IHS Global Insight Perspective | |
Significance | The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus yesterday elected nationalist prime minister Dervis Eroglu to the position of president, cementing the ruling Nationalist Unity Party's dominance of the political system. |
Implications | Although Eroglu attempted to strike a conciliatory tone in his victory speech, pledging to continue reunification negotiations, his hard-line position on the issue is well documented and is likely to impede efforts to successfully conclude the talks. |
Outlook | Under pressure from Turkey, Eroglu could still soften his stance on reunification talks; however, his nationalist hard-line stance has won support among a Turkish-Cypriot electorate exhausted by years of no progress in the UN-brokered talks. As a result, it is really a case of waiting to see if Eroglu's presidency will truly mean that the latest reunification efforts will be consigned to the scrap-heap of history. |
Turkish-Cypriot voters yesterday convincingly elected Prime Minister Dervis Eroglu as the statelet's new president. According to the electoral commission in the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which has only been recognised by Turkey, turnout for the election was an unexpectedly high 75%, with the nationalist Eroglu narrowly scraping an outright majority, with 50.4% of the vote. The pro-reunification incumbent president Mehmet Ali Talat secured 42.8% of the vote, while the remaining five other candidates contesting the poll largely failed to make a substantial impression on voters, winning less than 1% of the vote each. Eroglu's victory was widely expected in the face of growing voter ennui with the lack of results that the UN-sponsored talks between Talat and his Greek-Cypriot counterpart Demetris Christofias have yielded in the past 18 months. Under the TRNC constitution, the prime minister runs the government and the statelet's US$4-billion economy; the president is in charge of foreign relations, including reunification talks with the south, and has the power to veto legislation. As a result, domestic issues were largely ignored throughout the presidential campaign, with Eroglu and Talat focusing on reunification as the single largest election issue.
Question Mark Hangs over Future of Reunification Talks
Eroglu's considerably more conservative stance on the reunification issue has been well documented, favouring a two-state confederal solution: a proposition that has already been clearly and vehemently rejected by Greek Cypriots. Eroglu's Nationalist Unity Party (UBP) last year won the parliamentary election on the island by touting its strong nationalist position, as well as the belief that it would be able to secure the best deal for Turkish Cypriots in the talks. Upon declaring victory, Eroglu has been quick to reassure the United Nations, Turkey, and the Greek-Cypriot government that he will not be seeking to withdraw from reunification talks; however, it is likely that the format adopted by Talat and Christofias will prove unacceptable to the position espoused by the new president. The basis of the current reunification talks is the creation of a federal solution to the division, with the Greek and Turkish communities retaining clear geographical zones on the island. If Eroglu pursues his two-state solution, the future of reunification talks does not look good.
In his victory speech, Eroglu also indicated that he would continue to foster close and good relations with "mother country" Turkey; as a result, hopes still linger on the possibility of success at the reunification talks. Greek Cyprus has indicated that it would block European Union (EU) accession negotiations for Turkey until the Turkish government recognises it as the legitimate Cypriot government. As a result, Turkey has a vested interest in seeing reunification efforts succeed, as it would eliminate this threat, as well as allowing the EU to reopen eight accession negotiation chapters with Turkey, which were frozen over Turkey's refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek-Cypriot traffic. In a clear demonstration of the Turkish government's position on reunification talks, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already urged Eroglu to pursue the peace talks with the Greek Cypriots under their current UN-sponsored guise, calling for a settlement by the end of this year.
Outlook and Implications
Eroglu and Turkey have so far seemed eager to reassure that the changeover of president will not derail the UN-sponsored talks and that hopes for a settlement are still on the horizon. However, despite these positive assurances, the possibility of a settlement being reached by the end of the year seems a little far-fetched at present. This is especially true because Eroglu is pressing for the start of negotiations from scratch, whereas Christofias has rejected this, stating that talks would have to continue from the place left off by Talat. Incumbent Talat and Christofias were widely touted to have a very close working relationship, seeing eye-to-eye on a number of difficult issues and both being committed to securing a deal that worked to better the situation of both halves of the island. This is likely to change once Eroglu takes the reigns of power, with the scope for compromise on key governance and restitution issues being much reduced. Nonetheless, with pressure from Turkey for a settlement remaining strong, Eroglu's tough negotiating position could soften. The pressure from Turkey is likely to be intensified in the run-up to the parliamentary election later this year, with the issue of EU-Turkey relations likely to feature high on the campaign agenda. Furthermore, despite voting in nationalist Eroglu, Turkish Cypriots' desire for a settlement that would end its three-decade isolation and bring economic development and prosperity, as well as a normalisation of the security situation, remain strong. In a worst-case scenario, the status quo of Greek and Turkish Cypriot politics will be maintained for at least the duration of the next presidential mandate in the TRNC. However, in reality it could be considerably longer, as there are no guarantees on how long a pro-reunification candidate will remain president of Greek Cyprus (especially as Christofias has stated he would not stand for a second term if reunification talks fail), for how long the UN will remain committed to the process after being burned by past efforts, or for how long voters on both sides of the divided island will be willing to entertain the possibility of a reunification solution.