BY HASAN PULUR
MILLIYET - It appears that the Cyprus plan of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will be negotiated on and the resulting solution be based on this plan, because the government has neither the power nor the will to resist those who want to impose it on us. Even as the United States urges Turkey to discuss the plan, Europe also says that Turkey won’t be able to see Europe even with binoculars if a solution isn’t reached, and if we consider the ‘domestic collaborators,’ the government has no choice.
Well, what does the Annan plan say to draw so much reaction? The charges against it can be summarized as follows: ‘Turkish sovereignty and equality will be eliminated, 100,000 Turks will lose their homes, their property will be taken away, 1/5 of their land will be given away, and 52 villages and agricultural land with easy access to water and water resources will be handed over to the Greeks.’ This is all true.
There are terribly unfair provisions in the plan. One example: Page 55, Article 6, section 6: ‘No limit on residence can be an obstacle to freedom of movement. This right also includes the right to spend a maximum of 3 days and nights within a one-week period in their immovable property.’ What does this mean? Let’s see how those who know about Byzantine maneuvers solve this. There are about 65,000 Cypriot Turks who left their properties to Greeks in the south and immigrated to the north. The Turkish immigrants from the south settled in places which Greeks abandoned. What will happen now? If the ‘Annan plan’ goes through, the Greeks who fled from the north to the south will return to the north, that is, to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Under this plan they will stay at most three days and nights in their immovable property. What will happen if these three days are up and the Greeks refuse to go? You can guess what will happen. You’ll say that the Turks should also go and settle in their houses in the south. But they can’t. Even if they can go there, they can’t find their immovable property because 90 percent of Turkish houses in the southern part of the island were destroyed by the Greeks.
If the Annan plan is to be discussed, I recommend that the negotiators read the book ‘The Annan Plan and Lie Detectors’ by Fuat Veziroglu, a Cypriot jurist, politician, statesman and author. It’s short but quite powerful. What the Cypriots will live through can be explained and understood only by the Cypriots themselves.