Cyprus talks stumble over questions of security

GENEVA — Negotiators are still hopeful that a deal to reunify Cyprus can be done within weeks despite a bellicose response from the Turkish president Friday to the talks’ unexpected breakup.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted to the halt by emphasizing a position Greek Cypriots had long feared he would take — a refusal to cede ground.

“We have told Cyprus and Greece clearly that they should not expect a solution without Turkey as guarantor. We are going to be there forever,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.

The focus of the negotiations has only now shifted to the delicate question of how to make sure the island’s Greek and Turkish communities feel secure when the U.N. buffer zone between them comes down.

After just one day of talks at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders and foreign ministers from the three countries responsible for protecting Cyprus agreed to take a break and resume with a meeting of senior civil servants on January 18.

The hiatus Thursday was an unexpectedly early end to the first-ever international conference on the guarantee powers held by Turkey, Greece and the U.K., and a sign of the hard work that still remains after 20 months of negotiations between Nicos Anastasiades, the Greek Cypriot leader and country’s internationally recognized president, and Mustafa Akıncı, president of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state.

Erdoğan’s robust comments Friday were seen as a response to the Greek foreign minister going off script.

“We are in agreement that the security of one community should not be perceived as a threat to the other community,” Akıncı told reporters on Friday afternoon. “The point is, how can you strike a balance? How can you find ways and means [to make sure] that both communities on this beautiful island will feel secure?”

The civil servants will be tasked with identifying the specific questions around a new framework for ensuring the reunified country’s security, and the instruments needed to address them. After that, political leaders will come together again to discuss the options.

Akıncı told reporters that his side, and the Turkish government, were ready to begin working on Friday, but that Greece needed time to prepare. He stressed that it’s nothing more than a break, but the decision still raised concern for those who had hoped to see a breakthrough in Geneva.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, center, speaks as Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, left, and Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades listen on in Geneva | Laurent Gillieron/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s not bad, but it’s not good,” a source close to the Greek Cypriot side said on Friday morning.

Signs that the conference was going off-script started to emerge during a break in the discussions on Thursday afternoon — when Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias held an impromptu press conference for Greek media in which he laid down unrealistically tough demands for Turkey and Turkish Cypriots.

In the press conference, Kotzias stressed that the 30,000 or so Turkish troops stationed in the northern Turkish Cypriot area would have to start leaving the week after reunification takes effect, and announced that Turkey, Greece and the U.K. would meet the Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders again on January 23 — a date that the parties had not agreed on.

“The Cyprus problem is above all an issue of foreign occupation,” he said, according to Greek news site Ekathimerini.

His comments to the press came as a surprise to Anastasiades and Akıncı, and raised tensions when officials returned to discussions that evening, a source close to the talks said. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu kept his diplomatic cool, but Erdoğan’s robust comments Friday were seen as a response to Kotzias going off script.

Agreement imminent

There is no timeline for the negotiations beyond January 18, but officials watching the talks still expect the two Cypriot sides and Turkey, Greece and the U.K. to come to an agreement within days or weeks.

“We deliberately don’t have a date but it’s going to be soon,” Espen Barth Eide, the U.N. secretary-general’s special adviser on Cyprus, told reporters on Friday. “Maybe in the course of this month.”

Once a broad political agreement is in place, the two leaders will work out the last sticking points, write a new constitution and organize separate but simultaneous referendums within the coming months.

The smaller Turkish Cypriot community is wary about putting their security into the EU’s hands.

Some issues have already been the subject of long negotiations between Anastasiades and Akıncı: the form of the new federal government; bringing the Turkish Cypriot side up to date with EU laws and evaluating claims for property lost during partition in 1974.

But the discussion on Cyprus’ security and guarantees was barely broached in Geneva.

“Security and guarantees is one of the most important sticking points in the Cyprus problem, and it’s the least studied one. It has always been left to the very end, so believing that such an important dossier would be completed in a couple of days would be very naïve,” said Ahmet Sözen, a political science and international relations professor at the Eastern Mediterranean University in northern Cyprus, who negotiated for the Turkish Cypriot side in 2008.

Greek Cypriots want to do away with the 1960s treaty that allows Turkey, Greece and the U.K. to intervene if Cyprus is invaded, arguing that it’s outdated and unnecessary for a European Union member.

A woman walks her dog on the Turkish side of the buffer zone | Iaokovos Hatzistavrou/AFP via Getty Images

“We believe, especially on this important and very difficult chapter of security and guarantees, that the European Union can provide a solution for the benefit of all Cypriots,” Nikos Christodoulides, the Anastasiades government’s spokesman, told reporters Thursday afternoon.

The smaller Turkish Cypriot community, however, is wary about putting their security into the EU’s hands and kicking out the only country that has supported and recognized their government since Cyprus was divided in 1974.

Anastasiades and Akıncı have both suggested they could come to a compromise that phases out the security and guarantee system, and Turkish troops, over a number of years — one, two or three, according to the Greek side, or 15, according to the Turkish side.

“They are seen as the only legitimate government of Cyprus, and they are bigger in numbers, and they are in the United Nations system and they are a member of the European Union,” Akıncı said of the Greek Cypriots. “We are less in numbers. We are isolated, and the only security we can feel so far has come from Turkey.”