April 25, 2004

Greek Cypriots dash "confederation plan" [Sneer quotes mine.--Jen]

In a major blow to international hopes, Greek Cypriots yesterday in a referendum massively rejected a U.N. plan to unite the island torn by more than three decades of ethnic division.
    
In a separate referendum that widened the rift that has plagued Cyprus virtually since the end of British colonial rule in 1960, Turkish Cypriots accepted the blueprint for a confederation of two "constituent states" on the strategic Mediterranean island.
[Ever get the feeling that the United States just goes around cleaning up messes that Britain left, like Iraq, "Palestine," Kashmir and now Cyprus?--J.T.]
    
According to returns released last night, some 75.9 percent of Greek-Cypriot voters rejected the plan, which bore the personal stamp of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan[Kofi Annan: Mr. World Headache!], while just less than 65 percent of Turkish Cypriots approved it.
    
The vote of the Turkish minority will have no impact on the immediate future of Cyprus, which will remain divided. Only the Greek-Cypriot part will enter the European Union, as scheduled, on May 1, leaving the Turkish Cypriots in an isolated rump state recognized only by Turkey.

This is as it should be.
Turkey shouldn't be rewarded for its armed land grab, initially staged in 1974 with 40,000 Turkish troops that are still there.

The Turkish Cypriots did not participate in negotiations with the European Union, but many of them saw the unification plan as a path to membership.
    
European Union officials did not hide their disappointment at a result that greatly complicates the enlargement process next month.
    
"The political damage is large," EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said. "There's now a shadow over Cyprus' membership."
[Not to mention Turkey's!...which Mr. Verheugen didn't, as it happens.]
   
 State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was also "disappointed" at the Greek-Cypriot vote.
    
"Failure of the referendum in the Greek-Cypriot community is a setback to the hopes of those on the island who voted for the settlement and to the international community," he said.
[IOW, we're just tired of the Greeks and Turks fighting over this and wish it would be over any old way.]
    
The Greek-Cypriot vote is certain to tarnish the community's entry into the European Union and damage relations with the international community. The United States, the European Union and a number of regional powers saw the U.N. plan as a chance to end a long-festering feud in a strategic and vulnerable area.

But the estimated 200 specialists who drafted the 9,000-page U.N. plan were criticized for using facile formulas without considering the tensions, passions and history of the island. The plan is theoretically based on the system of the Swiss confederation that many considered not applicable in Mediterranean conditions.
    
According to Greek-Cypriot commentator George Lordos, who backed the Annan blueprint, "We will now lose all our friends in Europe.
    
"We embark on a course of future collision with Greece herself," he added, and the Cyprus problem "will never again be raised in her path to Europe."
    
The vote confirmed the opposing hopes and aspirations of the island's two ethnic communities, the Orthodox Christian Greek Cypriots and Muslim Turkish Cypriots.
[And the jihadi Muslims raise their heads in yet another place where they're trying to lay claim to land that isn't theirs and drive out the Christians. Shades of Kosovo and Kashmir and "Palestine" and Chechnya...]

 In the words of Turkish-Cypriot President Rauf Denktash -- the longtime Turkish leader who urged rejection of the U.N. plan -- the vote proved that "there is no Cypriot nation, just Greeks and Turks living in Cyprus."
    
In Turkey itself, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Greek community in Cyprus would be the big loser in the vote.
[Uh-huh. Doesn't Erdogan wish! Making lemonade out of lemons.--Jen]
[...]
 Turkish officials made clear they would push for the end of the international isolation of the Turkish north of the island, the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), saying there was no longer any reason for "an unfavorable attitude towards the Turkish community."
    
The Greek-Cypriot vote strengthened the position of their president, Tassos Papadopoulos, who had campaigned for a rejection. He claimed the plan, despite Mr. Annan's imprimatur, was full of pitfalls and relied too heavily on Turkish goodwill.
[Hmmm. Sounds to me as if it relied on Greek Cypriot goodwill.--Jen]

Memories of communal strife that date back to 1963 weighed heavily over the Greek-Cypriot vote. Many objected to what they saw as limited Turkish territorial concessions and the cost of the vague unification plan that was to be borne mainly by the richer Greek-Cypriot sector.
    
