Yusuf Kanli: Talat challenges Christofias
Güncelleme Tarihi:
It has become clear that the new Greek Cypriot leader Demetris Christofias and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mehmet Ali Talat will come together at the buffer zone headquarters of the United Nations, the Ledra Palace, in Nicosia, Cyprus in the third week of March. The two sides have started reasserting what the modality of the new process expected to be launched after that first maiden encounter should be.
Christofias was in Athens this week for a “fine tuning session” with the Greek leadership before the start of the talks, while Talat was engaged in a similar exercise with the Turkish president and prime minister. The Greek Cypriot leader sent a rather surprising verbal gesture to Ankara Thursday apologizing to Turkey for what Greek Cypriots did to Turkish Cypriots in 1963 and 1964. The address was wrong; he should have apologized to Turkish Cypriots. But perhaps when he meets Talat later this month, he will repeat the apology to the Turkish Cypriot leader as well.
Still, the apology was a nice goodwill gesture before the resumption of the talks. Similar eye-catching gestures aimed at winning back support of the international community and improving the Greek Cypriot image, tainted very much over the past years with the antagonistic behavior of the former Tassos Papadopoulos administration, might have been the new strategy of Christofias.
In terms of the modality of the new process, however, Christofias is demanding continuation of the so-called Gambari process – the process that was launched after Papadopoulos and Talat were brought together by Ibrahim Gambari, then assistant secretary-general of the U.N., on July 8, 2006 – that aimed to prepare a common ground for talks through work by a series of inter-communal committees. That time-consuming process unfortunately did not start, although at a Sept. 5, 2006 meeting the two leaders had pledged to actively support the committee works. Still, disagreements over petty questions such as where the committees would meet have prevented progress.
No open-ended talks
Talat, on the other hand, is now stressing that since the Gambari process was just aiming at bringing Papadopoulos to the talks he was shunning, if Christofias wants a result-oriented, all-inclusive process, he is “more than ready” and “more than happy” to engage in such an effort with the aim and intention of achieving a mutually acceptable resolution by the end of this year. That is, Talat is challenging Christofias to demonstrate that he has political will to engage in a “comprehensive and intensive” process that will not be “open-ended” and based on U.N. parameters. Wasting time with confidence-building talks and measures, according to Talat, will be nothing more than wasting precious time, because resuming the talks themselves will be the best confidence-building move.
Talat's stress on “U.N. parameters,” however, is likely to upset Christofias, who has made a U-turn from his pro-settlement position since his election and adopted the style of his predecessor, Papadopoulos, who always preferred relegating the Cyprus problem from one of power sharing between the two peoples of the island to one of individual rights and freedoms for the “Turkish citizens of the Republic of Cyprus.” In other words, the main stumbling block for a settlement in the Papadopoulos mentality was its denial of rights and liberties of the Turkish Cypriot people as one of the two co-founding peoples of the Republic of Cyprus. Now Christofias apparently not only rehashed the former three-way coalition government of Papadopoulos under his leadership, but he has also adopted a rather antagonistic approach to the Cyprus problem. At least, that is the impression he has been giving so far and which indeed can be nothing more than a negotiation tactic. We shall see, once talks get underway...
Call for compromise deal
Talat's stress on “UN parameters” also means the Turkish Cypriot side is demanding talks be held between the leaders of the two peoples with the intention of establishing a new federation based on the two states' reality on the island on the pillars of bi-zonality and bi-communality. That is, Talat is suggesting to Christofias not a restructuring of the Cyprus Republic into a federal state with two zones, but a new federal republic that will be a “virgin birth,” acquiring its legitimacy and sovereignty from the existing two states on the island, which will be converted into “founding states” with some degree of “residual sovereignty” under the new common state.
Talat is challenging Christofias to demonstrate whether he has the political will to compromise, telling him he is more than ready to make some bitter compromises for the sake of building a common future.