DENKTAS’S DESPERATE FIGHT FOR THE WRONG

 

Given his excellent record of unprecedented service to the Turkish world in Cyprus and elsewhere in his 80 years of lifespan, President Denktas’s current fight for the rejection of the fourth Annan plan at the 24 April referenda on both sides of the island clearly remains inexplicable. Under the conditions, one cannot help asking oneself if there is something he knows that we do not know, but the whole process of the Annan plan is proof in itself that such secrecy is impossible in today’s state of affairs on the Cyprus issue and insiders confirm it. Yet the public debates on the Annan plan in Parliament in Ankara has shed confusing light into the whole issue. For the details of this intriguing story and the expectations of Pulse for the outcome of the forthcoming referenda please see the article below.

 Pulse has been expecting, so far in vein, that President Denktas will come out with a public statement, as he has so far done in the long history of the Cyprus crisis, announcing that he has nothing to say against the State policy of Turkey even though he is not seeing it eye to eye with Ankara. The reason for it is probably the fact that this time there is no State policy for the fourth Annan plan as the NSC has left the issue to the discretion of the Turkish Government and Parliament rather than pressing for guiding it further at this final stage the whole thing has now reached.

The same is the case with President Sezer and the TGS (Turkish General Staff). General Hilmi Ozkok, in his capacity as the top commander of Turkey, has confirmed this fact in so many words at his press conference on Tuesday (13^th) and advised the people not to expect an opinion from the military on every issue. As for the criticism of some hardliners about what will the military express its opinion on if not on a national security issue such as Cyprus, it is apparent that neither Cankaya nor the TGS share the dangers about which Denktas has been so loudly beating the drums.

Has there been any secret about Cyprus that brought it to today’s Annan plan?

According to the Erdogan Government, “definitely yes,” but Turkish security organisations do not share that outlook as evidenced by General Ozkok’s press conference on Tuesday.

At the parliamentary debates on Cyprus on April 5^th, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul explained the course of diplomatic events that brought the Cyprus problem to its current critical stage by opening the path for the Greek Cypriots to become a full member of the European Union despite the express provision of the 1960 Guarantee Agreement banning the Republic of Cyprus from accession to any international organisation where both Turkey and Greece are not represented as full members.

The Foreign Minister explained at the Cyprus debates in Parliament that in 1995, the Turkish Government which also included today’s official opposition party, the CHP, “gave the green light” to abolishing the relevant provision of the Guarantee Agreement for the Greek Cypriots’ accession to the EU, in exchange for the customs union status to Turkey as from 1 January 1996. Even though the CHP Chairman Deniz Baykal was the Deputy Prime Minister of that Government, Baykal rejected at the debates that it was a CHP coalition and Gul chose to refrain from rubbing it in to avoid unnecessary arguments at the debates. The Foreign Minister of that Government, Murat Karayalcin, who is not a member of parliament today confirmed, however, that the 1995 agreement for Turkey’s customs union with the EU contained no provision about abolishing the article in question of the Guarantee Agreement. The course of events confirm Karayalcin. Dissatisfied by Turkey’s refusal to include this point in the customs union agreement that the EU summit in Luxembourg in December 1997 announced that Turkey could not even start the negotiations for EU accession, let alone be considered for accession to the European integration, apparently as a leverage to persuade Ankara to accept abolishing the relevant clause of the Guarantee Agreement.

The Luxembourg rerbuff to Turkey was the beginning of another spell of unhappy period in Turkey’s relations with the West. This unhappy state of affairs between Turkey and the West (the USA plus the EU) went on for two years until the Helsinki summit in December 1999 when the Luxembourg summit’s resolution was changed and Turkey was accepted as the13th candidate for accession after the first ten, including “the Republic of Cyprus” that will be full members of the EU within a few days, on May 1^st, and Bulgaria and Rumania that join the Union in 2007.

According to the Tayyip Erdogan Government’s mumbling (there is no clear statement about it) the Ecevit Government in December 1999 accepted abolishing the relevant article of the Guarantee Agreement to allow the Greek Cypriot accession to the EU. Neither the CHP spokesman, Onur Oymen (CHP-Istanbul) who was once a top man in the Turkish diplomacy, nor President Denktas share this outlook, however, and General Ozkok joined them on Tuesday by bringing up the relevant ban on the Greek Cypriot accession.

So it is apparent that there may not be a statutory Turkish agreement to abolishing the relevant article, but nevertheless it is very much on the EU’s and the United States’ agenda to run Cyprus affairs within that context and that Turkey may have given it “the green light”, as Abdullah Gul has put it, if not a statutory abolishment of the relevant article.

Today the current situation plays into Turkey’s hands

Whatever may be the case, the Cyprus problem has now reached the solution point with the imminent referenda on 24 April and international analysts are almost unanimous that it is very much to the Turkish side’s interest. The three basic points the Turkish side insisted upon from the outset have all been secured if the referenda are positive. These are the confirmation of the bizonal structure of the new United Republic of Cyprus, the political equality of the two sides in this federal State and the continuation of Turkey’s guarantee.

Under the fourth Annan plan it is not the “Republic of Cyprus” that will join the EU on 1 May as was the case originally, but the United Republic of Cyprus composed of two Constituent States, frequently called “the Member States” will and they are members of the European Union. The Greek Cypriot leader Papadopoulos declared that they would vote against the Annan plan at the referendum because he took over an independent State registered in the United Nations as a member and is now leaving behind a Community if the agreement goes into force. That is why the Greeks are now exerting efforts to postpone the referenda for a few months in which case they will enter the EU as the “Republic of Cyprus” representing the entire island but excluding the Turkish Cypriots who would have the choice of tagging after the Greek Cypriots as a minority.

Already much water has run under the bridge since these what Denktas calls “traps” engineered by the Anglo-Americans in league with the Greeks for the last decade since 1995, have now been culled from the Annan plans in its fourth form that will now be voted upon.

In other words, to use a Shakespearian expression, the Greek side is now hoist with its own petard. The 1 May deadline is now hanging over their head as the sword of Damocles. If they vote for the Annan plan they will have an equal partner, the Turkish Cypriots, sharing their privileges of an EU member. If they vote against and most probably that is what they will do according to opinion poles, no one can predict today what misfortune will befall on them. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan was in Ankara last week and he may be the first foreign statesman to recognise the TRNC as an independent country in that event.

President Denktas believes that some of these traps still continue for the Turkish Cypriots and expects the elimination of the Turks from the island within 15-20 years. He is grossly mistaken. It is not possible to play such tricks on a strong regional super power like Turkey which will be an energy terminal uniting the oil and natural gas supplies of not only the Middle East but also the Caspian basin and the Russian Federation. With a population of over 100 million young, healthy, well educated people, the Turkey of 2020s is a nightmare of most Europeans, rather than the target of archaic colonialist plots engineered from today. It is pity that a prominent Turkish leader of Rauf Denktas’s calibre cannot see these realities and is desperately campaigning for the wrong. There is reason to believe, however, that he may change his opposition to the referendum in the ten days that is left. uras@ada.net.tr – April 15^th, 2004