Interview with Ambassador İsmet Korukoğlu in Ankara
Apart from Palestine, the Western powers are sittign on another hot spot in the Meditiranean Sea, that is Cyprus isssue which is also eluding any lasting solution.
The dangers posed by its unsettlement are so grave that, Turkey and Greece, both NATO members have come face to face and virtually on the brink of war four times since 1987.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Türkiye’s Cyprus Operation which later led to creation of Turkish Republic of Northern Cypress (TRNC).
Cyprus, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea had achieved independence from British on 16 August 1960. Since it hosts two major communties Greeks and Turks, it was decided to distribute power among them like Lebanon.
According to constitutional arrangements, a Greek would become president and a Turkish Cypriot would be vice-president.
General executive authority was vested in a council of ministers with a ratio of seven Greeks to three Turks. The U.K., Greece, and Turkey were declared guarantors to ensure the independence of Cyprus.
On 30 November 1963, President Archbishop Makarios proposed to the three guarantors a 13-point proposal designed to eliminate the powers of Turkish citizens. This lead to bloody riots and the displacement of thousands of Turkish Cypriots.
In July 1974, the Cypriot National Guard launched a coup d’état, installing Nikos Sampson as president, who decided to annex the territory with Greece.
Turkey, under then-prime minister Bülent Ecevit, supported by his coalition partner Necmettin Erbakan, decided to use its guarantor country status to send troops to dissuade the new Cyprus government from annexing with Greece.
On 20 July, Turkish troops entered Cyprus, pushed the Greek forces towards the south and liberating the northern part.
The operation’s aftermath effectively divided the island along ethnic lines, with some 170,000 Greek Cypriots fleeing the north to be replaced by some 40,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced from the government-held south.
After failign to find a common ground, the TRNC declared its indeopendence as a sepearte country in 1983. So far Türkiye is the only country recognizing its official status.
The dispute stems from ethnic Greek nationalist ideology, Greek-Cypriot sentiment to merge with Greece, and ethnic Turkish peoples’ desire to remain independent.
Initially, with the occupation of the island by the British Empire from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and subsequent independence in 1960, the Cyprus dispute continues to haunt the world peace.
İsmet Korukoğlu is the Ambassador of TRNC in Ankara as of 2023.
Excerpts from his interview on the genesis of the issue and way forward:
Q: Cyprus has been a topic on the global high tables for almost 50 years now. What is preventing a lasting solution to the problem?
Ambassador İsmet Korukoğlu: This is not a 50-year-old problem. After independence Turkish and Greek Cypriots had agreed to establish an independent Republic of Cyprus with the UK, Greece, and Turkey as guarantor states. However, Greek Cypriots never gave up the idea of enosis—that is their desire to annex the territory to Greece. Less than three years after signing the agreement, the Greek Cypriot side in 1963 suggested 13 amendments to the Constitution aimed at reducing the powers of Turkish citizens and not treating them as equal partners.
We objected to these amendments. They pushed Turkish Cypriots out to live in a territory comprising only 3% of the total island. That is the genesis of the Cyprus problem. It is not 1974 but 1963.
Negotiations were held in Beirut in 1968. Now we were discussing building a new partnership, not the constitution that governed until 1963 because that ceased to exist. Turkish Cypriots had been expelled, and Greek Cypriots had monopolized and transformed it into a Greek Cypriot entity. They had already divided the country.
We would have suffered a similar fate to the Gaza Strip had it not been for Türkiye’s peace operation on July 20, 1974.
Q: But why is it taking so long to find a solution that is acceptable to all?
Korukoğlu: I am coming to that. The Greek Cypriot side is unfortunately treated by the international community as the so-called government of Cyprus for the entire island. They do not want to share power with Turkish Cypriots. They are treated as the sole representative, which gives them the upper hand. The status quo works in their favor. That is the main reason why we are still unable to settle the problem.
We tried and negotiated with the Greek Cypriot side to evolve a federation. We tried it for 50 years, and as Einstein said, “Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity.” That is what we did for 50 years.
Former Greek Cypriot foreign ministers have on record said many times that the Greek Cypriot side refused the federation proposed by the Turkish Cypriot side. The most notable instance was in 2004 when the Greek Cypriot side, after four and a half years of negotiation, put a plan to a referendum endorsed by the international community. We approved this plan by 65%, and the Greek Cypriot side refused it by 78%.
Another reason they refused it is that they were given the green light by the European Union that, whether any agreement was reached or not, the Greek Cypriot side would become a member of the EU. A week after the results of the referendum, the Greek Cypriot side was granted membership. The EU has imported a problem, complicating the settlement issue.
