Cyprus Talks | Creating the Cyprus Utopia

Cyprus Talks | Creating the Cyprus UtopiaCyprus Talks – Creating the Cyprus Utopia

At the moment it is difficult to make sense of the progress of the Cyprus Talks which were supposed to start in October of last year. At the insistence of the south’s President Anastasiades, a mutually agreed joint statement was to be released first and he is not prepared to enter the talks unless his precondition is met.

I’ve tried to understand his thinking on this and my only explanation of what he is trying to achieve is to not enter the talks unless he believes he agrees with what is being discussed. In other words the formation of a unified Cyprus and not two separate independent states. For the north it appears to be the opposite.

To the outside world a lack of comprehension of what Anastasiades is trying to achieve means that the process seems to have just stalled and depending on your political bias, the blame can be on either side. To try to get the process going, negotiators seem to be trying to create a joint statement which states that the basis of the Cyprus Talks is the creation of a unified Cyprus consisting of two independent constituent states under the control of a Greek Cypriot majority central government.

In this utopia, the ‘MPs’ of the central government would be voted in by all ‘citizens’ of Cyprus and this would mean a Greek Cypriot dominated legislature. Even here there is a problem of who would be accepted as a voting citizen, with the north giving citizenship to mainland Turks and the south to anyone one rich enough to risk investing in property there considering the title deed problems.

The two separate independent states would consist of ‘MPs’ voted in much as they are now. The problem is how much power the Greek Cypriot central government would have over the north. The problem would also be whether this power would then increase if ever a solution was achieved. Sure, a new Constitution could say that no changes would be allowed but Cypriots are good at ignoring courts supposed to uphold Constitutions as was clearly shown in 1963.

Anastasiades is reported by the Famagusta Gazette as saying that “failure to agree on a deal on the Cyprus problem could lead to the country being permanently divided.”  Well nothing is permanent but over the last 40 years this has been true so perhaps he should have said that the failure of Greek Cypriots to begin the talks when Turkish Cypriots are ready to do so is in fact continuing the existing divide day by day and that is as permanent as it gets.

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