BY SEMIH IDIZ
AKSAM- No one can beat us in terms of wasting time. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented his solution plan for the Cyprus issue back in November 2002. There’s no need to mention the well-worn discussions we’ve had in the 14 months since. So what happened to make Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Rauf Denktas, who once declared the plan a ‘dead document,’ accept that Annan’s plan is on the table? Denktas had said he would never sign the plan and normally, political consistency would require him to uphold this stance and so withdraw from the negotiations.
Now the situation is very different. Nobody cares about wavering and contradictions. Meanwhile, some people imply that the Turkish Cypriots are at this point due to the ‘improvement’ of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Of course they are trying to save face in terms of consistency, but they still have to explain why the plan should be discussed. Actually where we are now should have been reached before the Copenhagen summit of December 2002. This would have created relief for Turkish-EU relations, prevented the appearance of a political split among the Turkish Cypriots, and stopped the spread of the widespread view that a great disagreement divides Erdogan’s government from Denktas. However, none of these things happened. It’s as if we have to be late in reaching our goal or else reach it only after discussions and fights which damage our international esteem. We see this not only with Cyprus, but everywhere. So where are we now? We’re at the point of negotiation. In other words, Annan’s plan will be negotiated with the Greek Cypriots.
Of course there are many points to negotiate over A new mode of ‘living together’ will appear, one the details of which should be determined carefully. Nobody wants to sow the seeds of new discord. For this reason, we should leave aside our old discussions and create a balance between the interests of the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey and those of Greece, the EU and the US, and try to optimize them.