Stubborn Cyprus issue fails to yield to mediation

Peace processes around the world are back in the news following the Belfast Agreement. It has invited comparisons and inspired fresh efforts to resolve conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, Basques and Spaniards, Kosovars and Serbs and Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

President Clinton's special envoy, Mr Richard Holbrooke, told Time magazine that "for me, the Northern Ireland process is the most appropriate and accurate for Cyprus". But the sheer intractability of the Cypriot issue was confirmed when his mediation effort broke down this week, with little immediate prospect of it making progress.

Although the failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in London have attracted more international attention, the consequences of complete breakdown on Cyprus could be equally serious. Russian missiles are due to be deployed on the island by the Greek-Cypriot administration in September, which the Turkish government has warned it may use force to prevent.

The possible coincidence of such a conflict with a breakdown in Kosovo and continuing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians would certainly bring the region into sharp focus - not least for the EU's strengthened foreign policy regime if the Amsterdam Treaty is ratified by all 15 member-states.

Mr Holbrooke blamed the EU for the breakdown. He said Turkey has linked progress on its EU accession negotiations with those of Cyprus; the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, demanded recognition for his state, and a withdrawal of the Greek-Cypriot EU application, as a condition of Cyprus talks.

Mr Holbrooke argued strongly that the EU was mistaken in not including Turkey among the states with which it has opened full accession talks. At the Luxembourg Council last December it was decided to begin talks with 11 states, including Cyprus. Turkey's eligibility for eventual membership was accepted, but no timetable was specified and several conditions involving democracy, human rights, international law and mediation were laid down.

Turkey rejected the invitation to participate in the European Conference of EU accession states held in London last March. Its leadership describes the current EU offer as an historic mistake, which raises the question of Turkey's overall relations with and vocation to belong to Europe in a concentrated fashion demanding urgent resolution.

The British presidency is canvassing views on how best to put relations with Turkey back on track, to be discussed at a bilateral meeting on May 25th and then at the Cardiff European Council next month.

Clearly, the Clinton administration is taking the Turkish point of view on this matter. It is a shrewd political manoeuvre, touching on the basic interests at stake. It also exposes a fundamental dissimilarity between the Cypriot and Northern Irish peace processes - the fact that the Turkish and Greek governments are so at loggerheads compared to the British and Irish ones.

This has been ably exploited by Mr Denktash, as signs of the Turkish government's willingness to drop the recognition condition were rejected by the Turkish Cypriot leader.

It is only by putting Greece and Turkey on a more equal footing that progress is likely to be made out of Cyprus. Last year, the Greek government made it clear it supports Turkish EU membership. The Foreign Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, said that if Turkey is not entitled to membership, then neither is Greece. He was speaking after Christian Democrat politicians rejected the idea.

Their attitude was exemplified in a remark made by the Belgian, Wilfried Martens: "The EU is in the process of building a civilisation in which Turkey has no place."

According to Prof Thanos Veremis, head of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy: "The only prospects for Greece is a realistic Turkish accession to the EU". He says there is a discrepancy between the long-term policy of the Greek government, pledged to normalise relations with Turkey, and the recurrent crises that have marked them since Mr Costas Simitis came into office at the head of a reformed Pasok.

The Prime Minister has been dogged by residual opposition from a rump group of party traditionalists who talk up every incident with Turkey. Mr Simitis has also had to concentrate on structural reforms to prepare the Greek economy for EMU membership by 2001 and has made spectacular progress in doing so.

Improving relations with Turkey is easier said than done, of course. The two countries nearly went to war in January 1996 over the islet of Imia. Last week, Greece vetoed EU transfers to Turkey under the Customs Union Agreement following what Athens says is a reopening of Turkish claims to five more Aegean islets.

THIS latest incident has sharply escalated diplomatic rhetoric, further contradicting the idea of improving relations. Explaining this in an interview last week in Athens, the deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Yannis Kranidiotis, said that "unfortunately Turkey is a troublemaker in the area. It has very bad relations with all its neighbours, mainly because of its internal problems - social, economic, political, religious, and minorities". According to him, Turkey is "in a mess".

Prof Veremis says its military has overbearing power; elections are due next year; and the party system is in crisis because of the exclusion of the Islamist Welfare Party and the failure of the two main conservative parties led by Mrs Tansu Cillar and Mr Mesmut Yilmaz to co-operate due to personal enmity.

He is worried that this political complex in Turkey could unravel rather rapidly. On the face of it, the powerful military establishment there has much to gain from Europeanisation in its relentless struggle to defend secular values against Islamist resurgence. But such secularisation has a Jacobin streak. It is incompatible with the greater democracy Turkey needs to pursue its genuine European vocation.

Thus, Europeanisation would give the parties greater autonomy, incorporate rather than exclude the Islamists and diminish the role of the armed forces, according to Prof Veremis. Their recent interventions in politics have diminished their credibility and legitimacy as guarantors of the system and may leave them little option but a formal coup if the Islamists do well in the next elections, since other combinations have been exhausted.

Against this background it is not surprising that informed observers in Greece are pessimistic about the prospects of progress in Turkish-Greek relations or on Cyprus. One continually hears from them stories of how it suits Turkish nationalism to provoke disagreement - in Mr Kranid iotis's words to keep an open wound. Turkish observers make the same point, of course, about Greek responses and it is not difficult to find evidence for them.

It falls to the British EU presidency to attempt to bring the matter back on track in coming weeks. Their historical involvement with Cyprus may make this easier for them, as may their vaunted closeness to US policy. They have much to do to head off a nasty confrontation over where Turkey will go in coming years.