The New Old World (69 page)

As president, Christofias's first move has been to meet his opposite number in the north, Mehmet Talat, and arrange for
what was once the main shopping street in Nicosia to be opened across the Green Line. The arrival of the two men at the head of their respective communities represents a strange convergence in the history of the island. For in origin the CTP was, as Christofias likes to describe it, a ‘sister party' of AKEL—each a branch of the same communism when it was still an international movement. In the case of the CTP, it was fired in the eighties by the kind of radical Marxist students that provided the militants of the insurgent Turkish Left of the time, who on the mainland ended in their tens of thousands in the jails of the generals who staged the invasion of Cyprus. In the nineties, the party made its peace with the occupying army and today is more like the ex-Communist parties of Eastern Europe that have become bywords for allpurpose opportunism—Talat being closer to a Gyurcsány or Kwa
ś
niewski than to his interlocutor, who is well aware of the difference.

Still, that there is some common history linking the two sides is new in any talks across the ethnic boundary in Cyprus. How far Talat is capable of a measure of independence from Ankara remains to be seen. The Turkish Cypriot political class is attached to its local privileges, which it would lose were Turkey to absorb the north, and would like to enjoy the advantages of being truly within the EU, rather than in a condition of semi-limbo. The local population does not get on particularly well with the wretched seasonal migrants—mostly from the area around Iskanderun, the nearest port on the mainland—who perform much of the manual labour it shuns for more profitable employment by the state.

For the economy remains dependent on huge subsidies from Ankara, bloating public employment at wages much higher than in Turkey itself. Retired policemen get pensions larger than the salaries of associate professors on the mainland; while private enterprise is represented by no less than six ‘supermarket' universities doling out degrees to dud students from the mainland, or nearby regions of the Middle East or Central Asia. Against the potential advantages of integration into the EU stands the artificial character of the economy that would be exposed to the potential impact of the
acquis
. It is possible that the adjustment could be as painful as in East Germany.

Reunification would thus require not just institutional protections, but economic buffers for the Turkish minority, something an AKEL president would understand better than any other. A real settlement on the island can only come from
within it, rather than being externally imposed, as invariably to date. The demilitarization of the island that AKEL has long demanded, with the exit of all foreign troops and bases—the withdrawal not just of the Turkish army, but the shutting down of the anachronism of British enclaves—is a condition of any true resolution. A constitution with meticulous safeguards against any form of discrimination, and genuinely equitable compensation for losses on all sides, is a far better guarantee of the welfare of a minority than provocative over-representation in elected bodies, or preordained gridlock in the state, neither durably sustainable. To devise a political system that meets these goals is hardly beyond the bounds of contemporary constitutional thought.

In the past, there was no possibility of even raising such principles, given the Turkish military grip on the island. Today, however, what the whole ‘UN' process was designed to avert has come to pass. Cyprus possesses a veto over Turkish entry into the EU, and is in a position to force it to pull out its troops, on pain of exclusion. This enormous potential change has been the hidden stake of all the frantic diplomacy of the past years. It is true that a French refusal to admit Turkey to the EU, or a Turkish nationalist decathexis away from the EU, might deprive Cyprus of the lever now resting in its hands. But the Western interests vested in Turkish entry, and the Turkish interests—not least those of capital—vested in Western status, are so great that the balance of probability is against either. That does not mean Cyprus will ever use the power it now has. It is a small society, and immense pressures will be brought to bear to ensure that it does not. For the EU, notoriously, referenda are mere paper for shredding. Sometimes small countries defy great powers, but it has become increasingly rare. The more likely outcome remains, in one version or another, the sentence pronounced on another Greek island: ‘The strong do what they can, the weak do what they must'.

1
. For a lively description of these events, see Robert Holland,
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954–1959
, Oxford 1998, pp. 1–5. This outstanding work is perhaps the best single study in the historiography of decolonization. In the inter-war period, ‘more than half the island's administrators came from West Africa, usually have begun their careers as cadets in Nigeria': George Horton Kelling,
Countdown to Rebellion: British Policy in Cyprus 1939–1955
, New York–London 1990, p. 12.

2
. Tom Nairn, ‘Cyprus and the Theory of Nationalism', in Peter Worsley (ed.),
Small States in the Modern World: The Conditions of Survival
, Nicosia 1979, pp. 32–4. For more extended reflections on the trajectory of Hellenism on the island, see Michael Attalides,
Cyprus: Nationalism and International Politics
, Edinburgh 1979,
passim
.

3
. For the early history of the party, see T.W. Adams,
AKEL: The Communist Party of Cyprus
, Stanford 1971, pp. 21–45.

4
. Speech of 1 June 1956, at Norwich.

5
. For a vivid description of the mechanisms of repression, not to speak of electoral intimidation and fraud, over which Karamanlis (1955–1963) presided, see Constantine Tsoucalas,
The Greek Tragedy
, London 1969, pp. 142–52.

6
. Holland,
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 91.

7
. For details, see Brendan O'Malley and Ian Craig,
The Cyprus Conspiracy
, London 1999, pp. 41–3.

8
. Holland,
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 43.