In fact, many Greek Cypriots and foreign observers saw many clauses of the "Annan Plan" as containing the potential for new instability on the island, which has been relatively calm -- though politically frozen -- since the 1974 Turkish invasion after an abortive coup to link the island with Greece.
    
Many on the Greek side believed that their prosperity and economic development since the 1974 Turkish invasion would be diluted by the new demands to support the Turkish sector, which would be allowed to retain its separate political identity.

Maybe I'm making a big deal of nothing and Cyprus is a tiny island, but I think this mini-battle is another battlefront in the Global War on Islamist Terrorism.
And if nothing else, it should make for an interesting Olympics this summer.
Of course, Greece and Turkey have been fighting over some piece of land or the other for thousands of years and they will continue to do so.
The "Annan plan" wouldn't have put an end to that, but only officially rewarded Turkey for its armed invasion of the island in 1974.
Turks and Muslim Turks are in a definite minority in Cyprus and shouldn't be given half of it for any reason.
(And lurking in the background is Turkey's "cooperation" with the "international community," which was another bid for favors from the EUro-weenies when it came to EU membership, when it refused to allow US troops on their soil as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.)
Funny how I blogged about this problem over a year ago, when Mr. Papadopoulos had just won the election as Greek Cypriot President on the platform of "President of all Cypriots" and Denktash had stood up the UN for talks on Cypriot unification because of that.
Yet every story I read on the referenda this weekend had no mention of how horribly Denktash and the Turks had behaved in the past when talks were proposed or tried.
Clearly, this is another EU/UN problem that they're trying to solve quickly in the favor of the bullying Muslim country to the detriment of the more craven, but cowed Western one.
The Greeks are no angels, but I truly think that their Cypriot "cousins" have been wronged politically, economically and religiously speaking by the Turkish Cypriot
invasion and--Dare I say it? I do dare.-- "occupation."
And the wily Turks, led by the overtly Muslim Erdogan, have managed to get the stamp of legitimacy from both the U.N. and the E.U., even though the U.N. has condemned the Turkish occupation more than once:

... UN resolutions stipulate that Cyprus is a single country in which the northern third is illegally occupied. In 1982, Turkish-controlled Cyprus made a unilateral declaration of independence that was condemned by the United Nations and that remains unrecognized by every country except Turkey.

So, Kofi Annan (What a tool!) went against the long-standing resolutions of his own "fine" institution to try and make this happen on his watch. Typical.
What better proof do we need that U.N. Resolutions are worthless?
He'll do anything for money, power and celebrity and the full impact of his participation in the Iraq Oil-for-Palaces scandal hasn't hit yet, although I think it will soon, as they're implicating Kofi's son:

Benon Sevan, who ran the Oil-for-Food program, and reported to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is among those believed to have profited from illegal oil sales. Mr. Sevan has denied any wrongdoing. There also have been questions about a possible conflict of interest involving Kojo Annan and Cotecna, a Swiss firm that employed the secretary-general's son and was contracted by the U.N. to work on behalf of the Oil-for-Food program. Kojo Annan has denied any conflict.

And while Turkey's Erdogan was seemingly chastened in his jihad by the Al Queda-linked bombings in Istanbul last November, those bitter memories of the downside of Islamofascism seem to be fading or he would tell Denktash and the Turkish troops on Cyprus to come home.

We haven't heard the end of this, not only because of the Athens Olympics, but also because Cyprus is so strategically located in the Mediterranean... and then there are its ties to Great Britain (not the least of which is the fact that Prince Phillip was born on Cyprus!).
All the U.N. unification talks and then this referendum did was to legimitimize the Turkish occupation of the northern end of Cyprus and by their vote, the Greek Cypriots refused to do the same.
Good for them!