This text analyses the reasons for the continuing failure to re-unite the two states of Cyprus after over 40 years of division. It focuses on the Annan Plan - the popular name for the UN initiative to find a 'Comprehensive Solution to the Cyprus Problem' in anticipation of Cyprus' accession to the EU - & the reasons for its failure.
On April 23, 2003, to the surprise of much of the world, the ceasefire line that divides Cyprus opened. The line had partitioned the island since 1974, and so international media heralded the opening of the checkpoints as a historic event that echoed the fall of the Berlin Wall. As in the moment of the Wall's collapse, cameras captured the rush of Cypriots across the border to visit homes unwillingly abandoned three decades earlier. It was a euphoric moment, and one that led to expectations of reunification. But within a year Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected at referendum a United Nations plan to reunite the island, despite their Turkish compatriots' support for the plan. In The Past in Pieces, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant explores why the momentous event of the opening has not led Cyprus any closer to reunification, and indeed in many ways has driven the two communities of the island further apart. This chronicle of the "new Cyprus" tells the story of the opening through the voices and lives of the people of one town that has experienced conflict. Over the course of two years, Bryant studied a formerly mixed town in northern Cyprus in order to understand both experiences of life together before conflict and the ways in which the dissolution of that shared life is remembered today. Tales of violation and loss return from the past to shape meanings of the opening in daily life, redefining the ways in which Cypriots describe their own senses of belonging and expectations of the political future. By examining the ways the past is rewritten in the present, Bryant shows how even a momentous opening may lead not to reconciliation but instead to the discovery of new borders that may, in fact, be the real ones.
For nearly 60 years, the tiny Mediterranean nation of Cyprus has taken a disproportionate share of the international spotlight. In The Cyprus Problem, James Ker-Lindsay--recently appointed as expert advisor to the UN Secretary-General's Special Advisor on Cyprus--offers an incisive, even-handed account of the conflict. Ker-Lindsay covers all aspects of the Cyprus problem, placing it in historical context, addressing the situation as it now stands, and looking toward its possible resolution.
"Reports and analyses the results of the first public opinion survey in Cyprus carried out by the Centre for European Policy Studies in collaboration with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot partners. In the new atmosphere of relaunched negotiations in 2008, this book investigates what Cypriots think of each other, of the peace process and of possible solutions to the conflict."--Publisher.
This book follows the author's 22-year journey through Cyprus and surrounding countries beyond in an exploration of conflict resolution with regard to the Cyprus Problem. The struggle is emblematic of numerous international attempts over the years to resolve this identity-based ethnic conflict historically referred to as the Cyprus Problem. So far all have failed miserably. The current situation indicates any solution other than a formal partition of the island between the two communities seems increasingly remote as the years pass.This has led the author to conclude a resolution to the Cyprus Problem no longer is a realistic political goal, but rather one eclipsed by the need for a non-political solution, which at least may succeed in convincing people on both sides to live together peacefully for their joint benefit.
Over the past fifty years the Cyprus Problem has come to be regarded as the archetype of an intractable ethnic conflict. Since 1964, the United Nations has been at the forefront of efforts to find a political solution to the dispute between the island's Greek and Turkish communities. And yet, despite the active involvement of six Secretaries-General (U Thant, Kurt Waldheim, Javier Perez de Cuellar, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon), every attempt to reach a mutually acceptable solution has failed. Here, James Ker-Lindsay draws together new and original perspectives from the leading experts on Cyprus, including academics, policy-makers, politicians and activists. All have addressed one deceptively simple question: 'Can Cyprus be solved?' Resolving Cyprus presents a comprehensive overview of the Cyprus Problem from a variety of approaches and offers new and innovative ideas as to how to tackle one of the longest running ethnic conflicts on the world stage. This represents an essential contribution to the body of work on Cyprus, and will be required reading for all those following the debates surrounding the Cyprus problem.