9
.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p 43.

10
.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 52.

11
.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 69.

12
. Menderes to Lennox-Boyd, 16 December 1956:
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 166.

13
.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, pp. 241, 194.

14
. For this episode, decisive in all that followed, see Diana Weston Markides,
Cyprus 1957–1963, From Colonial Conflict to Constitutional Crisis: The Key Role of the Municipal Issue
, Minneapolis 2001, pp. 21–4ff, 159–60.

15
. Holland,
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, pp. 251, 288.

16
. For a graphic account of this exchange, see Stephen G. Xydis,
Cyprus: The Reluctant Republic
, The Hague–Paris 1973, pp. 238–41.

17
. There is a good critical analysis of the Constitution in Polyvios Polyviou,
Cyprus: Conflict and Negotiation
, London 1980, pp. 16–25.

18
. Holland,
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, pp. 303, 306.

19
.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus
, p. 336.

20
. This point is well made by Robert Stephens,
Cyprus: A Place of Arms
, London 1966, p. 173.

21
. These would later become the great ‘lost opportunity' for a settlement in Cyprus, in the retrospect of the Greek Right, nostalgic for the days of absolute coincidence with Washington. See Evanthis Hatzivassiliou,
Greece and the Cold War: Frontline State 1952–1967
, London 2006, pp. 181–3, a comprehensive apologia for the Karamanlis regime, deprecating such ineffectual departures from its legacy as were made by Papandreou.

22
. Laurence Stern,
The Wrong Horse
, New York 1977, p. 84.

23
. O'Malley and Craig,
The Cyprus Conspiracy
, p. 112.

24
. Stanley Mayes,
Makarios: A Biography
, London 1981, p. 184.

25
. For this period, see the penetrating account in Attalides,
Cyprus: Nationalism and International Politics
, pp. 104–37, still much the most thoughtful analysis of the tensions in Cypriot Hellenism.

26
. Mayes supplies a compelling narrative of this period:
Makarios: A Biography
, pp. 202–41.

27
. Christopher Hitchens,
Cyprus
, London 1984, p. 136.

28
. O'Malley and Craig,
The Cyprus Conspiracy
, p. 225.

29
. For the above comparisons, see Economist Intelligence Unit,
Cyprus: Country Profile 2008
, p. 25;
European Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions
, January 2008; EIRonline,
Trade Union Membership 1993–2003
.

30
. A residual 5 per cent is covered by the UN buffer zone and British bases.

31
. For this turning-point, which at the time left both Turkey and Greece dissatisfied, see Christopher Brewin,
The European Union and Cyprus
, Huntingdon 2000, pp. 21–30.

32
.
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution
, London–New York 2005, pp. 50, 85.

33
.
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution
, p. 105.

34
.
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution
, p. 175.

35
.
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution
, p. 206. Álvaro de Soto was the Peruvian functionary from the UN.

36
. For the text of his speech, see James Ker-Lindsay,
EU Accession and UN Peacemaking in Cyprus
, Basingstoke 2005, pp. 194–202.

37
. In 1995, the European Court of Human Rights awarded £468,000 in damages against Turkey to Tina Loizidou, a Greek Cypriot, who lost her property in Kyrenia to the occupation. After much resistance, Ankara was eventually obliged to pay up. For the Hannay plan, it was essential to stop any further reparations of this kind being ordered by European courts—an estimate of the total potential compensation owing on losses in the north runs to $16 billion dollars. See William Mallinson,
Cyprus: A Modern History
, London–New York 2005, p. 145; Mallinson notes that this sum is about the same as the latest IMF loan to Turkey. For other cases before European courts, see Van Coufoudakis,
Cyprus: A Contemporary Problem in Historical Perspective
, Minneapolis 2006, pp. 90–92.

38
. See Claire Palley,
An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999–2004
, Oxford 2005, p. 70, the leading legal study of the UN plans, which contains a detailed comparative chart of their variations, across thirty-five pages: pp. 277–314.

39
.
Cyprus: The Search for a Solution
, pp. 134, 172.

40
. For such reactions, see Ker-Lindsay,
EU Accession and UN Peacemaking in Cyprus
, p. 113, who writes in the same spirit.

41
. For these figures, see Coufoudakis,
Cyprus: A Contemporary Problem in Historical Perspective
, p. 46.

 

‘The greatest single truth to declare itself in the wake of 1989', wrote J.G.A. Pocock two years afterwards, ‘is that the frontiers of “Europe” towards the east are everywhere open and indeterminate. “Europe”, it can now be seen, is not a continent—as in the ancient geographers' dream—but a subcontinent: a peninsula of the Eurasian land-mass, like India in being inhabited by a highly distinctive chain of interacting cultures, but unlike it in lacking a clearly marked geophysical frontier. Instead of Afghanistan and the Himalayas, there are vast level areas through which conventional “Europe” shades into conventional “Asia”, and few would recognize the Ural mountains if they ever reached them'.
¹
But, he went on, empires—of which in its fashion the Union must be accounted one—had always needed to determine the space in which they exercised their power, fixing the boundaries of fear or attraction around them.