According to reports in the Turkish Cypriot press proposals on governance and power sharing submitted by Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu last week, revise the work done by his predecessor Mehmet Ali Talat, moving away from the notion of single sovereignty of a reunited Cyprus and towards the establishment of “two sovereign areas” where the two “founding states will be sovereign”.
In addition, the rights of the guarantor powers are further increased, by guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the constituent states as well as the state as a whole.
Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris quoted Eroglu on Sunday as saying that the existence of “two peoples and two states” and Turkish guarantees in Cyprus were indispensable conditions or a “sine qua non” for the Turkish Cypriot community.
Eroglu reiterated the view that progress could be achieved next week in Geneva if the Greek Cypriot side “has good will and comes closer to an agreement on the basis of the realities”. Otherwise, he added, the Turkish side expects the UN to “do its duty”.
“There are two peoples, two states, two areas in Cyprus. The active and effective guarantees of motherland Turkey is a sine qua non for us. We have never accepted and we will never accept the bizonality to be watered down and the property issue to be concluded in a manner that will take us to the pre-1974 period and scatter our economy and social life,” said Eroglu.
Also on Sunday, Eroglu’s top aide, Kudret Ozersay was quoted in an interview with Kathimerini making the same comment, that Turkish guarantees are a “sine qua non” for the Turkish Cypriots.
Opposition DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades has said that if Eroglu’s reported proposals turn out to be true and he really is aiming for two sovereignties “which in essence means we’re talking about a confederation, this is certainly a negative and unacceptable step backwards in terms of progress on the Cyprus problem”.
Coffeeshop, the Cyprus Mail's satirical column, says that nobody could have imagined that the first ever visit of a German Chancellor to the People’s Republic of Kyproulla would have sparked the euphoric celebrations we witnessed on Tuesday and Wednesday among the bash-patriotic chattering classes. The day after the visit we expected the state broadcaster to start morning shows on radio and TV by playing ‘Deutschland Deutschland uber alles’ but we were disappointed. Politis won the award for the best front-page headline the following day, with ‘Angelos i Angela’ (Angela the angel) as all papers highlighted the ‘tough language’ directed at the Turkish stance in the Cyprob.
Even the commies of AKEL were prepared to forgive her for turning into a neo-liberal, right-wing capitalist despite being brought up in East Germany and being indoctrinated with the ideals of Stalinism. After all, during her visit, she had publicly praised “the courage, creativity and initiative” shown by our comrade leader.
One paper identified a golden opportunity for turning Germany into an “important strategic partner” of Zypern. But how would France react to the creation of a Cyprus-German axis? The paper obviously forgot the defence agreement that was signed by the Ethnarch’s government a few years ago and was hailed as a new chapter in Chypre’s development as regional super-nuisance. Would President Sarkozy, expected to visit later in the year, not consider it a snub.
The lunatic reaction of the Turks in the end stole the show. A couple of hours after Merkel’s momentous statement, Erdogan launched a public attack on her telling her that she knew nothing about the prob and should have consulted her predecessor before talking. A statement by the German foreign ministry, aimed at appeasing the Turks, failed abysmally. On Friday Erdogan had still not calmed down and raised the stakes by saying “we expect Merkel to apologise to the Turkish side”. These Turks are so insecure they cannot even allow us enjoy a small and meaningless triumph.
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