periXscope
Working for an Apartheid statelet
in a EU country

When Graydon Carter wrote in the June edition of Vanity Fair about the need for us, the people, to find ways to actively protest the unpunished and, in many cases, rewarded lack of responsibility on the part of the big Wall Street and money scheme players that drove the American and world economy to shambles, I felt vindicated and, why not confess, proud!

If you remember, in NEO’s March issue, that is, two full months before Vanity Fair, I attempted to herald a revolution, to call people to arms (I mean that only metaphorically; I don’t want the NRA or other militias to start courting me for membership), to stop paying bills, unquestionably. It seemed a little radical then, but, boy, the idea is not radical now, as Carter showed by himself joining the revolutionary ranks. I can in all humility proclaim that it is a big thing for me that Graydon Carter had the guts to follow my leadership (even if it took him two full months)! You would normally expect it to be vice versa, as Vanity Fair is like a gospel to every magazine lover. But there is something that makes that possibility obsolete: I could have never mastered--his hair style!

In VF’s July edition, which also features a very well-written story by Christopher Hitchens on the New Acropolis Museum, Carter tackles the issue of the lost ground in the newspaper industry and, among other things, he suggests the need for newspapers to reinvent themselves, to come up with a new language, one that the public can identify with again.

I was thinking all that as I was about to start a commentary on the recent PSEKA Cyprus Conference in Washington DC that brought together Greek-American leaders and key US legislators for three days, discussing ways to resolve the Cyprus issue and to address the rest of the crucial Hellenic matters. In these matters, too, we need to be more creative and come up with a new language, a breakthrough: ideas that can lead us away from the stalemate and, more importantly, won’t offer a solution that could prove worse than the current division of Cyprus.

For a number of years, the negotiating policy of the Cyprus Republic – and not the Greek Cypriot side, as very arrogantly the US and the UN have come to impose – is geared towards “a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation.” This is a basis for discussion that the representatives of the occupied territories have accepted (And not the Turkish Cypriot side: the number of the Turkish troops and colonizers brought from the Turkish mainland outnumber the remaining Turkish Cypriots; this “homogeneity” is a result of ethnic cleansing since the Greek–Cypriots, along with Armenians and Maronites, were expelled and their property was illegally confiscated.)

As Philip Christopher, President of PSEKA, one of the conference’s main organizers for the past 25 years, stated, this talk on “a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation” can only lead to another “solution” along the lines of the voted down Annan Plan, ignoring at the same time two important new facts on the ground: a) Cyprus is a European Union country and the occupied territories are part of the same Union. b) The population is not Greek and Turkish anymore, as thousands of people have come from a number of countries and made Cyprus their home. Under the new conditions, in a country as diverse as it is today, where the Aquis Communitaire applies (even if it’s suspended for the moment in the occupied areas) it is obsolete to talk about a federation of which one component is the result of a brutal invasion and its raison d’etre will depend on maintaining its ethnically cleansed status!

Turks knew they would lose Cyprus forever the moment it entered the European Union five years ago. Erdogan, shrewder than most in the deeply corrupted Kemalist establishment, saw it coming and convinced the generals to accept the Annan Plan, hoping that the Americans would make the citizens of the Cyprus Republic do the same. After exhaustive negotiations in Switzerland, Ergogan succeeded in forcing the UN to draft a plan that not only would elevate the new Turkish component of the federated state to an equal status with the existing Cyprus Republic, which had to be dissolved first, but through the Turkish, ethnically cleansed and purified, statelet, a control over the whole new federated republic would be exercised. Cyprus wasn’t a EU member yet, so that was the last chance that such a racist, colonialist-minded plan could be imposed, if the Greek had voted yes, which as it turned down, they didn’t.

European Union membership and the population enrichment that has made the island a multi-national society, provides Cyprus with a unique opportunity to seek a solution based on the Aquis Communitaire, the European Union legal framework, which cannot accept the formation of ghettos, based on ethnic or religious criteria. If the Annan Plan had been approved before the country joined the EU, Greek Cypriots would not be allowed to buy property or live in the Turkish component state, although every other European would have the right to do so!

Turks know all that and they will try to drag their feet as much and as long as possible. It is very important, though, that the Cyprus Republic does not budge, because after so many years, time is on her side, despite what many people say about things getting worse as time goes by. That was true before the European Union, and things have irrevocably changed since. Professor Van Koufoudakis who knows the Cyprus issue as few in the world, points out these facts in his new book titled International aggression and violations of human rights: The case of Turkey in Cyprus, and reminds that the Turkish invasion of Cyprus is mainly a violation of human rights case, in which Turkey contravenes treaties she has signed.

Professor Vassilis K. Fouskas, offering a more left-leaning look in his recent book written with Professor Alex O. Tackie, Cyprus – The Post-Imperial Constitution, also talks about the need of a new language that would move away from the colonialist framework in which talks of developing the Cyprus state and society have been based until today.

As absurd as they might sound in the beginning, new ideas on the Cyprus issue in no way can be more absurd than the effort – with the Republic’s consent - to legally establish an Apartheid-like statelet on European Union territory, the survival of which will be dependent on not allowing Greek Cypriots to live there!

DEMETRIOS RHOMPOTIS
dondemetrio@neomagazine.com

©2009 NEOCORP MEDIA

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