I have been watching Cyprus closely ever since my first visit to the island to report on Glafkos Clerides\u2019 election to the presidential office in 1993.<\/p>\n
In those days, it was rare for a Turkish journalist to travel to both sides of Cyprus. Having to fly in and out of the north and the south, instead of being able to cross a few hundred meters through the Green Line, made the costs prohibitive for most news organisations. \u00a0Making contacts and getting \u00a0either side\u2019s leaders and officials to agree to interviews with a journalist from the enemy side were even greater obstacles.<\/p>\n
In 1993, I was lucky enough to arrive in Cyprus with meetings arranged both with Glafcos Clerides and Rauf Denktas, as well as several \u00a0other prominent politicians. The cherry on the cake during my week-long stay in the Greek Cypriot part of the island was my \u00a0meeting with \u00a0a political anthropologist for the first time and my renewed\u00a0 aquiantance with a Greek Cypriot journalist that \u00a0I had met\u00a0 in a Europan summit some years previously. Over the years, those two have become two of my closest, dearest friends and my trusted compass in all things Cypriot.<\/p>\n
In the North, too, I met many wise people. Some were opposition politicians who gave me an invaluable insight into the Turkish Cypriot\u2019s thinking. Others were fellow journalists who explained \u00a0\u00a0the often unfathomable intracies of the Cyprus problem to me.<\/p>\n
Later on, as a correspondent based in Ankara,\u00a0 I went back to Cyprus several times to witness\u00a0 the 38 month-long UN effort to bring a solution to the island. During that time, I got to know and admired the UN general-secretary\u2019s special representative, the Peruvian diplomat \u00a0Alvaro de Soto and his team.<\/p>\n
I was there, standing under torrential rain, soaked to the bone, when De Soto announced the dinner invititation by Denktas to Clerides on December 2001.\u00a0 We were wildly excited that a new chapter might be opening in the \u00a0long-running dispute that so brutally divided the two communites.<\/p>\n
From my well-informed sources, I heard stories of the two old friends, Denktas and Clerides cracking jokes and enjoying each other\u2019s company in those encounters.\u00a0 Many of us \u00a0had moments of hope\u00a0 that their pragmatic\u00a0 and warm personalities and their\u00a0 shared histories and \u00a0understanding of each other would lead the way to a meaningful progress.<\/p>\n
Then, hours later, we would come crashing down to earth \u00a0when time and time again they walked away from the negotiation table.<\/p>\n
Alvaro de Soto, a highly skilled diplomat and an experienced negotiatior, had a strong personality of his own and a sense of humour to match those two towering figures of the Cypriot politics.<\/p>\n
Another key figure during that time was Lord Hannay (then Sir David), the British Special Representative for Cyprus, working with Alvaro de Soto.<\/p>\n
In my formal interviews and informal conversations with both, even at the most optimistic times while they tried to put together a settlement package, I learnt \u00a0some very valuable lessons.<\/p>\n
Caution and confidentiality \u00a0were crucial requirements.\u00a0 In Cyprus, you never took anything for granted either. Things could take a totally unexpected turn just when you least expected it.<\/p>\n
Despite their experince and wisdom, I don\u2019t think either of them expected such a decisive rejection of the Annan Plan by the Greek Cypriot side in the 2004 referendum.<\/p>\n
It was said at the UN that the Cyprus problem was like a padlock that needed four different keys to open. Turkey, Greece, Turkish Cypriots \u00a0and Greek Cypriots all had a key each and the challenge was to get all four hands to reach to the padlack to turn the key at the same time.<\/p>\n
The events of the past 24-hours, with hopes for the resemption of talks being raised and \u00a0a fast-diplomatic traffic ensueing , \u00a0brought back these memories.<\/p>\n
Following his official visit to Greece, Turkish FM Davutoglu talked about a possible comprehensive solution being on the horizon. \u201c The decades-old problems in Cyprus are fast-approaching a critical juncture\u201d he said. \u201cFrom here on, you either show a political will to move toward a solution or you just say that this is not working out\u201d.<\/p>\n
Before his meeting with the Turkish Cypriot president Dervis Eroglu on the island, Davutoglu had been conducting a series of discussions with his US and British counterparts via telephone.<\/p>\n
Turkish foreign ministry officials have been calling these intensified efforts, a new initiative.<\/p>\n
While following Davutoglu\u2019s talks in Athens and Nicosia, I couldn\u2019t help\u00a0 remembering\u00a0 the lessons of the past, along side these memories.<\/p>\n
When I read Kathimerini newspaper\u2019s\u00a0 optimistic account of the meeting in Athens between the Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Mr Davutoglu, I momentarily thought perhaps my usual\u00a0 caution was somewhat outdated.<\/p>\n
Along came the statement from another experienced Turkish diplomat, the foreign affairs spokesman of the main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP)\u00a0 in Turkey.\u00a0 Retired ambassador and \u00a0CHP deputy president Faruk Lo\u011fo\u011flu expressed concern that the Foreign Minister Davuto\u011flu was conducting a not-so-transparent\u00a0 initiative on Cyprus which may end up with concessions harmful to Turkish Cypriot interests.<\/p>\n
Some hours later, I heard about the UN special advisor Alexander Downer\u2019s suprising turnaround at Larnaca airport, delaying his departure.<\/p>\n
Davuto\u011flu had held a meeting in Nicosia with the Turkish Cypriot leadership \u00a0on Saturday morning. \u00a0Based on previous comments by Davuto\u011flu and the warning from Mr Lo\u011fo\u011flu, I half expected\u00a0 a compromise \u00a0on the Greek Cypriot insistance that there should be a joint declaration to get both sides to commit before talks, to the idea of a some kind of federative formula.<\/p>\n
Davuto\u011flu\u2019s\u00a0 joint press conference with Ero\u011flu soon brought an end to this expectation.<\/p>\n
If there was any optimism left,\u00a0 Alexander Downer\u2019s unusual meeting\u00a0 with Davuto\u011flu at the Turkish Embassy destroyed my last glimmer of hope that something major could \u00a0be happening.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, Greek Cypriot government spokesman Christos Stylianides\u00a0 responded\u00a0 angrily. He said\u00a0 that \u00a0the joint statement by Davuto\u011flu and Ero\u011flu \u201ctorpedoed any possibility for the resumption of a substantive dialogue in Cyprus\u201d.<\/p>\n
With a worsening situation in the Middle East increasing pressure on\u00a0 the Turkish\u00a0 government to re-think its\u00a0 foreign policy, with no light at the end of the tunnel for both Greece and Cyprus in their economic crisis and the the Greek presidency of the EU approaching , Mr Davuto\u011flu clearly once again thought the time for another opening was ripe.<\/p>\n
Once again, he read the situation drastically wrong.<\/p>\n
For those of us seasoned Cyprus watchers, \u00a0it wasn\u2019t altogether suprising. Because the fine line between pragmatism and opportunism \u00a0in international relations has always been even thinner in Cyprus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been watching Cyprus closely ever since my first visit to the island to report on Glafkos Clerides\u2019 election to the presidential office in 1993. In those days, it was rare for a Turkish journalist to travel to both sides of Cyprus. Having to fly in and out of the north and the south, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}