Times article reviewing British position on Cyprus UN 5+1 Talks.
For nearly half a century Cyprus has been Europe’s most intractable problem, the palm-fringed home of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, divided by war and pulled apart further by the rivalries of Greece and Turkey, the patrons of its two communities.
For Britain, which ruled the island from 1878 until 1960, the issue is one of the last imperial hangovers. The UK became one of Cyprus’s guarantors at its independence, alongside Greece and Turkey, meaning it has a responsibility, and a right, to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
It also has its own direct interests in the form of two sovereign base areas, patches of British territory where 3,000 UK troops are stationed along with listening posts gathering intelligence from the most turbulent parts of the Middle East.
Dominic Raab meeting Nikos Christodoulides, the Cypriot foreign minister. Talks backed by the UN are due to begin next month.
For the past five years however, the UK has been preoccupied by Brexit, and has shrunk from its overseas roles in practice even if not in policy. From Kosovo to Cyprus, politicians who have long counted on Britain as an influential friend complain that the UK is not as interested as it used to be.
So as Dominic Raab lands in Cyprus today to meet leaders on both sides of the island before UN-backed peace talks are due to resume next month after a hiatus of nearly four years, there is a weight of expectation upon the foreign minister.
In the Greek-speaking south, February has been described as “critical month” for the Cyprus issue by Nikos Christodoulides, the foreign minister.
Raab’s visit is part of a flurry of official trips in the run-up to the new talks. The foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey visited their respective sides of the island this week; Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president, is due to arrive on Monday.
In the Turkish-speaking north, recognised as a sovereign state only by Ankara and dwarfed in terms of international clout by the south, an EU member, negotiators hope the post-Brexit UK can take a more active role in negotiations.
“The EU, acting on the principle of solidarity with all its members, has been quite biased on its approach to the Cyprus issue,” said Ergun Olgun, chief negotiator for the north, before meetings with Raab. “We are hoping that with the UK out of the EU, the British government will be more independent.
“The need [for a settlement to the conflict] is pressing now, and I think international actors, petrol companies, the EU, the Nato alliance see there is now need to take the Cyprus issue by the horns. And that naturally brings us to the question: on what basis can we build a sustainable resolution to the Cyprus question?”
Therein lies the problem. The last UN-backed talks in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana, seen at the time as the best chance of reunification since war cleaved the island 47 years ago, collapsed in 2017. Since then, things have only got worse.
A British armoured car helps to guard a refugee convoy as it leaves Nicosia. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup.
Soon after Turkey sent seismic exploration vessels and warships into Cypriot waters in what Ankara says was an attempt to secure the Turkish Cypriots’ rightful stake in undersea gas reserves.
Last summer that dispute boiled over into a regional crisis that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war and sucked in France and the UAE. Under the threat of EU sanctions President Erdogan has since backpedalled and political dialogue between Ankara and Athens restarted last week, though the underlying issues are far from resolved.
Then, in October, presidential elections in the north installed Ersin Tatar, Erdogan’s favoured candidate. He backs a two-state solution, which would entail a formal division of the island and international recognition for the north. It is currently economically stymied by wide-ranging embargoes including a block on trade with the EU, leaving it increasingly dependent on Turkey which keeps 40,000 troops on the island.
Ersin Tatar, the Turkish-Cypriot leader, with President Erdogan of Turkey, who favours a two-state solution.
Tatar, who was prime minister in the north before winning the presidency, boosted his election campaign days before the run-off ballot by reopening the resort of Varosha, a Turkish military zone since 1974. That was seen as a provocation in the south; many of Varosha’s residents had been Greek-Cypriots who have never relinquished their claims to their properties there.
For the Greek-speakers, any talk of formal separation is also anathema — and could jeopardise the future of Britain’s sovereign base areas, most of which are located in the south. While the Turkish Cypriots support a continuing British military presence, the government in the south — the Republic of Cyprus — passed a resolution in 2005 describing the areas as “the indirect continuation of colonialism” and calling for the UK’s sovereignty in them to be limited to military purposes.
“Dismantling the Republic of Cyprus, in any way, through a botched agreement, would also dismantle any claim to the existence of British bases in Cyprus,” said Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, a senior fellow at the Centre for European and International Affairs at the University of Nicosia. “This is the last foothold that Britain has in the eastern Mediterranean, the only bastion of hard power that could complement and protect its soft power yearnings in the post-EU era of ‘global Britain’.”
Ersin Tatar, who had been prime minister before he was elected president, meets Dominic Raab in Nicosia.
The message to Raab from the south would be that a solution had to involve a “bicommunal federation” rather than separate states, she said. And any attempts to secure Britain’s continued military presence as a price of its support would be unacceptable. “This is the 21st century, after all. Post-colonial remedies are surely an anachronism.”
The island is physically more divided than it has been since 2003, when the land border between the two sides was opened for the first time since 1974. Covid-19 has closed it again, even if only temporarily; Raab is one of the few people to cross from one side to the other since last March. The north is in lockdown after a new surge of infections, while the south is preparing to lift restrictions imposed last month. The border may be reopened next month.
The UK’s official position on Cyprus remains the same as it has always been — that reunification, in whatever form, would be the best solution for both sides and the rest of the world. Given the evolving realities on the island, the UK may be forced into a more pragmatic position, however.
One thorny issue is the oil and gas reserves, which has caused so much tubthumping since the collapse of Crans-Montana, and how much the two sides are prepared to co-operate economically.
Dominic Raab would be mindful not to antagonise the republic or the EU, said Erol Kaymak, a professor of international relations, lest it put at risk the status of the British bases.
Olgun, the north’s negotiator, said: “The relationship needs to be built on the basis of two states with equal international status. We need to find a way of making it possible for these two states to establish a co-operative relationship on the island. And we need to find a way to resolve this so that there are no further problems after an agreement is signed.”
Every part of Raab’s visit will be watched on both sides of the island. Shaking hands or bumping fists with Tatar would be symbolic, said Erol Kaymak, a professor of international relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University in north Cyprus. The foreign secretary could open trade talks with the north.
Yet Raab would be mindful not to antagonise the republic or the EU, said Kaymak, lest it put at risk the status of the British bases. Raab had some room for manoeuvre, “but the UK is unlikely to take too many risks to unlock the Cyprus dispute”