289 - Living with the Enemy: Harmony Amid a Frozen Conflict

Cyprus Bifurcated

            The globe’s longest running, but now quiet, conflict between opposed peoples is on the strategically situated eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Once angrily contested by both sides, Cyprus is now largely peaceful at the people-to-people level even though their leaders and their governments are quick to take umbrage when either the Turkish administration of North Cyprus or the Greek administration of the South gain attention from the rest of the world.

            Cyprus as a whole, bigger than Puerto Rico and Rhode Island but smaller than Connecticut, is the cockpit of the eastern Mediterranean, and has been since ancient times. But it has been bifurcated politically since 1974, with two governments butting heads on the island because of differences of language, religion, and aspiration, and because of deep-rooted fear.

Turkey invaded the former British crown colony fifty years ago this past July. About 25,000 Turkish soldiers are still garrisoned in the northern part of the island, with little to do except (mostly symbolically) to protect the self-proclaimed and unrecognized (except for Turkey) Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC).

            The TRNC controls about one-third of the island’s territory and counts about 383,000 predominantly Turkish-speaking Cypriots as its citizens. The remainder of the island – the Republic of Cyprus – is populated by 1.4 million Greek-speaking Cypriots.  It joined the European Union in 2004 without the participation of the Turkish Cypriots, but is not a NATO member.

A UN peacekeeping force has occupied and maintained a demilitarized zone between the two republics ever since the Turkish invasion.  But, since about 2002, relations between North and South Cyprus have largely been uneventful, with only very rare minor outbreaks of hostility.

 Cypriots have learned to get along, to avoid renewed antagonisms, and to tolerate the other without contesting every presumed slight or conceivable injustice.  Despite linguistic distinction, they watch television and social media across the political fault line. They eat the same foods, although usually not together, and enjoy similar wine and alcoholic beverages. Their mutual language is English, dating from colonial times, and many younger Cypriots, both Turkish- and Greek-speaking, migrate to Britain for higher education.

Cyprus, warm and sunny when Europe endures a cold winter, thrives on tourism. The South also registers ships and sends potatoes to Europe when the northern climes are snowbound.  The North has licensed casinos and welcomes gamblers from Turkey.

Cyprus, for all of its intractable political division, is an island where there is no cross-border violence and a surprising degree of harmony despite the bitter and irreconcilable historic differences between the separated sections of the whole. Since 2002, too, movement across the demilitarized green line has been routine and relatively seamless, with a quick checking of passports.  North Cypriots regularly pass, for example, from the northern parts of Nicosia/Lekosa, the still bifurcated capital city, to work in the South.  Tourists cross the green line with equal ease.

Yet, political expectations and determinations are starkly divergent, with both republics having long hewed to future dispensations for themselves that have defied generations of eager UN negotiators.

South Cyprus claims the entire island as its sovereign right.  When the Turks invaded to prevent their fellow Turkish speakers from becoming subjects of a military regime under Greek officers who had ousted the president of what was then a united island, they saved Turkish speakers from being killed and persecuted. Many Turks moved north from exposed positions in the south and west.  This week, a former Greek Cypriot cabinet minister acknowledged unspeakable Greek-perpetrated atrocities on Turkish children during the battles of 1974.

Until 1960, Cyprus was a British crown colony. Thereafter it was independent, led by a charismatic Greek-speaking orthodox archbishop. But in 1974, Greek-speaking fascists seeking enosis or union with Greece tried to oust Archbishop Makarios militarily. Violence broke out, with Greeks attacking Turks.

But after the Greek speaking officers who had pursued union with Greece were finally subdued by British intervention, South Cyprus resumed its post-colonial status as the presumed hegemon over the entire island, not just the South.  By then Turkish troops had established a separate entity which, in 1983, declared itself a republic.

Several negotiating teams at the beginning of this century almost managed to persuade North and South to come together.  After several years of assiduous parleying between the two sides, a carefully crafted UN federal plan was put to a vote. Concessions made by the UN to the North resulted in an unexpected majority there in favor; but the concessions upset the South. Its citizens voted robustly against the UN plan.

Cyprus would be a much stronger player in Europe and internationally if both sides operated together as part of a polity that ruled the whole island but with each component controlling its domestic affairs – its educational, agricultural, health, touristic, and similar concerns, with federal Cyprus focusing on security (Cyprus lies 520 miles from Syria and Lebanon and 263 miles from Israel) and such now important issues of money laundering, banking integrity, and corruption. (Russia uses Cyprus to evade sanctions.) There are petroleum deposits offshore, too, the exploitation of which could benefit both sides.

Despite a potential future petroleum bonanza and hardly any fundamental life-style differences between the two Cypriot sides, there is almost no chance that the frozen Cyprus conflict will be resolved soon or ever. The North wants the South to accept the fact that it exists and will not go away – and that it will demand half of any oil produced offshore. Turkey naturally backs the TRNC; its leaders make frequent visits to North Cyprus to emphasize their support.

The South reiterates -- whenever the UN or other negotiators try to unfreeze Cyprus’ disunion – that it will never retreat from its sovereign claims to the entire island. The Turks should not have invaded; North Cyprus is an illegal usurping secessionist entity, the South says.

There the dispute has long rested, ingenious attempts to bring the two sides into different forms of federation having never overcome Greek Cyprus’ firm belief that the island should remain under its sole jurisdiction. Likewise, since there is nothing more than harsh words between the two sides now, and no warfare, there is little urgency (especially on the island) to find a workable way to bring Turkish- and Greek-speakers together into an enduring federation.

Cypriots have found a way to live together, even if separately. And divided they may long remain despite the advantages in today’s world of constructing an island-wide government capable of serving all inhabitants well.