The Need for Immediate Action on Cyprus

by Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

June 9, 1998

The end of the Cold War has offered the opportunity for peaceful solutions of several conflicts once considered perpetual, including the Arab-Israeli, Bosnian, and Northern Irish. Bucking this trend is the unresolved illegal occupation of Cyprus by Turkey. The continued division of Cyprus is a dispute of high national security importance to the United States. The "cold peace" status quo on this troubled island is simply not an option.

Although some confidence-building measures have been carried out and human contacts established over the years between the Greek community in the south and Turkish community in the north of the island, the Cyprus conflict has resisted settlement since the Turkish invasion of 1974.

In May Richard Holbrooke, President Clinton's Special Negotiator for Cyprus, held a round of talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots aimed at injecting new ideas and momentum into the peace process.

Holbrooke hit a stone wall. Stubborn Turkish Cypriots set two preconditions for substantive talks: first, recognition of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" and second, a withdrawal by the Republic of Cyprus of its membership application to the European Union. In a departure from past U.S. pronouncements on Cyprus, Holbrooke put the onus for the deadlock squarely on the Turkish Cypriots, where it belongs.

Turkish Cypriot Leader Rauf Dentash is not only continuing to perpetuate the illegal occupation of the island, but is acting more in Ankara's interest than in that of his own constituency by implicitly linking Turkey's future membership in the EU with progress on Cyprus. Denktash's unsubtle message to the EU is that at its Ministerial Council meeting in Cardiff, Wales on June 15-16, Brussels needs to treat Turkey's application for membership more favorably if it wants Cyprus, already included in the first group of prospective new members, to complete its accession as a united country.

But by insisting that Cyprus must withdraw its application for EU membership, Turkey and Dentash have over-reacted. Is it in the interests of Turkish Cypriots for their leader to say that they will be kept out of the EU unless Turkey is invited, and the world accepts Turkey's continued illegal occupation of Cyprus?

No one should underestimate Turkey's considerable value as a vital regional security partner and secular bulwark for Europe against Islamist extremism. Nonetheless, last December in a strikingly myopic decision, the EU invited two groups of countries to prepare to join its ranks, including several in the second group whose economies are not nearly as strong as Turkey's, and rebuffed Ankara, consigning it to a special category.

That slight was accompanied by grossly undiplomatic and insulting remarks about Turkey by a senior EU official. Although some of the EU's reasons for not proceeding to invite Turkey may have been justified, the approach was to say the least counter productive. There clearly needs to be a greater effort on the part of the European Union to reach out to Turkey with regard to its future role.

Similarly, recognition of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" would not only be recognition of an illegal act of aggression, but a non-starter needlesly fueling a series of overreactions in a volitile time on the island. After failing for years to get any country other than Turkey to recognize his rump state, Denktash should know better.

These positions may, of course, only be Denktash's opening gambits, but they do the Turkish Cypriots a great disservice. They make it clear to the whole world that Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot leaders have no interest in serious negotiations.

Meanwhile, Washington needs to make clear both to Denktash and to Ankara that we expect better cooperation from them.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking. The Greek Cypriots, fed up with twenty-four years of inaction by the international community, alarmed by the size and power of the Turkish occupation force in northern Cyprus, and frustrated by frequent overflights by Turkish aircraft, have made a deal to buy Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles, which could reach from Cyprus into Turkish air space.

The Russian-made missiles are due for delivery in August, and Turkey has categorically stated that it will take them out if they are delivered. This should be a matter of vital security interest not only to American diplomacy, but to our European NATO partners.

We need to find a way to defuse this timebomb. One way would be for the Turkish government to commit to ending its overflights of Cypriot air space and thereby give the Government of Cyprus a chance to postpone acceptance of the missiles.

I have long advocated the complete demilitarization of Cyprus as the precondition to instability and restoration of mutual confidence between the two communities. Clearly, before this can be seriously discussed, however, we need to get past the immediate threats.

First, we must get both communities on Cyprus to agree to a U.N. Security Council resolution to renew the mandate of the peacekeeping force (UNFICYP), which expires on June 30. Then, an essential step to building mutual confidence must be more reasonable, substantive, direct talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. America remains committed to working with the two parties. But it is they who must show the political will by taking reasonable positions -- not offering poison pills like the Denktash preconditions -- to move toward the goal of a bizonal, bicommunal federation in Cyprus.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-Delaware) is the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee