THE POWER IS OURS
(Publication Date: 6 April 2007)
Are we surprised, or is it just me?
What is it that we want?
Are what we say and what we expect perhaps the same?
What are we pursuing?
***
“Our president gave a conference on Cyprus at METU and answered questions. One of the questions was: “Do you think the platform for a solution to the Cyprus issue is the EU or the UN?”
In response, Talat said that the EU could not be a platform for a solution, adding, “The EU does not understand the Cyprus issue.” President Talat said that the EU was not impartial on Cyprus, added that the United Nations was the platform for a solution to the Cyprus issue, and at the same meeting said that the only way to resolve the Cyprus issue was to lift the isolation imposed on the Turkish Cypriots.
Meanwhile, Presidential Undersecretary Raşit Pertev says that if the Direct Trade Regulation is not adopted in line with what the Turkish side wants by the end of Germany’s EU Council presidency in June 2007, the European Union could lose the Turkish Cypriots.”
Though these statements seem apt and correct, I think there are contradictions in them!
Now you’ll say, “Come on, Cem, what contradictions? They’re being perfectly clear about what they want.”
Yes, they are being perfectly clear, and, in my opinion, they are saying the right things too, as I just said.
But that’s not where I am.
I guess my brain works a little differently!
Some things are bothering me again, and they make me ask questions.
Why would the EU, which is not impartial, adopt the Direct Trade Regulation?
Could the EU, which is not impartial, risk losing the Turkish Cypriots? Or how much does it care?
If we think that the UN is the platform for a solution to the Cyprus issue, why are we looking to the EU with expectations?
The EU made us some promises and did not keep them! For years, we’ve been repeating that those promises were not kept and that the EU pursues a hypocritical policy. Could that be exactly what the EU wanted when it made those promises? In other words, we’ll criticize them and waste time showing off our cleverness by saying, “Look, their masks have fallen; this is the EU’s true face,” while they carry on as they please and the Turkish Cypriots continue to pin their hopes on the EU. Could this have been the EU’s plan all along?
We want the isolation to be lifted. Who are we asking? The EU. But would the EU really lift the isolation? Or let’s go back to the beginning: who first said the isolation should be lifted? The EU, didn’t it? It put this idea forward and said it was necessary for a solution, yet it is not doing it itself. So could the EU really want a solution on the island? Or did the EU give us the issue of isolation to chew on as well? I think we are the only side that wants a solution on this matter. Given that, what are the chances that the outcome we have pursued for years will come about? Is there no other way forward?
Our president says, “The EU does not understand the Cyprus issue.” Why, then, does the EU put forward proposals to resolve an issue it does not understand (like the earlier Finnish proposals)? Why did we debate those proposals? When they were talking nonsense about things they did not understand, why did we take them seriously?
*
For the past fifteen days, I have been writing insistently in this column: The solution is neither in the EU, nor in the US, nor in the UN!
The solution is here—in our own hands.
If we want to reach a solution, we must stand by our state, our flag and our land, and pursue serious, sincere and courageous policies as a country.
Do not, under any circumstances, describe what I’m saying as a nationalist stance!
What I am trying to say is that we must show the whole world, through the decisions we make within our own country’s borders, that we understand what it means to be the owners of a country.
Neither the EU, nor the US, nor the UN can interfere with the decisions we make.
We have this power, and we are not even aware of it.
Yet we need to develop policies that will annoy the EU, the UN and the US, and bring them to the point of putting pressure on their spoiled children, the Greek Cypriots.
What we are doing now is merely engaging in demagoguery in the eyes of the world when we say, “This is our right; the 1960 agreements require it,” and “We said ‘Yes’ to the Annan Plan, and we are being punished.”
Naturally, this gains us nothing.
If we pull ourselves together, ask ourselves what we want, develop sensible policies and put them into practice, we can press the world to reach a solution.
I hope we do one day…
See you on Monday… Be courteous in traffic!
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