{"id":85580,"date":"2017-01-16T13:20:30","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=85580"},"modified":"2017-01-16T13:20:30","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T13:20:30","slug":"cyprus-toward-a-non-territorial-confederation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/01\/cyprus-toward-a-non-territorial-confederation\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyprus: Toward a Non-Territorial Confederation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>16 Jan 2017 – <\/em>After some 20 months of discussions and preparations, a high political-level Conference on Cyprus was opened at the UN headquarters in Geneva on 12 January 2017. In some ways this was a continuation of inconclusive negotiations that have taken place in the 43 years that the country has been divided between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. However, in calling this conference the Special Advisor of the UN Secretary-General on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, former Foreign Minister of Norway felt that there had been important progress on a range of issues and that a \u201chigh profile\u201d conference could move things forward. Thus on 12 January the new UN Secretary-General was back on his old Geneva grounds at the table with Mr Nicos Anastasiades, President of the Greek-administered segment of Cyprus, Mr Mustafal Akinci of the Turkish segment, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Union and (so that there would be at least one woman at the peacce table) Ms Federica Magherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

The complex political situation has three States as \u201cguarantor powers\u201d \u2013 the United Kingdom which was the colonial master until 1963 and Greece and Turkey which created the tensions in the first place. Their representatives were at the table as well.<\/p>\n

There is general agreement that Cyprus should be one State and not two, that this one State would be federal in nature, and that this re-united State would be part of the European Union. But as Espen Eide said in a press conference, quoting an old saying \u201cthe Devil is in the details;\u201d. The first but crucial \u201cdetail\u201d is the geographic frontiers of the Greek and Turkish areas. Maps of preferred internal administrative borders were exchanged among the two presidents in Geneva but not made public. This is the first time that such maps have been exchanged. Given the emotional and complex nature of the situation, geographic divisions with no \u201cnatural\u201d frontiers are an issue which can cause real disagreements. Moreover, frontiers that can be easily understood can serve as an excuse if the real disagreement is something else.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a prior agreement that when there is finally a firm proposal, the nature of a Federal Cyprus will be presented to both Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations in simultaneous referenda. Thus the negotiators must take into consideration the popular attitudes on both sides so that the agreement is mutually acceptable. The hope is that \u201cthe time is ripe\u201d for agreement when both Greece and Turkey are preoccupied with other issues in the volatile region and many Cypriots are tired of the status quo.<\/p>\n

The high political level start to the conference lasted for two days and is now to be followed by meetings among civil servants and bilateral contacts in the hope of an overall agreement and a proposal to be made public.<\/p>\n

There are two aspects of the negotiations on which the Association of World Citizens would like to propose given its long-standing interest in developing appropriate constitutional structures. First, while for understandable reasons, the term \u201cfederal\u201d is now most often used rather than \u201ccon-federal\u201d, in the case of Cyprus \u201c a con-federal Cyprus\u201d might be the better term, a looser form of union, one in which dealing with issues at the most local level possible would be the constitutional structure.<\/p>\n

Borders and frontiers are often thought to be \u201cnatural and inviolable\u201d even if they are only border in the mind. Attitudes toward borders are often conflict-perpetuating. Borders are a reflection of the past rather than of the future.<\/p>\n

Today, there is a need for cross-communal cooperation. Thus there may be a possibility for a Cyprus con-federation based not on geographic divisions but on functions, such as economic initiatives, land law, personal status concerning marriage, separation and inheritance. Such a functionally-based con-federation has conflict-solving potential. There is the Ottoman Empire precedent of different legal rules for people living in the same area. However, neo-Ottoman ideology may not be the best approach to stress in the current Cyprus negotiations. Cyprus, which has one of the oldest UN forces keeping the two communities apart may be a spark of hope for advances in resolving conflicts in other areas as well.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens and <\/em>editor of Transnational Perspectives. He is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Jan 2017 – After some 20 months of discussions and preparations, a high political-level Conference on Cyprus was opened at the UN headquarters in Geneva on 12 January 2017. In some ways this was a continuation of inconclusive negotiations that have taken place in the 43 years that the country has been divided between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}