Bargaining chips, anyone?

tauringhuang.

Sep 4th 2008
From The Economist print edition

New ideas for an old quarrel

AP

Nicosia’s green line: a hard crossing?“WE MUST, at long last, put an end to the suffering of our people and reunite our country,” said President Demetris Christofias on September 3rd as he began negotiations with his Turkish-Cypriot counterpart, Mehmet Ali Talat. The mood, at least, is a far cry from the rancour that engulfed the island in 2004, when a UN plan was backed by the Turkish-Cypriots but rejected by the Greeks.

One stumbling-block in all discussions about Cyprus is the fate of the Greek-Cypriots who fled south in 1974 when Turkey invaded, in the wake of a short-lived coup fomented by the junta that held sway in Athens. In Greek political rhetoric, the demand of the refugees to go home is non-negotiable. But that thinking may be changing.

Under a peace plan of 2004, some 120,000 displaced Greeks could have gone back thanks to boundary changes. But what about the 100,000 Greeks who might claim property in the Turkish part of a bi-zonal Cyprus? (The precise figure is hard to calculate; many displaced Greeks have died or moved far away, but their progeny may make claims.)

Why not combine a minimum number of returns to the Turkish zone—say 25,000—with incentives for the Turkish side to accept more? That is proposed by Neophytos Loizides, a Cypriot-born lecturer in ethnic conflict at Queen’s University, Belfast. For example, for every return above the threshold, the Turkish side could “naturalise” a settler from Turkey. The bold thing about his idea is its acceptance that the Turkish side of a bi-zonal federation has legitimate interests, around which a bargain can be constructed. Obvious? Not if the rights of refugees are too sacred to negotiate.