Q: Regarding the EU attitude, before evolving into a union, they pushed their member states to settle their issues. We saw the issue of Northern Ireland, Trieste, Åland, and some others getting settled. But why was a similar attitude not shown towards Cyprus?
Korukoğlu: That is why we call this injustice. As per the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, a member or candidate can only be a member of the EU if it settles issues with neighbors in particular. They should have told the Greek Cypriots to wait until an agreement or settlement was reached. Contrary to their own rules, in Helsinki in 1999, the Greek Cypriot side was given the green light to become an EU member. This is injustice, and I remember one of the UN commissioners saying after the results of the referendum that he was misled.
The Greek Cypriot side was rewarded with EU membership for its obduracy, and the Turkish Cypriot side continues to live under isolation.
Q: Now the question has boiled down to you and Turkey wanting a two-state solution to the Cyprus issue, where TRNC and Greek Cyprus live side by side as independent countries. In world diplomacy, now it is said to find people-centric solutions rather than territory-centric solutions. Is any such solution possible to this dispute?
Korukoğlu: We have to analyze each issue based on its merits. We negotiated with the Greek Cypriot side for 50 years, but it did not reach anywhere. They refused a plan to have a federation, which was endorsed by everyone. They refused to negotiate sincerely from 2008 up to 2017 as well. They themselves pushed us to demand a two-state solution.
Now the facts on the ground are that two states do exist on the island.
TRNC exists, despite recognition or non-recognition. We have a democratically elected government, president, parliament, courts, territory, everything. There are four criteria for an entity to become a state, and we possess all of them. It is hypocrisy of the EU to demand a two-state solution for Palestine and reject it in Cyprus.
The reunification of Cyprus is not possible. We tried it, but it did not happen. The model of unification under the umbrella of a federation is now a relic of the past. It is not possible now.
Q: The sea around Cyprus is known to have rich gas resources, which has made the region strategically important. Last year, at the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, India, Israel, and Greece decided to build the India-Middle East-Europe corridor, connecting the Israeli port of Haifa with Greek ports via Cyprus waters. What is your take on this corridor? Does it affect your sovereignty?
Korukoğlu: Yes, it overlaps with our sovereignty. The Greek Cypriot side is pretending that it represents the entire island. It engages in unilateral activities with some countries and energy companies as well. In 2003, the Greek Cypriot side signed a unilateral treaty with Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel, to which we objected.
We then had an agreement with Turkey and allocated our own blocks from north to south to the Turkish petroleum organization to engage in exploration and drilling activities on our behalf.
That is what we are doing. These resources belong to TRNC and the Greek Cypriot side. But they cannot explore or extract natural resources unilaterally at the cost of TRNC.
We should have a say in the management of the exploration of natural resources. We did not want this issue to turn into a crisis between us and the Greek Cypriot side. That is why we proposed to the Greek Cypriot side four proposals on how to manage natural resources. They were aimed at exploring them jointly and not unilaterally.
We proposed in 2011, then in 2012, in 2019, and then in 2022. But all were declined by the Greek Cypriots.
As the Greek Cypriots refused those plans, we conducted our exploration together with Turkish organizations. The Greek Cypriots also refused the Turkish president’s proposal for a conference of all the parties, including energy companies, to discuss the matter and turn the Eastern Mediterranean into a sea of peace.
Q: What about corridors and pipelines passing through your waters?
Korukoğlu: Pipelines are still a dream, and the India-Europe corridor has not yet been implemented. When implemented, we hope it will respect our marine borders and continental shelf.
Q: What is your roadmap to becoming a full-fledged state? When you say you are a functional state unlike Palestine, what are you pursuing?
Korukoğlu: Yes, we are a full-fledged and democratic state. Since 2021, particularly when our president announced a two-state solution, we have tried to engage with the international community. TRNC has obtained observer status at the Turkic Council. We are also part of the OIC observer and Economic Cooperation Organization. We want to increase relations with other countries in the fields of education and trade. Recently, the Turkish parliament passed a resolution calling for recognition.
We seek recognition to increase TRNC’s relations with the rest of the world. All flights to Turkish Cyprus have to make at least one stopover in Türkiye due to international embargoes, hampering the development of large-scale tourism.
Q: Looking back at the past 50 years, what has TRNC achieved, and what have been the misses?
Korukoğlu: We succeeded in establishing a full-fledged state. What curtails our progress is the isolation imposed by the international community. Universal human rights call for uniform development. The international community is violating this principle. They do not let us have a level playing field. But we are struggling. India has been there for centuries, so has Türkiye. We are just 40 years old.
What is to our advantage is that Turkey is our guarantor state and backs us. So we are confidently moving ahead. Unfortunately, Palestinians do not have a state like Turkey on their border to protect them.
We are very fortunate to have Turkey supporting us.
