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WHY CYPRUS SHOULD NOT JOIN THE EU - YET

By MICHAEL STEPHEN – October 2001

Negotiations between the EU and the Greek Cypriots on the technical requirements for accession are almost concluded, but it does not follow that their application for membership (claiming to act on behalf of Cyprus as a whole) has to be accepted.

The EU Helsinki Summit said that it was not essential for the Greek Cypriots first to settle their differences with the Turkish Cypriots, and the EU thereby made a Cyprus settlement almost impossible. The Greek Cypriots since then have seen EU membership as a means by which they could bring political, economic, and even military pressure to force a settlement on their own terms. However, at Helsinki the EU did NOT pledge that the Greek Cypriot application would be accepted.

The Greek Cypriots are good publicists, but they do not have right on their side. It was the policy of their own political and religious leadership which tore Cyprus apart in 1963 and evicted the Turkish Cypriots from all their constitutional positions in the Republic. British Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, said in his memoirs that if the Greek Cypriot leader could not treat the Turkish Cypriots as human beings he was inviting the invasion and partition of the Island." The Turkish Cypriots did not "secede" - they were thrown out.

British Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon recalled "No one who lived as I did in Cyprus in the 1960's will forget what was happening then. It was an attempt at the systematic elimination of one part of the community. It was ethnic cleansing before that phrase came into vogue in the Western media." For the full story of the appalling treatment which the Turkish Cypriots received from the Greek Cypriots for eleven years, despite international guarantees, and the actual presence of UN troops in Cyprus slink March 1964. see "The Genocide Files" by Harry Scott-Gibbons (ISBN 0-9514464-2-8). It Is astonishing that the UN and the EU have allowed the Greek Cypriots to profit from their terrible crimes by dealing with them since 1963 as the government of Cyprus, and this has to change.

The tragedy was caused by deep racial hatred against ethnically Turkish people, especially in the Greek Orthodox Church, and an obsessive ambition to dominate the whole island. These causes persist to this day and are an insuperable obstacle to a settlement unless International attitudes toward the Greek Cypriots change. The Greek Cypriots will not otherwise agree to a two-state or confederal settlement because it would put an end to their ambition - they will agree only to a federation with strong central powers which they might eventually control - to which the Turkish Cypriots could never be expected to agree.

The Turkish Cypriots were squeezed into 3% of the island until their rescue by Turkish soldiers in 1974, and the world showed no concern for violations of their human rights far worse than those of which the Greek Cypriots constantly complain.

The UN Security Council has never accused Turkey of invasion or occupation, nor called for the withdrawal of Turkish troops. Turkish Cypriots are not going to put themselves back into danger, whatever the economic inducements and conciliatory words, nor to rely again on international "guarantees" even within the EU.

If the Czechs, Slovaks, Croatians, East Pakistanis, Timorese and others can have their own state, why not the Turkish Cypriots? It would not be the smallest UN member. The Turkish Cypriots have not acquired territory by force" and there is no "occupied area" In Cyprus - on the contrary it is the Greek Cypriots who usurped the   government of Cyprus and destroyed the Republic by force. All the Turkish Cypriots have done is to survive, and to establish with the aid of Turkey a safe haven in the   island of their birth where they can live in peace free from Greek Cypriot oppression.

The Greek Cypriots who fled from the north have only their own leaders to blame,  and they could have been compensated long ago if their leaders had not wished to use them for propaganda.

A new association between the two peoples of Cyprus might have been possible had not the EU yielded to Greek pressure and made such a stupid mistake at Helsinki, but even then the prospects were not good. The prospects were not good because  the world treats the Greek Cypriots as the Government of Cyprus. They have no legal or moral right to that status, and the British Government said on l2th March 1964 that "Cyprus Government" could mean only a government which acts with the   concurrence of its Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot members. There has been no concurrence since 1963, and there is no “doctrine of necessity" which entitles one  partner to assault and terrorize the other and then claim the right to run the state  alone.

