Cyprus Vote: Big Ramifications for Turkey's EU Bid and NATO's Operational Capacity

The future of Turkey's European Union bid could hinge on the February 17 presidential election in Cyprus. The prospect of a new Greek Cypriot leadership may offer the last chance for uniting the divided island, analysts say. Permanent division, experts add, would create a lasting source of political tension that not only could prevent Turkey's EU accession, but also hamper the EU's and NATO's strategic capabilities.

"The results of the election will be important, if we are going to have a move forward," says Philippos Savvides, Greek Cypriot political analyst based in Athens. Brussels is set to review progress on Turkey's membership bid in 2009, leaving this year as the only window of opportunity to make headway on the Cyprus issue, Savvides says. "It will be a mess if we don't have a resolution."

Cyprus has been split since 1974, when Turkey invaded the island's northern part to safeguard its Turkish Cypriot community, which comprised some 20 percent of the total population. With United Nations peacekeepers monitoring a ceasefire line separating the island's Greek and Turkish parts, the Cyprus issue has made little progress toward reunification over the decades.

There was some hope for a resolution in 2004, when Turkey signed on to the United Nations-brokered Annan plan, which called for Ankara to withdraw its troops, and Cyprus to be reunited. The new Cyprus would have been comprised of two confederal states, one Greek and one Turkish, with a loose central government.

Although 65 percent of Turkish Cypriots voted for the plan in an April, 2004 referendum, 76 percent of Greek Cypriot voters – urged on by president Tassos Papadopoulos – voted no, effectively killing the initiative.
Despite its rejectionist stance, Cyprus was admitted to the European Union a month after the failed referendum.

Hugh Pope, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, says the EU made an important mistake by admitting Cyprus with the island still divided. "Cyprus now has no real carrot to go for a solution and there is no real stick to use against it. There are no brakes on the situation anymore," Pope says.

With Cyprus in the EU, its long-running feud with Turkey is now playing itself out inside the bloc. Cyprus, for example, has blocked Turkey-EU negotiations from going forward in a number of areas, including such critical ones as energy policy. "Cyprus is using every possible occasion to punish Turkey in the EU. Cyprus has been the most difficult wedge between Turkey and the EU," Pope says.

But the Cyprus issue is having an impact well beyond the question of Turkey's membership in the EU. Nicosia, for example, is preventing the EU from reaching a consensus position in support of an independent Kosovo because it fears that it would provide a precedent for Turkish Cyprus.

Turkey, meanwhile, is using its NATO membership to strike back, blocking enhanced cooperation between the EU and the defense alliance in protest of what it sees as Brussels' being held captive by the Cypriot agenda. This has hampered EU policing projects in Kosovo and Afghanistan from getting off the ground.

"The big picture strategic stuff is already difficult for the EU, and it's going to worsen because there is guerilla diplomatic warfare going on between Cyprus and Turkey and it's spreading everywhere," says Pope.

Polls in Cyprus have not found a clear leader among the three candidates running in the election: Papadopoulos; Dimitris Christofias of the nominally communist AKEL party and the former foreign minister; and Ioannis Kasoulides, an independent backed by the centre-right party DISY. A runoff election will be held on February 24 if no candidate wins a majority of the vote on February 17.

Savvides, the Athens-based analyst, says Papadopoulos is struggling to pull ahead of the other two candidates because of a growing sense that his approach to the Cyprus issue has failed to yield any results. "I believe the other two candidates have more credibility than in terms of sincerely pushing for a solution," he says.

The hope among European diplomats is that the election of a new Greek Cypriot government would enable the United Nations – with EU help – to reintroduce a plan to reunify the island. Without a new solution, Savvides and others warn that the Cyprus issue will drift towards a "Taiwanization" of the problem, with Turkish Cyprus remaining an unrecognized country but slowly gaining more international acceptance and wealth, to the point where it will no longer seek reunification.

Emine Erk, a Turkish Cypriot lawyer and human rights activist, says that while the enthusiasm that the Annan plan generated in 2004 has been greatly diminished, the political will for a settlement still exists in northern Cyprus.

"There is a kind of optimism that there will be a change and there will be a new process beginning," she says.

Turkey, though badly stung by the Greek Cypriots' behavior within the EU and what it sees as Brussels' failure to punish Nicosia for rejecting the Annan plan, also appears to still have the desire to work something out, observers say.

"Turkey needs a solution on Cyprus, if for nothing else, than for its own European Union perspective, to give those who are against its membership one less thing to hide behind," says Sylvia Tiryaki, an expert on Cyprus at Istanbul Kultur University.

"Cyprus is the obstacle, and Turkey definitely wants to get rid of it."