On
August 15, 1928 Beatrice Webb wrote these words in her Diary: “In the new
constitution which is to be granted (said to be the work of Drummond Shields)
the representative Council is to administer as well as legislate on the model of
a County Council. But then the population of Ceylon is more homogenous than that
of Kenya, Cyprus and Palestine”
Nearly seventy years later her judgment on the relative homogeneity of each of the four countries she chose to discuss has proved extraordinarily naive. Each has been ravaged by internal conflicts. And indeed this post-war decades have been marked by harrowing domestic conflicts - racial, religious, tribal. And many of these conflicts have led to intervention and involvement of different kinds, from diplomatic pressure to harassment, from sabotage to military assistance, weapons, and/or personnel.
It is such involvement, overt or covert, positive or negative, which introduces an otherwise domestic dispute to the realm of foreign policy and international relations. And so to Cyprus, Turkey and European Union membership.
Earlier this month, Turkey’s application for membership in the European Union (E.U.) was turned down. “In a move that will change the face of Europe, the participants at the summit talks (held in Luxembourg) invited ten countries in Eastern and Central Europe plus Cyprus to join the existing E.U. members ending the post-war division of Europe and adding about 100 million people to the Union’s population. But they did not accept Turkey, which has been seeking membership for 34 years, even though they did not rule out its candidacy in the future. The Turkish government which had hoped the move towards Europe would be a bulwark against militant Islam, said the offer was insufficient, and declared that political dialogue was at an end” reported Barry James from Luxembourg.
“There will be no political dialogue between Turkey and the European Union” observed Prime Minister Measut Yilmaz at the end of a Cabinet meeting. Next came a warning, and a threat. If the European Union goes ahead with plans to open negotiations with the Greek Cypriot government, Turkey which has already occupied northern Cyprus, would proceed ”to integrate the territory”.
The roots of the current conflict can be traced to British strategy, a strategy founded on naval power. “Like Cyprus’s other masters, the British viewed Cyprus simply as an important pawn in a larger strategic game. The island became the base London needed to protect its growing trading interests in the East, to preserve freedom of navigation through the Bosporus and Dardenelles straits and the Suez Canal, and to block Russian Expansion” argues Leigh Bruce who covered the region for the BBC and the Christian Science Monitor for five years. (A parallel may be drawn with Ceylon, Trincomalee, Colombo and the Indian empire, and of course trade).
And so the predictable Archbishop Makarios and enosis, union with Greece, and a liberation struggle led by George Grivas, a Greek general born in Cyprus and knowing the terrain intimately.
What does Cyprus mean in a post-Cold War world which the US-led western alliance now dominates? The U. S. and its European allies would like to strengthen and expand the European Union and NATO. The next target is the former Warsaw Pact members, of Eastern Europe, Moscow’s allies that formed the frontline in a divided post-war world. One candidate certain of membership is the Greek-run bit of Cyprus, predicts the ECONOMIST. Another anxiety is the February presidential election in the Greek-administered part of the island. And all this in the run-up to the expansion of the European Union. Lined up and heavily backed by the powerful policy makers of the European Union are three so-called Soviet satellites, in the idiom of the Cold War: Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic, (Slovakia, once an integral part of Czechoslovakia did not qualify). Also included in the list are Slovenia and Estonia... but not some other Baltic states.
History decided the fate of these Baltic states, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a tactical move by Germany which regarded Britain its main enemy. On a visit to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, just before the Soviet implosion, this writer learnt how the critical relationship with Stalin’s USSR, had influenced the character of each republic and its so-called foreign policy. e.g. the cold-blooded move by Hitler to appease Joseph Stalin, and satisfy his insatiable appetite for territory.
Poor helpless Cyprus is trapped in a moment of history where several states are seeking to protect and advance their interests just when new political ideological forces also possess the capacity to influence events in the last few years of the 20th century. Cyprus is a scene in that great drama, its leaders given modest roles.
And not too far is the historic struggle of the post-war world the Arab-Israeli in what Beatrice Webb correctly introduced as Palestine. When Tehran, the home of Ayatollah Khomeini, was hosting 55 Muslim delegations, Turkey’s top brass played host to the former Israeli Air Force chief, David Ivri. It was General Ivri who had prepared the ground for a visit to Ankara by a large Israeli military delegation. When Tehran and several influential Islamic organisations lashed out at the Turkish government, its defence minister, quite unruffled, told the international media, we respect the Islamic Conference, we belong to it, but we cannot allow it to dictate our relations”. Modern, secular Turkey stands on its own. How long can it defy geo-politics and the Islamic resurgence?
Can Turkey afford a splendid isolation? With the unstinted support of the United States, now the sole superpower, “little” Israel became a Goliath in the region. Today, it is falling apart and even Benjamin Netanyahu cannot meet the multiple threats that face his not-so grand coalition. Can the pro-American Israel and Turkey stop the march of Islam?
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