Columnist Murat Yetkin, writing in Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (online, 01.05.13), published the following commentary with the above title:
“On April 29, the same day that Alexander Downer, the special Cyprus envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General, was in Ankara to talk to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay was in the Turkish half of Nicosia [Trans. Note: the occupied part of Lefkosia] to have talks with Irsen Kucuk, the ‘prime minister of the Turkish Cypriot government’ of the divided island.
Almost at the same time that Davutoglu was telling Downer that there were suitable conditions to restart talks between Turkish and Greek Cypriots, with the assistance of Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom as the guarantors of the Republic of Cyprus in 1960, Atalay was telling Kucuk that the status quo in the ‘Turkish Cypriot Republic’ [Trans. Note: the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus] was no longer sustainable and that urgent reforms were needed.
Atalay based his remarks on a survey carried out by the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV), an Ankara-based think tank, which showed that only a fifth of the population on the island are happy with the way that they are governed and that the trust in the system (symbolized in the trust in the courts) is also at the same level, according to official sources replying to Hurriyet Daily News questions. Atalay did not go as far as using a sentence which begins with the word ‘otherwise’, but considering the situation that Turkey is the unique supporter of the Turkish Cypriots, despite being blocked from entering the European Union because of that, Kucuk probably took a message out of those remarks. Cemil Cicek, the Turkish parliamentary speaker, recently said that if Turkey had to make a choice between the EU and the Turkish Cypriots’ rights, it would go for the Turkish Cypriots without any hesitation. Yet, it seems Ankara does not want to be played by the Turkish Cypriots either, while making plans to take new steps on the issue.
It is no coincidence that Atalay is also in charge of coordinating the Tayyip Erdogan government’s efforts to reach a political settlement on Turkey’s Kurdish issue. Like the Kurdish issue (having links with the human rights situation in Turkey) Cyprus is one of the top obstacles blocking Turkey’s integration with Europe – at least as it is presented by the commission and some of its key members.
The issue has not been on Ankara’s priority list for some time, but when the eurozone economic crisis hit the economy of the Greek Cypriot government in the southern two-thirds of the island concurrently with the discovery of rich natural gas fields around the Mediterranean island, the whole situation changed. Davutoglu recently told HDN that Cyprus was back on agenda along with Syria, Israel/Palestine and Iraq. Erdogan asked his Greek counterpart, Andonis Samaras, during a meeting in Istanbul last March to work together. Davutoglu sent letters to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and leading members of the U.N. Security Council, helping Downer start his tour; he had been talking to both sides on the island and Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos in Athens before flying to Ankara for Davutoglu. He is expected to carry on more talks with both Cypriot parties this week.
Will the crisis in southern Cyprus bring a new opportunity for talks on reunification of the two people separated since the Greek coup and Turkish military intervention in 1974 [Editor’s note: the Turkish invasion to Cyprus] or will it help them reach a peaceful divorce after having slept in separate beds since that year? No one has an answer to that question yet.”
Furthermore, on the same issue, columnist Yusuf Kanli, under the title “When will the Cyprus talks’ plane take off?” in HDN (01.05.13), wrote that the Turkish government’s shifting Cyprus approach might be best summarized with the naïve phrase of “committed to settlement.” If Cyprus is a problem between the two peoples of the eastern Mediterranean island and, if together with Greece and Britain, Turkey is a “fiddler on the side-line” or a guarantor of fair play, what does it mean for Ankara to be committed to a Cyprus settlement?
Kanli also argued that Turkey and Turkish Cypriots are not just paying lip service to their “committed to a settlement” declaration but have been pressing hard for the resumption of talks and even the convening of an international conference to finish off the Cyprus problem with a big-bang agreement.
CNA
