Negotiators visits to Ankara and Athens

Turkish Cypriot negotiator Kudret Ozersay has said that the visits of the negotiators of the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities to Athens and Ankara respectively will be held on 27 February, Kibris reports.

He said that the negotiator of the Greek Cypriot community, Andreas Mavroyiannis, will meet with the Undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry and he, himself, will meet with the Undersecretary of the Greek Foreign Ministry.

Evaluating his meeting with his Greek Cypriot counterpart Mavroyannis on Friday, Ozersay told  Bayrak television that the meeting had been conducted in a cordial atmosphere and that they had discussed how to proceed with the talks.

He said they had agreed in principle to meet twice a week which could be increased if necessary.

He said they had also put forward a proposal regarding the leaders meeting and are waiting for a response. The negotiators’ next meeting is scheduled for the 19 February.

2. Davutoglu: Let’s have lunch together in the south

Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmet Davutoglu has described the joint declaration as a “very important diplomatic success”, Kibris writes.

“During my meetings with my interlocutor the Greek Foreign Minister I have ever since said ‘let us go together to the island, if we will bring peace. I am ready to go to the south. Let us have lunch in the south together or breakfast. Afterwards let us have dinner in the north together. Then let us meet all together in the middle wherever they want and have coffee. So that they see that Turkey and Greece have decided together to solve this…”

Asked whether there are some points on which concessions have been given in comparison to the Annan Plan, Davutoglu replied, inter alia, the following: “In this manner a foggy cloud is created. What concessions have been given comparing to 2004? What happened? … Everybody is praising Turkey because of Cyprus. They are praising the Turkish Republic… If the EU’s chapters 23 and 24 are substantial, this text is the complete substance of the 40-year long Cyprus negotiations, including the plan of 2004. Turkey and the TRNC are stronger than ever since the Cyprus cause started”.

Moreover, according to Ankara Anatolia news agency, in a joint press conference with his Dutch counterpart Frans Timmermans in Ankara, called on the EU not to favour any side during the negotiation process. He said it would be a mistake if the EU chooses to favour the Greek side just because it is an EU member.

He stressed that both Turkish and Greek sides sit around the negotiation table on equal terms.

He said there is a positive momentum which is very promising in terms of reaching a comprehensive settlement of the longstanding problem in Cyprus. “Now it is time to construct a building out of this momentum. (…) A Cyprus in peace should be established”.

Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News reports that Timmermans said that opening negotiations on chapters 23 and 24 with the European Union will engage Turkey in the debate over the rule of law.

Timmermans voiced his personal support for opening the chapters but said his government and Parliament would have the final word on the issue.

“The Netherlands, once negotiations have finished, will gladly welcome Turkey among the EU member states. It’s only fair that the process that started with the intention of making Turkey a member of the EU should lead to its membership if we can conclude the negotiations in a positive way,” the Dutch minister said.

3. Behind-the-scenes of the talks

Columnist Yusuf Kanli, in Turkish daily Hurrieyt Daily News says Foreign Minister Nami believes the Greek Cypriots will not say ‘no’ this time, because Greek Cypriot leadership has learned from the 2004 referendum what the price of a ‘no’ vote would be. A deal will be subjected to simultaneous referenda only when the leaders agreed to, he added.

Nami agrees with Davutoglu that the time has come to finish off the Cyprus problem one way or another, but he was critical of the slow pace of the process. He said if chief negotiators are to meet every other week and leaders are to meet once a month, would it be logical to expect a Cyprus deal in five months or so?

The paper says that Nami, who has a reputation of being ‘pro-settlement’ and has been often accused by his opponents of conducting ‘unauthorized parallel negotiations’ with the Greek Cypriot side, did not share complaints from the ‘close circle’ of Eroglu that Turkish Cypriots had been bypassed by Ankara in the process that led to the resumption of the talks.

“Ankara and northern Cyprus have been in close contact all through the process,” he said. But by stressing north Cyprus, it was apparent that Ankara preferred to work with him rather than the official negotiating president to overcome the deadlock over the joint text. Ankara, with American encouragement to bypass the Turkish Cypriot presidency and deal directly with Nami, created some concerns among Turkish Cypriots that something odd might be in the pipeline.

The paper also interviews former President Talat, who said that he was confident that Eroglu had been prodded by some factors to walk down the difficult road towards the talks, but now that he has taken so many important steps, political differences must be abandoned and he should be encouraged to continue further.

