BY TAHA AKYOL
MILLIYET- Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Rauf Denkas is due to address our Parliament today. It would have been an unforgivable error to reject his request to speak there. Actually I consider Denktas’s stance mistaken but I also know that he’s a hero. Denktas has devoted his entire life to the Turkish Cypriots. He didn’t lose his morale when facing disasters and now he can’t be pleased with the prospect of making peace with ‘the enemy.’ This is understandable. Of course Denktas speaks with imperial generosity but when generosity and reason clash, thereason should win out. In a statement dated April 1, he said, ‘The system of guarantorship concerns our security. The United Nations altered a point which it put in a document that it had previously accepted. Six thousand Turkish soldiers were supposed to stay here, but now they say they will review this once every three years. After a couple of years of review, the soldiers will surely be made to leave and all Turkey’s ties with our island will end.’ Concerning the positive aspects of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s plan, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Ozkok said this week, ‘We can see that Turkey’s guarantorship has been strengthened in the latest plan. If we want to stay on the island, we would have the right to keep our soldiers on Cyprus. Under the plan, the Turkish Cypriot nation will live in an atmosphere of peace maintained by the police, the UN peacekeeping force and the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK].’
Of course the plan carries negative sides and risks as well, which Ozkok also enumerated. Painting everything as dark in order to smear the plan before the referendum makes Denktas appear desperate. We can understand Denktas. His psychology comes from his heroic struggle of past years. When Denktas speaks to the Parliament today, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won’t be in the audience. This is no surprise because this week Denktas charged that Erdogan had been ‘deceived’ on Cyprus. However, Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies should go to the Parliament and listen to him with respect, and Denktas should speak fluently and carefully, without dispelling people’s respect for him. For history now wants a solution.