It has been 12 years since the last attempt for a
solution to the Cyprus dispute. This time the President of the Republic of
Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and the
Turkish Cypriot community leader Mr. Mustafa Akinci are trying once again to bridge the
distance that separates the two sides. But with their whole neighborhood up in
flames as a background, this task looks as difficult as ever.
By Panagiotis Karampelas*
Introduction
The history behind this dispute is well documented and repeating it
wouldn’t help this analysis. In brief, the Cyprus dispute in its current form
was shaped after the Turkish invasion in 1974. Since then the northern 36% of
the island is occupied by Turkey, where in 1983 the Turkish Cypriot community
unilaterally formed the “Turkish Republic
of Northern Cyprus”. Since then there was a number of initiatives taken by
mainly the UN, notably in the early ‘90s the “Set of Ideas” initiated by the
then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de
Cuéllar and concluded by his successor Boutros
Boutros-Ghali with no success.
In 2004 the Republic of Cyprus became a member of the EU and in the same
year the “Annan Plan”, as it remained known, was rejected by 75,83% of the
Greek Cypriots. Since then, an
interesting development took place: natural gas was discovered inside the
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Republic of Cyprus. The prospect of
economic growth mobilized all key international players and in 2014 a new
series of negotiations begun.
However, the unsuccessful coup d'état in Turkey as well as the ongoing
war in Syria and Iraq against the IS, has increased the need of a closer look
on the risks involved in the Cyprus dispute, as one new problem in that area
may be one too many…
What
has happened so far?
In February 2014 President Nicos Anastasiades
and the then Turkish Cypriot community leader Mr. Derviş Eroğlu agreed on a Joint Declaration that was to be the
foundation of the new negotiations. These started on the May 15, 2014 with Mr. Mustafa Akinci on the Turkish
Cypriot side, after he replaced Eroglu as a leader of his community. Although
the hopes were high and there was significant progress in most chapters, with
both sides talking about a referendum even as early as 2015, the process slowed
down as disagreements started to surface. What became apparent quite early was
that Akinci wouldn’t be able to plan the Turkish Cypriot negotiating strategy
without the consent of Ankara.
As 2015 saw limited progress, the referendum was pushed forward for 2016.
Due to many leaks over what was being discussed so far and the heated
statements by the political opposition on both parts of the island, the two
sides decided not to openly disclose any new information, but instead to keep
updated only the political parties with the condition that there will be an
embargo to the press.
