BY MURAT YETKIN
RADIKAL- In Parliament yesterday, our ruling and opposition parties discussed the Cyprus issue. Both Prime Minister and Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal both focused on this issue in their addresses to their respective party’s group meetings. While Erdogan argued that Sunday’s election results had effectively remade the political landscape and enabled the Turkish Cypriots to move more decisively towards a permanent settlement on the island, Baykal took an opposite tack, saying the new environment would not help efforts for a solution.
‘What would happen if the sides failed to reach a permanent settlement by May 1?,’ one reporter asked Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul in Tokyo yesterday, referring to the date Greek Cyprus is to due to join the European Union. ‘If Turkey does its best, nobody could ever rebuke Ankara in case of a failure,’ replied Gul. What could these words mean? What exactly will Turkey do so as to ‘do its best?’ Does this statement mean that Ankara will announce its support for new negotiations over the UN plan? If this is the case, it would be a quite serious step. However, neither the Turkish and Greek Cypriots nor Ankara and Athens are ready to sign the UN plan in its current form. This is why Ankara is expected to launch a new initiative by proposing changes to the UN plan. I suppose our Foreign Ministry is now busy preparing this initiative.
No matter what Ankara is now trying to do, there are still two unclear points: First of all, if the Turkish Cypriots’ new government is unwilling to cooperate with Ankara towards a permanent solution, all our efforts will prove pointless. As a matter of fact, there seems to be little chance of such a new government forming unless the current leftist and rightist party blocs are dissolved. President Rauf Denktas yesterday pledged that the new government would be predisposed to cooperate with Ankara. Today he is set to meet separately with the leaders of the various political parties. In addition, after snubbing him for months on and, Denktas is expected to meet soon with Thomas Weston, the US special coordinator for Cyprus. The US State Department recently stressed that a solution should be formed in line with the UN plan.
The second odd point is that Ankara and Lefkosa both seem to be making light of the deadline set by the EU, that is, next May 1. In other words, both sides seem to believe that if a permanent solution can’t be reached by this date, it won’t be the end of the world. Moreover, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Guenter Verheugen yesterday put forth that Dec. 30, 2004 is the actual deadline for the Cyprus issue. However, he also reiterated the following ‘troublesome’ fact: If the sides fail to reach a permanent settlement by May 1, Turkey will become a country with troops deployed within EU territories. What will happen then? It’s not realistic to think that the EU will declare war against Turkey. However, it may turn down our membership not as soon as the deadline passes, but later. Such developments would shake up everything, making the future much more complicated for us than today.
I hope Verheugen won’t turn out to be right. Accordingly, Ankara and Lefkosa should accelerate their moves for the sake of both Turkey’s future and that of the Turkish Cypriots.