Well known
lawyer and constitutional expert Polis Polyviou has been appointed as an
advisor on the Greek Cypriot side’s negotiating team, Phileleftheros reports.
He will take
part in today’s meeting between negotiators Andreas Mavroyiannis and Kudret
Ozersay and will be sitting in on the talks.
In addition
former Attorney General Aleckos Markides will from now on also become involved
and will speak directly with President Anastasiades and the legal team.
The paper says
that according to sources, this has been deemed necessary as talks go deeper
into details.
Today’s
meeting is expected to deal with procedural issues that were raised at the
first meeting.
2. Rights of
Turkish settlers will be protected
Turkish Cypriot prime minister, Ozkan Yorgancioglu, has promised Turkish settlers that they will
do whatever they can in order for them to be given citizenship in a future
federal Cyprus, Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika reports.
The
paper writes that the Turkish settlers are feeling uncertain as to what will
become of them, as no one has explained to them in the
event of a solution.
“We are all included in the definition ‘Turkish Cypriot people’.
Everybody who lives in the country and is a citizen, not an old or new citizen,
and sees his future here is included in this. Our target should be an agreement
in which our interests will be protected,” Yorgancioglu told a delegation from
the association of the Turkish war veterans. “It is our duty to protect the rights of the people who have lived here
for 40-45 years, who were born here,”
3. A
portrait of Turkish Cypriot negotiator Kudret Ozersay
Kudret
Ozersay is not your typical technocrat/negotiator, says Sotos Ktoris in an
online portrait of the man appointed as Turkish Cypriot negotiator.
He
also has political ambitions and is one of the most important figures in the
new generation of Turkish Cypriot politicians, an obvious choice for the
position of negotiator. The forty-year old academic is considered a moderate
political figure, is widely respected internationally, and above all, is
“mainstream” in his opinions on the Cyprus problem. His doctoral thesis at the
University of Ankara focused on the legal validity of the 1960 agreement. He
has also authored a series of academic texts on various aspects of the Cyprus
issue, such as the property issue, bizonality, security, and guarantees. His
standing as an academic and technocrat, as well as his political acumen, have
made him an excellent connoisseur, and adroit handler of the legal, political
and historical dimensions of the Cyprus issue.
His
positions on the Cyprus problem reflect the overall consensus of opinion of the
vast majority of Turkish Cypriots, which can be summarised as wanting to change
the divisive status quo in such a way so as to safeguard and secure the ethnicity
of the Turkish Cypriots within a loose, bizonal, bi-communal federation.
Ensuring the 'maximum' bizonality has, for Ozersay, been the cornerstone of Turkish
Cypriot aspirations, as the only thing that can guarantee the security of the
Turkish Cypriots against the prospect of being overrun by the Greek Cypriots with
their greater numbers and financial clout. The Turkish Cypriot insistence on a
'strong' bizonality is rooted precisely in this belief, and the painful
experience of the 1963-1974 period.
He
believes that the experiences of the two communities in the recent past is at
the heart of their different interpretations with the fundamental principle of bizonality
on the one hand and respect for human rights on the other. He believes these
two principles are what further exacerbate a settlement of the property issue
which with the passage of time has turned into a "huge technical and legal
conundrum”.
Ozersay
is critical of the stand of certain Turkish Cypriot political forces in favour
of 'clean' bi-zonality, as well as their view that the Third Vienna Agreement
definitively resolved the property issue. At the same time, he considers the Greek
Cypriot claim for unrestricted recovery of the property they owned before 1974
as a distinct threat to the Turkish Cypriot community.
Ozersay
derives his political strength directly from the Turkish Foreign Ministry,
which views him as their most reliable interlocutor in Cyprus. Together with
Ozdil Nami at the Turkish Cypriot foreign ministry, who maintains excellent
relations with Ahmet Davutoglu and his party, they form a new cadre within the
Turkish Cypriot community which is directly accountable to Turkey, further limiting
the influence Dervis Eroglu has in the negotiating process. Appointing Ozersay as
negotiator reflects the Turkish government’s intention to " finish"
the Cyprus problem, either through a negotiated settlement, or by upgrading the
"TRNC ". By replacing the inflexible nationalist Osman Ertug, allows
Ankara to manage the negotiations with greater flexibly and without the threat
of internal reactions, in order to either reach a solution or put the blame for
a deadlock on the Greek Cypriot side.
As the
academic Niazi Kizilyurek says, this time the Cyprus plane will land either at
the airport of the solution or that of partition. The coming negotiations with
Ozersay will be difficult, particularly on issues considered vital for the
Turkish Cypriots (bizonality, guarantees). However, it is encouraging that the talks
will be conducted with someone who, despite his own father having been killed by
Greek Cypriots in 1974 in the village of Alaminos and whose remains were
identified in 2007, nevertheless never attached himself to the partitionist and
nationalist rhetoric of the Turkish Cypriot right.
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