“I already declared that if he continued on this road and delivered a settlement, I will support Eroglu in the elections next year,” Talat said smiling at seeing Eroglu so often accused of being an anti-settlement politician now continuing a settlement process with Turkey’s strong encouragement, the paper says.

4. EU Chief Barroso says admitting breakaway states to EU “extremely difficult”

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday it would be nearly impossible for the European Union to agree on granting membership to newly-formed states that elect to break away from an existing member country, the Cyprus Mail said.

Barroso’s comments were made after he was asked if an independent Scotland would be welcome to join the EU, although he said he did not want to comment specifically on that scenario. Scotland is due to hold a referendum on independence in September.

“It would be extremely difficult to get approval of all the other member states to have a new member coming from one member state,” Barroso said in a BBC television interview. “I believe it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

Barroso, whose mandate as head of the EU executive ends in October, has previously said that any newly independent state would have to re-apply to join the EU.

5. Anastasiades’ mistake

An editorial in the Cyprus Mail says President Anastasiades made a mistake in trying to explain the provisions of the joint declaration in his press conference last week. By treating the Cyprus issue and the start of talks as a technical rather than a political matter he was doing exactly what his political foes would have wanted, playing the game according to their petty rules and prejudices.

In an attempt to respond to the criticisms of the last few days, Anastasiades ended up talking about arcane technicalities such as ‘residual powers’, the ‘evolution of the Republic,’ and the ‘source of state sovereignty’. If he were addressing a conference of academics and constitutional experts references to these lofty concepts may have been justified but had no place on television with the general public as his target audience. Do ‘residual powers’ and the ‘source of state sovereignty’ mean anything to the average person?


The problem is that for decades the Cyprus problem has been treated as a complex legal issue by politicians and journalists because this perfectly suited their anti-settlement agenda. It allowed them to concentrate on procedural detail and ignore the real purpose of the negotiations. The procedure became an end in itself, as it was very easy to interpret the wording of an agreement or a legal term in a totally negative way and claim that it was heavily-weighted in favour of the Turkish side, so as to prevent the process leading anywhere.


This has been exactly what we have been witnessing in the last week, with the opponents of the settlement identifying all sorts of ‘unacceptable’ legal concessions in the joint declaration. Apart from the ‘residual powers’, we have heard about ‘triple sovereignty’, ‘triple citizenship’ and of course the ludicrous ‘virgin birth’ (of the state) which dates back to the Annan plan but remains a favourite of our political legal eagles. By resorting to these legalistic devices the rejectionists peddle expertise they do not have in order to impress people and to show that they know best.


Anastasiades should avoid playing the game according to the rules of the rejectionists, because this gives additional ammunition to his foes. Self-appointed leader of the rejectionist camp Nicholas Papadopoulos felt he could publicly accuse the president of being a liar, because his understanding of the declaration was not the same as the DIKO leader’s expert interpretation. It is irrelevant that Papadopoulos is no constitutional expert.


The Cyprus problem needs to be treated as a political issue and the president should focus on offering his vision of a reunited Cyprus in which Turkish and Greek Cypriots would live in peace and security, working together for the good of their shared country and enjoying what it has to offer them. He could talk of the many opportunities that would arise as a result of an agreement that would double the size of the country and the economy overnight; of the opening of the fenced area of Famagusta, the investment prospects that would be created and the shared projects that could be undertaken, not to mention the ability to implement a long-term energy policy.


What is it after all that most Greek Cypriots are really interested in? Whether they would be given back their properties or be compensated for them and whether their security concerns would be satisfied. This is why the withdrawal of Turkish troops and an acceptable arrangement on the property issue should be top of our agenda. Does anyone other than anti-settlement politicians really care about the ‘virgin birth’, ‘residual powers’ or ‘internal citizenship’?

The federal state would after all be a full member of the EU and be subject to the laws, rules and regulations that apply in the Union. Its size and scope would not be of much relevance under the circumstances.


Anastasiades needs to make the new Cyprus that would emerge from a settlement (by virgin birth or otherwise) his message and avoid engaging in exchanges about constitutional theories and interpretations that never end. This suits the sworn enemies of a settlement who would have us believe that partition and the permanent presence of the Turkish troops in the north is preferable to a federal constitution with a few imperfections.

