Premature Turkish triumphalism
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan must feel events are moving strongly in his direction. Not only has the United States forced an apology to Turkey out of Israel for the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, but many in Turkey believe that the Cyprus banking crisis presents Ankara with an unprecedented opportunity to resolve the long-standing dispute between the Greek and Turkish portions of the island.
What is not in doubt is that Cyprus (that is the Greek-dominated two-thirds of the island) has been hugely weakened by the banking crisis and will take years to recover. Furthermore, the offshore banking model for the island’s economy has been destroyed beyond repair. The best hope for the Cypriot economy, therefore, is the exploitation of offshore gas reserves that could amount to as much as 60 trillion cubic feet.
Turkey has long disputed Cyprus’s right to exploit these reserves in the absence of a settlement with the Turkish Cypriots, and it was quick to oppose the suggestion during the bailout negotiations that Cyprus could unilaterally mortgage its gas reserves as part of the solution. Turkey’s foreign ministry issued a statement on 23 March saying: “The resources around the island do not belong only to Greek Cypriots. They belong to all people that live on the island in the framework of international law.” It added that any agreement that ignored the equal rights of Turkish Cypriots could spark a fresh crisis in the region.
The statement said: “Possible plans to put the island’s joint resources up as collateral for a ‘solidarity fund’ or any other loan agreement is just another reflection of the Greek Cypriot illusion that it is the sole owner of the entire island and it risks a fresh crisis in the region.”
The view in Ankara is that although much of the pain of the Cyprus bailout will be taken by Russian depositors, the long-term ramifications for Cyprus are huge. The 10bn euro bailout will now be added to Cyprus’s existing public debt, which is already more than 80% of GDP, and will leave Cyprus as the second most-indebted member of the eurozone after Greece.
It is this long-term weakness, together with the potential disruptive leverage that Turkey holds over Cyprus’s ability to exploit its natural gas reserves, that has led many in Ankara to believe that a favourable solution to the Turkish-Cypriot question may now be a much more realistic prospect than hitherto.
This sense that Turkey may have an unprecedented opportunity has been increased by the Israeli apology for the Mavi Marmara incident. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the fact that President Obama pushed so strongly for Israel to issue the apology is seen as an indicator of how important the US considers Turkey to be in the new Middle East. Secondly, the rapprochement between Turkey and Israel makes it less likely that Israel will make common cause with Cyprus over natural gas exploitation to the detriment of Turkish interests.
The Zaman newspaper summed up the feelings in Ankara well when one of its columnists wrote on 26 March: “Negotiations [between Cyprus and Turkey] will take time to resume since Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades will be very busy and will likely keep a distance from such issues. Nevertheless, in the medium term a conjunction of various factors can facilitate the solution, which has been unobtainable for half a century. The EU bailout gave Brussels efficient leverage over the Greek side of the island…It will be forced to accept a negotiated solution. Greek Cypriots now count on a ‘new treasure’, the rich natural gas reserves recently discovered. The only feasible way to exploit them is through cooperation with Turkey. The recent reconciliation between Turkey and Israel gives new opportunities in this area. The dream of pipelines transporting the gas of the east Mediterranean to the EU through Turkey as well as the NATO membership of a unified Cyprus can become a reality in this new context.”
The US has multiple reasons for pushing for the Turkey-Israel rapprochement. These include fears over the future of Syria (and its weapons of mass destruction), disillusion with the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of the Arab Spring, and the gestating crisis with Iran over its nuclear programme. A solution to the division of Cyprus along the lines now being envisaged in Ankara would be seen as an additional benefit. But Ankara might be unwise to count its chickens too early.
We have two reasons for saying this. The first is that the rapprochement with Israel does not seem to us to be as solid as is being suggested. Turkey’s centre-right Hurriyet daily was certainly triumphant in its interpretation of the Israeli apology saying: "In the end, Turkey’s indispensability for Israel has been demonstrated once again. In other words, it was Turkey that won this arm wrestling match. While the Middle East is going through a great earthquake with all the traumas of the Arab Spring and the processes of disintegration in Syria and Iraq, Israel has chosen to make peace with Turkey as the most important centre of power in the Middle East."
But that’s not quite how it is being seen in Israel. The clue is in the actual wording of the apology, which is far from fulsome. Erdogan was after a full public apology for the raid on the Mavi Marmara (a Turkish-owned ship trying to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza) and the killing of nine Turks by Israeli commandos. In the event, what Israel actually said was: “In light of Israel’s investigation into the incident which pointed to a number of operational mistakes, the Prime Minister [Binyamin Netanyahu] expressed Israel’s apology to the Turkish people for any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury and agreed to conclude an agreement on compensation.”
What Israel has done is to allow Turkey to boast about its complete victory over Israel without disputing this interpretation. But the fact remains that the apology was itself fairly mealy mouthed, and Erdogan’s other principal demand, that Israel lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip, has not been met. All Netanyahu agreed to was to ease restrictions on the entry of civilian goods into the Palestinian territories for as long as calm prevailed.
Furthermore, sources in Jerusalem have reported that Netanyahu has made it clear to Greece’s Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that the rapprochement with Turkey will not be at the expense of good relations with Greece – or, presumably, Cyprus. During the three years that relations between Israel and Turkey have been in the doldrums, Israel has been assiduous in improving ties with Athens.
Our final thought on Turkey’s hopes that Cypriot weakness could lead to an early settlement of the Cyprus divide on terms favourable to the Turks is that an entirely opposite scenario is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Enosis, it may be recalled, was the movement calling for the union of Cyprus with Greece. When an illegal referendum was held in May 1950, against the wishes of the ruling British colonial government, 95.7% of participants voted in favour of Cyprus leaving the British empire and joining Greece.
In the end, Britain created an independent Cyprus in 1960, but the 1974 Greek-supported coup against Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus was organized by a hardline pro-enosis group, and it was this that sparked the Turkish military intervention to protect the Turkish population of northern Cyprus and to facilitate the division of the island that persists to this day.
What is so extraordinary about the euro crisis, and perhaps not sufficiently appreciated, is that scenarios in Europe that even five years ago would have been considered completely beyond the realms of possibility are no longer entirely impossible to imagine. A return of the Colonels in Greece? An authoritarian political figure making headway in Italy, Spain, or Portugal? All of these possibilities are now at least within the realm of the imaginable, albeit still on the extreme edges of what might be possible. And so it is with Cyprus. In circumstances in which both Cyprus and Greece were forced to leave the euro – an outcome which is by no means impossible to imagine – a revival of the spirit of enosis in Cyprus could be envisaged. In other words, the Turkish triumphalism that has been on display in some quarters during the past week is undoubtedly premature and could even prove to be seriously misjudged. JdeC.