Cyprus: Still Working on a Solution

[The Bread Guy]

For any Cyprus vets out there:  an update.
For anyone who thinks quick solutions are available for such disputes, even between countries with decent governance and respect for the rule of law:  something to chew on.

"Cyprus: Reunification or Partition?"
International Crisis Group report, 30 Sept 09
Link to Exec Summary, Recommendations

"Three decades of efforts to reunify Cyprus are about to end, leaving a stark choice ahead between a hostile, de facto partition of the island and a collaborative federation between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living in two constituent states. Most actors agree that the window of opportunity for this bicommunal, bizonal settlement will close by April 2010, the date of the next Turkish Cypriot elections, when the pro-settlement leader risks losing his office to a more hardline candidate. If no accord is reached by then, it will be the fourth major set of UN-facilitated peace talks to fail, and there is a widespread feeling that if the current like-minded, pro-solution Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders cannot compromise on a federal solution, nobody can. To avoid the heavy costs this would entail for all concerned, the two leaders should stand shoulder to shoulder to overcome domestic cynicism and complete the talks, Turkey and Greece must break taboos preventing full communication with both sides on the island, and European Union (EU) states must rapidly engage in support of the process to avoid the potential for future instability if they complacently accept continuation of the dispute...."

More on link

 

[Journeyman]

if the current like-minded, pro-solution Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders cannot compromise on a federal solution, nobody can. To avoid the heavy costs this would entail....

Heavy costs!?!  : 

- Like the bloated UN staff would have to move on to something less Club Med-like?

- Like the Greek Cypriots wouldn't be able to throw rocks at the north, then hide behind the UN skirts when the Turks shoot back?

- Like the Turks would have to find someplace else to put their ethnic-Kurd conscripts?

- Like the Cypriot economy would have to be rationalized without the artificial input of UN funding?


Canada went into Cyprus in March 1964 with a four-month mandate. There's still a Canadian flag on the UNFICYP flagpole....45 years later! The Turks don't want to go south; the Greeks aren't able to go north. The only ones wringing their hands over this are those with a vested interest in believing that the UN has any sort of utility, and shouldn't be bulldozed into a smoking crater.

Well, that's one view anyway

 

[COBRA-6]

and shouldn't be bulldozed into a smoking crater.

and I think I know who would lend us the dozer too:

 

[The Bread Guy]

Bumped with the latest - getting a bit cloooooooooooooooooser (52 years in) ...

On 22 August 2014, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced that he had appointed Mr. Espen Barth Eide of Norway as his new Special Adviser on Cyprus, replacing Mr. Alexander Downer of Australia, who had stepped down four months earlier, in April.

In the statement that announced the appointment, the Secretary-General described Mr. Eide as a seasoned diplomat who would bring to the position “a deep understanding of peace processes and peacemaking.”

Mr. Eide has since been working to assist two sides – the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots – in search for a comprehensive and mutually acceptable settlement to the Cyprus problem.

On 25 September2016, the UN Secretary-General held – on the margins of the UN General Assembly’s general debate – what he described to reporters as a “productive” meeting , with Mustafa Akýncý, Turkish Cypriot leader, and Nicos Anastasiades, Greek Cypriot leader.

(...)

Espen Barth Eide:  The United Nations has been in Cyprus for 52 years. It so happens that I’m also 52 years old, and we were born in the same week – the [UN Peacekeeping Force, known as UNFICYP] and myself – and the UN came there because of the inter-communal strife in the early days of the independent Republic of Cyprus. And then 10 years later, there was a military coup, supported by the then military regime in Athens, and just after
that, the Turkish invasion, and the de-facto division of the country into two parts.

And what we’re trying to do is to help the leaders – the Turkish-Cypriot and the Greek-Cypriot leader – to re-unify the country, under a federal-structure for Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike, and we have actually come quite far in that process ...

 

[a_majoor]

As a personal note, I did a tour of Cyprus in i 1989, and returned in 2007 as part of my decompression. What was quite bizarre was the people were spouting exactly the same rhetoric in 2007 as they were in 1989.

I'm not exactly filled with confidence that the people there are ready to make a deal......