Reactions to Eroglu win

Political developments in the north will not disrupt the ongoing peace process, Government Spokesman Stephanos Stephanou has said following the Turkish Cypriot election results yesterday.

Greek Cypriot politicians greeted the news with gloomy consensus. AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou called Eroglu’s victory a “negative development”. “If Mr. Eroglu wants to have a say [on Cyprus], he will have to adapt his views so that they conform to UN resolutions and the principles of international law.” He said the onus was now on Turkey to stop Eroglu from running rampant with a nationalist agenda

DIKO spokesman Fotis Fotiou urged the National Council to come up with a ‘Plan B’ in the event the talks should collapse. He also called for a mobilisation on the diplomatic front, so that Cyprus might convince the EU and the United States to pressure Turkey into softening its stance.

DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades highlighted the need for greater diplomatic vigilance: “If Ankara does not beginning pushing for a solution that will be acceptable also to Greek Cypriots, then our side needs to make it clear that it will be forced to veto Turkey’s EU accession.”

Socialist leader Yiannakis Omirou said Cyprus should be on its guard because Turkey and Talat might use the nationalists’ rise as an alibi to regress to a hardline stance.

The European Party’s warned that Turkey put Eroglu in power as a way of sending the message that, unless a solution is found before Eroglu is elected President, the Greek Cypriots should be prepared for the worst".

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat said yesterday that the ongoing talks to reunite the island will not be disrupted by the National Unity Party (UBP), despite the right-wing party’s landslide election victory.

“I expect the change of government to have a minimal impact on negotiations as I, as president, direct the talks,” Talat told reporters in the north after returning from talks in the UN buffer zone today with Dimitri Christofias. He pointed out that Eroglu had already said during the election period that his party will take this approach.

However, the Cyprus Mail says that, in theory at least, the UBP could severely restrict Talat’s ability to steer negotiations the way he wishes, as the north’s political structure stipulates that any agreement made with the Greek Cypriots would need parliamentary ratification and that this was in fact the way that Talat sidelined former Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash before the Annan plan referendum in 2004.

A spokesman for the party told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that they would take an active interest in the negotiations and planned to send a representative to all UN-sponsored meetings between the two sides. “Our view does not differ greatly from Talat’s or from Turkey’s, in that we want to see real bizonality and we want to see the virgin birth of a new entity rather than the continuation of the Cyprus Republic”. Another factor on which the UBP, Talat and Turkey all agreed, said the spokesman, was that “Turkey’s guarantee rights are also nonnegotiable”.

Meanwhile Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat continued their regular meetings on the Cyprus problem yesterday and agreed to think up ways of speeding up the overall talks process .

Christofias said that he and Talat agreed that their advisors would discuss specific issues on which there is convergence of views.

The two leaders held a private discussion lasting 90 minutes, after which they got back to business and joined their teams of experts for a brief discussion on the economy chapter. “It was a cordial meeting,” noted Christofias, reporting that the Greek Cypriot delegation had prepared a gift of Easter eggs and flaounes which they handed to their Turkish Cypriot counterparts.

Regarding the discussions on the economy, which began yesterday, Christofias said that in order to assess the situation, the aides of the leaders of the two communities and their teams would first have to meet to discuss the details before the next meeting, scheduled for May 5.

The two leaders are not holding talks over the course of the next two weeks because during this time both UN Special Representative in Cyprus Taye Brook Zerihoun and UN envoy Alexander Downer will be in on a mission to New York briefing the UN Secretariat on progress in talks so far.

For his part, Zerihoun said the leaders’ top aides, George Iacovou and Ozdil Nami would be meeting every day this week, so that each side could prepare documents outlining ways of tweaking the negotiations procedure. The documents would be read out at the leaders’ next encounter, he added.Asked if they had discussed the results of Sunday's “elections” in the occupied areas, Christofias said it was “only natural to do so,” adding that no one expected Talat to be pleased with the outcome.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan yesterday expressed unequivocal support for the reunification talks on Cyprus and towards Talat. In a speech to members of his party, he said: “It would be very wrong for the new government to end the negotiations or to continue the negotiations on a basis different than the one that has been followed so far... The process must continue exactly as before.” He added that “we will never support a move that would weaken the hand of Talat.”

An editorial in Politis says there are two reasons that brought Eroglu to power in the north - the economy and the lack of a solution to the Cyprus problem. The paper's satirical column Kata Varvaron says the best thing about Eroglu's victory was that it gave us an opportunity to witness the marvellous acting abilities of all those G/C politicians who would normally break out in a rash at the phrase 'solution to the Cyprus problem', namely all those suffering from the No psychosis, which according to a recent survey, constitute 35% of the population (and an equal number of T/C). We saw them putting on a miserable face and gloomily talking about "a negative development", whereas we knew all too well that inside they were shouting for joy!