For so long as the Greek Cypriots thank they can keep their "governmental" status, and keep the Turkish Cypriots isolated and under economic pressure, they will not settle. It is important to Greek Cypriot strategy to appear to be negotiating, but they are paying mere lip-service to the UN process. Realising that the UN talks were going nowhere, the Turkish Cypriots suspended them in November last year, but as long ago as March 1986 they had accepted a UN plan which the British government endorsed.

Premature accession of Cyprus would bring little or no benefit to the EU and would import serious legal and practical problems. The acquis could not apply throughout the island. Further, it is to be expected that the Greek Cypriots would always veto Turkey’s entry into the EU if they were to get in, though they would of course deny any such intention. Greek Cypriot membership would mean the effective end of Turkey's application, and would wreck Europe's relations with that country of 65 million people of enormous strategic and commercial importance, especially in relation to the energy resources of the Caspian, Iran and Iraq, and the fight against terrorism. Europe‘s self-inflicted loss would be a major gain for the Americans and others. The idea that Turkey can be induced to betray the Turkish Cypriots in pursuit of its own EU aspirations is both unprincipled and unrealistic.

There are less than a million Greek Cypriots, and there is no conceivable reason why the EU should take such risks for their sake. The Greek Cypriots, using their unjustified governmental status, occupy the "Cyprus" chair in all international institutions, and have lobbied hard in the EU, especially in the European Parliament, spending millions on publicity and hospitality. They control all the "Cyprus" embassies, they deny the Turkish

Cypriots an official voice in the world, and enforce a cruel embargo upon their trade and communications which has forced some Turkish Cypriots to emigrate and reinforces distrust and enmity between the two peoples. The Greek Cypriots have also extracted one-sided judgements and resolutions from international institutions, including the Loizidou case in the ECHR (1996-VI, p. 2223). It should be noted that the courts have never examined the Greek Cypriot claim to be the government of Cyprus - they have simply noted political decisions to that effect, and based their judgements upon them. The embargo is not however just the result of recent court cases - it has been going on since 1963, without any authority under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

The difficulty with the UN in Cyprus is that it has taken the Greek Cypriot side against the Turkish Cypriots on the fundamental question whether the Greek Cypriots have any right to be treated as the Government of Cyprus, and has thereby disabled itself as an impartial intermediary. The Turkish Cypriots met the Secretary-General in Salzburg on 28th August 2001, but they no longer find UN mediation useful and have for the time being declined further UN offers of help. Following the Salzburg meeting the Turkish Cypriot President, the English-educated Barrister, Rauf Denktaţ, invited the Greek Cypriots for direct talks but they refused.

The ball is now in the court of the EU and the international community. If they want a Cyprus settlement they will have to treat the two peoples of the island on an equal basis, and make it clear that there will be no EU membership until both agree to it. Cyprus is the home of the Turkish Cypriots as well as the Greek Cypriots and neither has the right to take the island into the EU without the consent of the other. Further, unless Turkey agrees, Cyprus is prohibited from joining the EU by Article 1 of the 1960 Cyprus Treaty of Guarantee, which has still not been evaluated by the Commission. Still further, Britain and Greece are bound to veto accession by Article 2 of the Cyprus Treaty, which has so far been ignored by them.

The Turkish Cypriots would welcome eventual Cyprus EU membership as two states or one, but they will not join the "Cyprus" delegation for current EU negotiations because they, correctly, consider the application to be illegal and do not recognize any "Government of Cyprus," and because they, again correctly, consider that accession terms cannot be concluded until a settlement has first been agreed in Cyprus. There would have to be very important derogations from EU norms, the nature and extent of which have not yet been agreed, and which may not even be capable of agreement.

And what of the Greek threat to veto enlargement? It is absurd that the Greek tail should be allowed to wag the European dog on an issue of such importance. The other Member States will have to stand up to them and make it clear that they will not be allowed to precipitate a major crisis between Turkey and the EU and with the other applicant states:

Michael Stephen is a former Member of the British Parliament, and is the author of

,"The Cyprus Question" (ISBN 0-9540840-0-4). He is an international lawyer and a Member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).