STAR- Columnist Zeynep Gurcanlý comments on the question of Cyprus concerning the Greek Cypriots’ EU membership bid and Turkey’s possible reactions to the issue. A summary of her column is as follows:
The Cyprus issue is now at a crossroads, since the European Union is very likely to approve the Greek Cypriots’ membership bid in December, and the same question is occupying people’s minds in both Ankara and the European capitals: What will Turkey’s reaction be? Up to now, its strategy on the issue has always been this: ‘Turkey will do exactly the same thing with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) as Greece does with the Greek Cypriots.’ Even I remember Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit talking about the TRNC’s unification with Turkey. Everyone has discussed what could happen on the island, but now let’s turn the picture upside down, and try to see what won’t happen in Cyprus.
First of all, neither the politicians nor the bureaucrats in Ankara actually think that the TRNC will unify with Turkey. The reasoning is that if such a thing happens, Turkey will become an immediate bordering neighbor with the Greek Cypriot side, which would be quite undesirable for Ankara, and would also thus become a direct participant in the Cyprus issue, giving up what it has long argued for, namely being a guarantor state. What Turkey really wants is not to unite with the TRNC, but to prevent the Greek side from taking control of the whole island. In order to do that, preservation of the TRNC’s existence on the island is a sine qua non for Ankara.
In case of the Greek side’s accession to the EU, another thing that will definitely not happen is resolution of the problem through the EU. That is, if the EU accepts the Greek Cypriots’ membership, it won’t have an easy road ahead. If the EU sees the Greek side as the sole representative of the whole island, this will beg the question of the TRNC’s status, which is not controlled by the Greek Cypriots and consequently would not be under the EU’s control. Thus, the EU, having incorporated the island of Cyprus into itself as a whole, would come to accept implementing its laws, customs or intra-union rules and regulations only on one part of the island, thus creating a great technical problem for the EU. To this technical problem, one must add Turkey’s possible reactions, and you would then have a completely confused situation on the island. The EU is also well aware of these problems. However, it is not speaking about them so loudly. Yet, several scholars in Europe have recently begun to address them. Accordingly, the EU could accept the Greek side as the representative of only the half of the island, which would mean recognizing the TRNC’s existence on the island and the Greek side’s lack of jurisdiction over TRNC territory. As a result, more countries would come to recognize the TRNC in the international arena, and in a very distant future the TRNC would become an EU member alongside Turkey. This would surely not be accepted by the Greek side, which has been claming for the last 30 years that they are the sole possessor of the island. Now, let’s wait and see if the EU will prove capable of producing a solution proposal similar to the one spelled out in December.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION