i think the EU screwed up the cyprus peace deal. cyprus has always facinated me, i've been following it since we did a unit on the cyprus conflict when i was in high school. my high school teacher was serving in the peace corps on the island when the coup and subsequent turkish invasion occurred in 1974. also my mother happened to be on the island years earlier when it gained its independence from britain. my mother, along with the rest of her tour group of young american women, happened to be staying in the same hotel where the countries leaders were meeting to draft the cypriot constitution. my mother recounts how she would see the delegates in the lobby and wonder if she was seeing this country's version of george washington or alexander hamilton. her admiration for the delegates later took a nose dive when they tried to pick up her and her friends in the hotel bar.
anyway, cyprus was one of those longstanding unresolvable conflicts--although it was relatively peaceful as unresolvable conflicts go. then earlier this year, the u.n. brokered what seemed to be a promising peace deal. at the time it was announced, i was optomistic that the island could finally be reunified. but now in retrospect, the flaws seem obvious.
the u.n. plan required both the greek cypriot and turkish cypriot population to ratify the deal in separate referenda. the problem was, the EU was rushing ahead to let cyprus join the EU. the prospect EU membership was one of the major incentives for these peace talks to get moving in the first place. but for some reason (perhaps someone out there knows exactly why) the EU announced that cyprus would be admitted to the EU even if the peace plan was rejected by the parties. if that happened, the EU would admit the greek cypriot government into the EU and leave the turks out (although in theory the entire island would be in the EU because the EU member states never recognized the division of the island in the first place).
so as the greeks and turks went to vote for the peace deal last weekend, the turks had every incentive to vote in favor of the plan. a "no" victory would mean that they not be admitted to the EU and they would remain under a government which was not recognized by anyone but turkey and thus under an effective economic embargo, which impoverished the turkish half of the island. the greeks, on the other hand, had every incentive to reject the proposal. after all, even with a "no" vote, the greeks would get their EU citizenship and the economic benefits that go with it. they also would not have their economy dragged down by the poorer turkish half. on top of all of that, a "no" vote was an opportunity to screw over the turks, something no self-respecting greek would ever pass up (nor would a turk pass up the opportunity to screw over a greek). in the end, it became all but inevitable that the greek referendum would fail.
despite decades of attempts to settle this conflict, EU membership seemed to be the only carrot seemed to really motivate both sides to work towards peace. if the EU really wanted cyprus to be reunited, it should have refused to offer both sides membership until they got their differences worked out. by offering greek cypriots membership even if they won't agree to reunification, the EU gave up the one tool it had to encourage a resolution among the greek population of the island and will only encourage speculation that the EU is motivated primarily with keeping muslims out of their exclusive club. the union's offer to "work with Turkish Cyprus" seems to be a rather pathetic attempt to paper over its responsibility for the failure of the peace plan.
UPDATE: one turkish article (or rather, headline, the article itself doesn't add much) blames greece for forcing the EU to adopt the one-sided strategy and turkey promises an all-out "diplomatic attack" to have the embargo on turkish cyprus lifted now that the turkish cypriots have demonstrated that they are for reunification. (via the agonist)
