle a review of Turkey’s bid if Ankara does not open Turkish ports to Greek Cypriot traffic.

Yet Mr Christofias knows compromises would anger his coalition partners. George Iacovou, his representative in talks, described hopes of rapid progress as “wishful thinking”.

A despondent Mr Talat says the EU is to blame for Turkish Cypriots’ waning enthusiasm for reunification. He cites the EU’s failure to open markets to northern Cypriot trade and accuses it of favouring Greek Cypriots. After the ECJ ruling, he said “this is crystal clear, there is no vagueness”.

Even if the EU sidesteps the Cyprus issue when it reviews Turkey’s EU bid in December, Mr Talat faces his own deadline with presidential elections in the north next spring. And as negotiations drag on – with progress in technical areas, but divergences on contentious issues of governance and property – Cypriots in both communities are losing interest.

Turkish Cypriots voted conclusively in 2004 for a UN-brokered deal that Greek Cypriots rejected. The defeat of Mr Talat’s party in last month’s elections is partly because of a downturn in the Turkish Cypriot economy. Yet voters have also endorsed a nationalist party whose leader, the 72 year-old Dervis Eroglu, is openly sceptical that a federal arrangement can succeed.

He said his government would continue distributing titles to land owned by absentee Greek Cypriots and added that, if a UK court followed the ECJ’s guidance and enforced Greek Cypriot claims on land in the north, “our people will push us to get out of negotiations”.

Turkey exerts enormous influence over the Turkish Cypriot administration, and has delivered stern warnings to Mr Eroglu to support a settlement. But as Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s EU negotiator, points out, any Turkish government perceived as selling out on Cyprus risks losing millions of votes.

Ayla Gurel, a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, says Turkish Cypriots are starting to doubt that the EU can solve their problems. “Their impression is that the EU framework cannot be a guarantee because the courts can always choose to overrule political decisions,” she said.