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Turkey’s EU bid meets another Cyprus roadblock
Negotiating Turkey’s accession to the European Union hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. But it may be about to get tougher still.
Europeans are already divided over the prospect of inviting a largely Muslim nation into their club of 27 states. And while some are attracted by Turkey’s huge economic potential, that’s frequently shadowed by its much-criticised human rights record.
As a result, Ankara’s membership negotiations with Brussels have, perhaps predictably, been slow.
Now a presidential election in northern Cyprus, a sliver of land only twice the size of London, is threatening to wreck any chance of a serious revival in those talks for years.
If opinion polls prove correct, hardline right-wing candidate Dervis Eroglu will oust incumbent Mehmet Ali Talat in the vote this Sunday. Reunification talks between the province, recognised as a state only by Ankara, and the rest of Cyprus could grind to a halt under Eroglu’s leadership.
The conflict started shortly after Britain granted independence to the Mediterranean island in 1960, sparking fighting between its Greek and Turkish communities.
In 1974, a Greek-inspired coup prompted Turkey to invade the island and carve out its own province in the north. Decades of wearisome stop-and-go reunification talks have followed.
Cyprus reunification talks – drowned out by shouting?
After months of Cyprus reunification talks, what comes out of the negotiating room more often than anything else, is shouting.
Greek Cypriot President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, appear to have made little headway in the conundrum that has defied generations of international diplomats.
Western diplomats and analysts on the divided Mediterranean island are starting to wonder if the euphoria that surrounded the launch of the talks in September 2008, was justified.
“They went back to the drawing board, that’s the main problem,” said Mete Hatay, a researcher for the PRIO peace institute in Nicosia.
High hopes were pinned on the two men, who come from leftist parties and enjoyed a strong relationship as opposition leaders, to make more progress than their predecessors – Glafcos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, British-trained lawyers whose careers were identified with the Cyprus problem.
“Both of them have trouble grappling with the language and terms. They are not lawyers like Clerides and Denktash,” said a senior Western diplomat. “Christofias wants to lead by consensus but you can’t operate like that as president and Talat is in a tight corner.”
Christofias moves too slowly and Talat, anxious not to give up too much, stepped back from agreed positions, hoping to meet somewhere in the middle but frustrating his opponent, he said.
The time has come for all cypriots to unite in friendship, and put the past behind us forever
Can Cyprus “comrades” clinch a deal?
The leaders of Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish communities sipped coffee and called each other “comrade” as they launched a new round of talks on reuniting the island, whose 34-year division has exasperated the most committed of mediators. This time, foreign diplomats and analysts say, a solution is in sight, thanks largely to the two moderate, leftist men heading the negotiations – Greek Cypriot Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot Mehmet Ali Talat.
Although it has been years since any violence has erupted on the island, the simmering feud has far-reaching effects onTurkey’s EU aspirations, its relations with fellow NATO member Greece and politics in the eastern Mediterranean.
Fed up with former president Tassos Papadopoulos, who tearfully asked Greek Cypriots to vote down a U.N. re-unification plan in 2004, voters elected Christofias this year and turned the tide on an issue that has long baffled the international community.
Or have they? Local analysts warn against excessive euphoria, saying that the obvious positive climate between the two leaders needs to trickle down to the ground for a deal to be made. Both communities must approve any solution in simultaneous referendums.
“Both leaders have good intentions but the atmosphere on the local level is polarised,” said Mete Hatay of the PRIO peace institute. “They must be in contact with the communities on a grassroots level to inform them and encourage them.”
Turkish Cypriots are still hurt by the Greek Cypriot rejection of the 2004 U.N. blueprint, which the north overwhelmingly approved. And with every passing year, the distance between the two sides appears to grow.
A walk down towards the central Nicosia Ledra Street crossing, whose barrier was pulled down in April as a prelude to the talks, speaks volumes about the differences that need to be bridged.
The leaders of Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish communities are very lovely. The is very lovely and useful.
The Cyprus street opening which almost never was
In Cyprus, stepping out of line can be a deal breaker. Ahead of Thursday’s dismantling of a symbol of the island’s division, it almost ended in disaster. Balloons were released into the air, champagne corks popped and there were smiles all around when both sides opened the gates to a flood of human traffic at Ledra Street.
But two hours before the fireworks, Greek Cypriots were in a flap over the movements of Turkish Cypriot policemen, in a spat which could have threatened the reopening of Ledra Street after about half a century.
“There was a complication overnight, they installed policemen in the demilitarised zone, but we seem to have overcome the problem now,” a sleepless Greek Cypriot official told Reuters. “I had been on the phone all night.”
The 80-metre corridor of land linking the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot ends of Ledra forms part of a United Nations corridor of land splitting Nicosia east to west. But like most things in Cyprus, even a few metres of land is disputed, in this case about 10-20 metres of it.
Arriving more than an hour before the ceremony, I was ushered by smiling U.N. soldiers through an abandoned shopping centre, along a decrepit alleyway with towering mud-brick buildings. Here, only the facades and rusting cast iron gates drawn across archways were standing.
That is what crossing Ledra would have looked like, had local town workers not engaged in a last-minute sprint to erect scaffolding, and cover them with sheets of bright colours. It all looked rather artificial.
I was asked to leave because organisers said they were “not ready”. On my way back, a U.N. soldier was talking into his mobile phone. “Does that mean there will be no ceremony?” he barked.
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May want to add Armenia to your list so as to enlighten you. It’s easy to point to the obvious but Turkey has a reconciliation issues that exposes Europe with geopolitical concerns which make the Cyprus issue look as a tea party dispute.