6. Coffeeshop

The Cyprus Mail’s satirical column Coffeeshop says that its  select team of metrio drinkers, some posing as constitutional experts and others as law professors in tweed jackets, will give readers a scholarly, in-depth analysis of the content of the catastrophic joint declaration which envisages the evolution of the patticha republic into a mespilo republic.


They have studied every word and phrase as well as the position of every comma and full-stop in the declaration to provide our customers with accurate explanations about the three singles, zero couples, constituent states and the significance of residual powers.


Initially, the Coffeeshop’s experts did not see any risk of a ‘virgin birth’ in the declaration, although Ethnarch Junior and his soulmate Yiorkos Lillikas identified the danger immediately. So they went bank to the text and after hours of meticulous study they realised that Junior and Yiorkos were right to be worried.
 With only three singles (citizenship, sovereignty and international personality) and no couples included in the document, it was inevitable that the new federal state would result from an immaculate conception. Had there been at least one couple, they could have produced the new federal state in the conventional way and nobody could complain about a ‘virgin birth’, which is not such a bad thing.
 In fact, as Christians we should be proud that the new Kyproulla state would result from a virgin birth because the last time this happened was a little over 2,000 years ago and it produced the Messiah. This could explain the cunning Archbishop Chrys’ unexpected support for the declaration.

You’d think half our political leaders were the products of virgin births the way they have all seized the role of Messiah determined to save us from the biblical catastrophe of a settlement. 
The leading Messiah of the last couple of weeks has been Ethnarch Junior, who is taking his role very seriously indeed. Junior has upheld his proud family tradition, flying the flag of negativity and alarmism, not only for the good of the country but also as a way of posting his ‘great leader’ credentials.
 Junior was particularly vicious and mean-spirited in his attacks on poor old Prez Nik, whom he accused of lying during his Wednesday evening news conference – a bit rich coming from the son of Tassos, a legendary liar.
 Junior apparently is very anxious and worried about the residual powers going to the constituent states in the event of a settlement. Our constitutional experts agree that it would have been much better to pickle the residual powers and put them in a jar in the freezer but believe we could get round the problem by saying they were not residual but came about from a virgin birth.

The big question is why DIKO remains in the government alliance headed by a ‘liar’ who knows nothing other than to make big concessions to the Turks. Why are the proud and principled people of DIKO lending their support to a prez who has treacherously agreed that the federal constitution’s residual powers would be exercised by the constituent states? 
What is Junior waiting for to do the right thing? When does he plan to take his four ministers and leave the government? If he does not leave he would create the mistaken impression that DIKO is more interested in enjoying the spoils of power than saving the country. And when he leaves he should tell all the DIKO losers he appointed chairmen of SGOs, like his smiling koumbaros Giorgos Pipis, to step down as well.
 Junior fears he may face a revolt if he took such a course of action. Already, one DIKO deputy, Athina Kyriakidou, announced that she would support Prez Nik’s effort to secure a settlement. As for his ministers they tried to do a deal with Nik ahead of Thursday’s Council of Ministers’ meeting to lock their posts.
Thursday’s cabinet meeting was scheduled to vote for the SGO privatisation bill, which, a day earlier, Junior had decided DIKO was against. In theory, the four DIKO ministers would have voted against it but instead they tried to do a deal with Nik. They offered to vote in favour of the bill, if he promised to keep them in their ministerial posts even if DIKO left the government.
Nice Nik refused to make such a promise, advising the fearsome foursome to abstain in the vote, which they did, thus keeping Junior happy but, sadly, failing to secure their ministerial futures – a good development for the country.

It is obvious that Junior is eyeing the presidency. His mum made her husband president, one son a mayor and now wants her second son to follow his father. She wants to go down in history as the only woman who was both the wife and the mother of president of the Republic. 
A settlement of the Cyprob would put paid to her noble plans because Junior would be associated with the ancient regime and nobody would trust a guy who invested so much in maintaining partition and hostility between the two communities as president of the constituent or federal state. DIKO without the Cyprob would only have rusfeti to offer.
 Junior would appear to be in a lose-lose situation, because nobody has won presidential elections by taking a stand against a settlement. Even his dad had to pretend that he was pro-solution – he pledged to work for a settlement based on the Annan plan – to get elected. And he lost spectacularly when he tried to get re-elected, because more than two-thirds of the population wanted a prez who would work for a settlement.