Financial Times; May 02, 2003
EUROPE: Erdogan to assess prospects for island pact
By Leyla Boulton in Ankara, Andreas Hadjipapas in Nicosia and,Kerin Hope in Athens
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish prime minister, is due to visit northern Cyprus tomorrow to assess prospects for a settlement with Greek Cypriots following the lifting of barriers dividing the island since 1974.
The island has been swept by a tide of euphoria since the Turkish Cypriot north allowed free movement in and out of the enclave.
Yesterday Greek and Turkish Cypriot trade unions held a joint Mayday demonstration on the Greek side of Nicosia. Demetris Christofias, secretary general of the Cyprus communist party, told the crowd the events of the past week "have demolished the myth that Greek and Turkish Cypriots cannot live together."
Greek Cypriots visiting their former homes in the north made up the majority of the 160,000 people who have crossed the UN-patrolled Green Line on day trips. Turkish Cypriots came south to apply for passports and look for jobs.
The idea to open the border originated in Ankara and was agreed reluctantly by Rauf Denktash, the veteran Turkish Cypriot leader, with encouragement from his son, Serdar, tourism and culture minister in the north.
It enabled Ankara and the Turkish Cypriots to regain credibility after a damaging failure to approve a United Nations peace plan that would have allowed a united island to sign a treaty of accession to the European Union last month.
Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, has said he will not resume efforts to help broker a solution "without solid reason to believe that the political will exists for a successful outcome". This week, Alvaro de Soto, Mr Annan's special adviser on Cyprus, said he was delighted yet astonished by the Turkish move. "It runs counter to everything Mr Denktash has been telling us all along - that Greek and Turkish Cypriots cannot live together." But he warned it did not address underlying problems.
Resolving the island's division is essential for Turkey to advance its candidacy for membership of the EU. Progress on the EU front would in turn boost the reformist Justice and Development party's position at home, acting as a counterweight to an army suspicious of the government's Islamist roots.
Since the collapse of the UN-brokered talks, Turkey has approached Greece, its fellow-guarantor power on Cyprus and holder of the EU presidency, with a view to reopening negotiations on the peace plan. But Athens is reluctant to push Greek Cypriots to accept the Turkish proposal for a system of "global exchange and compensation" for properties abandoned by Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The Annan plan had proposed a combination of compensation and limited restitution, with the latter described by Mr Denktash as a recipe for chaos.
Greece already faces difficulty in persuading Tassos Papadopoulos, president of the Greek Cypriot-controlled south, to maintain his earlier commitment to the terms of the Annan plan.
Mr Papadopoulos has announced a package of confidence-building measures, agreed with the European Commission, to boost trade between the two sides of the island and provide jobs in the south for Turkish Cypriots.
The Greek Cypriot government will now accept official documents issued by the Turkish north, including car registrations, that will allow Turkish Cypriots to travel to the south in their cars. The crush at the three crossing points has been so great that many people have been forced to wait overnight.
To ease the situation, UN peacekeepers on Wednesday demolished barbed wire barricades and earth embankments on either side of the buffer zone splitting the capital, Nicosia, and the rest of the island, to provide additional crossing points.
But yesterday Mr Papadopoulos appeared to sidestep the UN plan by asking the Turkish side to hand over to the UN the abandoned tourist resort of Varosha and to start the gradual withdrawal of Turkish troops from the north. Both moves were part of the Annan package.
Turkey is working on a plan to transfer to a compensation board in northern Cyprus thousands of Greek Cypriot property claims that would otherwise flood the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.