New Hope for Cyprus

The border, like many others that have divided cities, is ugly.

Barbed wire covers the no man’s land in Nicosia. Guard posts covered in peeling paint house armed soldiers keeping a watch over the buffer zone that has separated the Republic of Cyprus and the breakway Turkish Republic of North Cyprus for more than 27 years.

This week there is renewed hope that the two sides will find a way to end their divided existence. Cyprus President Glafcos Clerides, 81, and Rauf Denktash, 77, the leader of the Turkish republic, agreed on Tuesday to hold talks on ending the division on United Nations ground in Cyprus in mid-January.

The announcement on Tuesday came after a short face-to-face discussion between Denktash and Clerides, the first such talk in four years. With European Union membership promised to the Greek half of the island, the two parties are now trying to find a speedy resolution to a problem that has befuddled international negotiators for more than two decades.

The European Union has made it clear that the Republic of Cyprus, the flourishing Greek southern two thirds of the island, will most likely gain entry into the EU within the next two years. If necessary, the Turkish northern third, which has struggled economically and is recognized only by Turkey, will be left out of the EU agreement.

Threats of War

As a NATO-member, Turkey still has 35,000 troops stationed on the island. They are left over from Turkey’s 1974 invasion when Greek Cypriots sympathetic to a military dictatorship in Greece tried seizing control of the island.

Turkey’s prime minister has said that abandoning Cyprus would be equal to “sacrficing a piece of Turkey’s soil” and has promised to annex the northern half if the Republic of Cyprus gains EU membership. Turkish government officials have said that such a development could spark war between NATO partners Turkey and Greece.

EU membership

Threats of war between the two countries, which in the past have regularly bickered over air and sea space in the Aegean Sea, are nothing new. But behind the threats this time is a very real worry that a Cyprus EU accession, without the Turkish northern half, could damage Turkey’s EU dreams.

The island's EU prospects seem to have expanded into an internal conflict in Turkey as well. The Turkish government has been emphasizing the need to recognize two separate states and ethnic groups in Cyprus. But that stance is rejected both by the United Nations and the more market-oriented Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen Association.

The Turkish group is pressing for a quick resolution that would speed Cyprus’s membership into the EU and not obstruct Turkey’s membership hopes. Gunther Verheugen, the EU Commissioner for Englargement, has said Turkey will lose its chance to join the EU if it annexes northern Cyprus.

International Pressure

Representatives of the United States, after years of fleeting interest in the island, have also joined the UN and EU in applying international pressure. Secretary of State Colin Powell will be in Ankara on Tuesday to discuss the issue, among other things, with Turkish leaders.

“We support Cyprus’s EU accession and we are working hard to reach a solution that will help accession,” the U.S. special envoy to the region, Thomas Weston, told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini over the weekend.

How soon that resolution will come ultimately rests on the shoulders of the onetime schoolmates Clerides and Denktash.

Clerides has said Cyprus’s EU membership could serve as a “catalyst,” to resolving the Cyprus issue.

“We hope that the Turkish side will see the light and agree to Cyprus’s accession to the EU for the benefit of all Cypriots,” Clerides said recently.

His conversation partner seemed open to the possibility in a recent interview with the Associated Press, but maintained the EU question would be the make-or-break issue.

“Anything can be settled, anything can be arranged,” provided that Greek Cypriots “accept they are not representing us in the EU,” Denktash said recently.