82 0001

A phrase used during national and official holiday celebrations, especially during announcements on TRT, was particularly striking: "…Eid al-Adha is celebrated with ceremonies throughout the country, in our foreign missions, and in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." If the dream comes true, the four words after "and" in the above sentence will no longer be present in the celebrations. I say "word" because it wouldn't have any other meaning. Since I can't watch TRT, I don't know what the holiday announcements are like right now. My apologies.

Before we get to that point, let's take a brief, but still brief, look back in time. In 1571, Cyprus was captured by the Ottoman Empire. The number of Muslim Turks on the island increased. Defeated by the Russians, the empire, desperate to gain support, leased the island to the British. Ah, those Germans? When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of defeated Germany, the British annexed the island. There were no trustees at the time. A governor was appointed. However, the island's Greek population revolted against the British in 1931, demanding Enosis, or the island's annexation by Greece. The issue reached its peak in the 1950s. The Enosis referendum was passed against the Turks. In 1955, the Greek armed organization EOKA clashed with the British. Meanwhile, the Turks also took up arms. This was a sign of conflict between the two communities.

The Republic of Cyprus was established on the island in August 1960, with Turkey, Greece, and the United Kingdom as guarantors. Amendments to the constitution made in 1963 in favor of the Greek Cypriots were rejected by the Turks. Tensions between the two communities escalated into conflict with the murder of two Turkish Cypriots that same year. With the reinforcement of Greek troops, massacres of Greek Cypriots began.

Türkiye's intervention and invasion were prevented by the US in 1964. Ten years would pass before the invasion and definitive intervention took place.

Officially known as the Cyprus Peace Operation, Türkiye's intervention, along with the martyrs it inflicted, halted the bloodshed on the island, except for incidents such as the shooting of a Greek Cypriot attempting to lower the Turkish flag at the border and the killing of a Turkish soldier by fire from a Greek Cypriot zone. It's important to remember the arms embargo imposed by the "friend and ally" the United States before the operation. However, the Cyprus issue, fundamentally, persists to this day between Greece, the Greek Cypriot Administration, and Turkey, all for various reasons. Tensions persisted over the continental shelf, Turkish vessels' oil exploration in the Aegean, the militarization of the Dodecanese islands by Greece, the events of September 6-7, the firing of Turkish fishing and pleasure boats, dogfights, and the Kardak rocks, all of which escalated into war.

These were followed by political tensions, especially in Türkiye. The Turkish Federated State of Cyprus was established in 1975. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus followed in 1983. Despite the military success of the 1974 Cyprus Operation, journalist Mehmet Ali Birand (1941-2013) states that a flawed diplomatic policy was pursued: “The announcement of the KTFD… was actually a delayed decision following Türkiye’s second operation in August 1974… The operation was carried out, but the resulting political vacuum remained unfilled… The announcement of the KTFD along with the first operation could have eliminated all the drawbacks… Moreover, Turkey had forgotten and never used the decisions of the first Geneva conference signed by the Ecevit government, which established the bi-communal nature of Cyprus… On one side was the Turkish army, and on the other, the Bayraktarlık (Bayraktarlık), which had organized the mujahideen, the Turkish Embassy, ​​and finally the KTFD, maintained a four-headed administration.”

How would a bi-communal administration of Cyprus be achieved? The Turkish Cypriots' opposition to Enosis, expressed in the 1960s under the slogan "Either Partition or Death," called for the island to be annexed to Türkiye. This was unsuccessful. At the 1964 meeting in London, Turkey stated that this thesis could be changed and that a federal structure could be adopted, while Rauf Denktaş emphasized the need for complete separation of the two communities. Before the second operation, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, despite the objections of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Denktaş, proposed a cantonal formula to the Greek Cypriots. This was not realized. Following the de facto division of the island into two, the West championed the idea of ​​a bizonal federation.

Following the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus's accession to the European Union under the name Republic of Cyprus, Turkey declared that this would not contribute to a solution to the problem. The period known as the Annan Plan, when the United Nations entered the picture, began. The plan focused on a common state consisting of two separate states, namely a federal state. In the negotiations that began in 1999, Denktaş's proposal became a confederation. The negotiations progressed beyond smiles in photographs. Former President Ersin Tatar proposed a two-state solution.

Before these almost impossible-to-summarize developments reached the present day, the country that wielded more influence in the Cyprus issue than the US and the Soviet Union was the UK. This was because it had bases on the island, and their security was a priority in every negotiation. The British sent Nepalese Gurkha soldiers under the pretense of protecting their bases during the operation. The harsh reaction was announced by TRT, of which İsmail Cem was the General Director. İsmail Cem's performance of a sirtaki with his colleague George Papandreou on the island of Samos in 2001, during his tenure as Foreign Minister, was merely a display of good intentions. And then there's the right of nations to self-determination. According to the thesis of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, as its name suggests—why it's translated into Turkish as a meaningless term like "self-determination"—nations should determine their own actions. This was one of the initial proposals for a solution to the Cyprus problem.

As can be seen, the Cyprus issue is a complex, seemingly intractable tangle of developments. A single call for self-determination diverges from the right of nations to self-determination. "Problems" like the mafia on the island, money laundering, and which singer will perform where and when are simply forgotten. Whether referring to Northern Cyprus as a "sanjak" without a direct reference to the Ottoman Empire is a failure to consider that the sanjaks were actually united under the Cyprus Beylerbeylik (Governorship of Cyprus) remains unclear. The issue is that, despite Yavuz Bingöl's support, Ersin Tatar lost the presidency after the elections, and Tufan Erhüman, the leader of the Republican People's Party (CTP), who advocated a federation-based model, won the presidency. Erhürman had announced that if elected, he would resume official negotiations with the Republic of Cyprus, the last of which took place in 2017. While it is customary in Türkiye to not recognize certain institutions and decisions, it would be surprising for Turkish Cypriots. The CTP's statement actually demonstrates why the proposal will be opposed: "It completely violates the will of the Turkish Cypriot people, their political equality, and the realities of international law. It is unacceptable." Can you imagine the TRNC President changing his license plate, which only features the TRNC coat of arms, to 82 0001? The change doesn't stop there; a governor is also appointed.

Note: Are the demands being met? Ahmet Türk was acquitted in the case that led to the "trustee" appointment.