This book explores the assassination of Antonios Triantafyllides, a leading Cypriot lawyer and politician, in British colonial Cyprus in January 1934. This event has been the infamous subject of rumours since its occurrence and a taboo subject for Cypriot society and historians alike, as the event has been silenced or dismissed. This book explores the assassination in its broadest possible context by situating it within the broader events within the British Empire, the region and the world more generally at that time. The basis for the exploration is a ‘community of records’ through which all the evidence is sifted, reading it both with and against the grain, in order to provide the most likely answer to who was really behind this mysterious cold case. Through rigorous analysis, this book concludes that those who most likely masterminded the assassination supported radical right-wing extremist pro-enosis nationalism and were subsequently also prominent in forming the EOKA terrorist group in the 1950s.
This book develops a holistic understanding of the intrinsic security concerns which lie at the heart of the protracted conflict in Cyprus. This work offers a well-grounded account of intractability in Cyprus by unfolding the rationale and prevalence of competitive approaches held by Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike. The analysis explains how crude security interests give birth to an existentialist security dilemma that has so far prevented Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and their security guarantors, from reaching a durable settlement. This book contains a systematic critique of the breadth and depth of the major security concerns embedded in the proposed federal bi‐zonal framework for Cyprus, uncovering the impetus and rationale of the underlying insecurities that prompt the Greek and Turkish sides to compete on a series of state‐building aspects, including the opposing understandings of self‐determination and sovereignty, the competitive underpinnings of federal institutional design, and the problematic role of third‐party involvement. This book ultimately unravels a deeper and more pragmatic understanding of how competitive security considerations and geopolitical considerations link up to ethno‐federal design in post‐conflict environments. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict studies, federalism studies, statebuilding, European politics, and International Relations.
This book examines the various minorities living in the island of Cyprus from the early modern (late Venetian and early Ottoman) period down to the present day. It charts their history, with special emphasis on their relations with the powers ruling Cyprus and with the two dominant Christian-Greek and Muslim-Turkish communities. The theme running through the book is that despite being significant members of Cyprus’ society, the three historical minorities (Maronites, Armenians and Latins) were only included in society to a certain extent by the two major communities. This was formalised in the post-independence (1960) period when they were compelled to become members of either dominant community and thus they suffered ‘internal exclusion’ by being regarded as religious sub-groups of one of the two dominant communities rather than national minorities in their own right. Within this general context, the social, legal and political roles, customs, culture and language of the various minorities are examined as they evolved through time and in response to internal and external developments affecting Cyprus in the political, economic and global spheres. They are discussed not as static entities, but as evolving groups that have adapted with greater or lesser degrees of success to the radical and at times painful changes Cyprus has undergone, especially over the last 150 years, in all walks of life. Finally, the question of what the future holds for the minorities of the island in the light of Cyprus’ EU membership and the prospect of reunification are also analysed. This book is a product of the conference “Minorities of Cyprus: Past, Present and Future”, which was held on 24 and 25 November 2007 at the European University Cyprus.
This is a book on the interrelationship of the EU legal order and the Cyprus issue. The book addresses a question which is of great significance for the legal order of the EU (as well as for Cypriots, Turks and Greeks), namely how the Union deals with the de facto division of the island. Despite the partial normalisation of relations between the two ethno-religious groups on the island, Cyprus' accession to the EU has not led to its reunification, nor to the restoration of human rights, nor a complete end to the political and economic isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community. Ironically enough, the accession of the island to the EU actually added a new dimension to the division of the island. According to Protocol 10 on Cyprus to the Act of Accession 2003, the Republic of Cyprus joined the Union with its entire territory. However, due to the fact that its Government cannot exercise effective control over the whole island, pending a settlement, the application of the acquis is 'suspended in those areas of the Republic of Cyprus in which the Government of the Republic of Cyprus does not have effective control.' Given this unprecedented (for an EU Member State) situation of not controlling part of its territory, the book analyses the limits of the suspension of the Union acquis in the areas north of the Green Line. In other words, the telos of this particularly challenging research is to map the partial application of Union law in an area where there are two competing claims of authority.