THE flurry of indignation about the granting of citizenship to the children of mixed Turkish Cypriot-Turkish settler marriages only serves to confirm the desperate level of public debate in Cyprus.
It may be that the sudden pompous patriotism and self-righteous criticism levelled at Interior Minister Andreas Christou by Simerini newspaper, EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou and DIKO deputy Nicos Pittokopitis had more to do with trying to damage Christou – the only minister in the Cabinet to have supported a ‘yes’ vote at April’s referendum on the Annan plan.
Nevertheless, the messages given out to the international community (if they still care, which they probably don’t) and to our Turkish Cypriot compatriots are hardly encouraging.
The people shouting the loudest about the naturalisation issue are the very same people who shout the loudest about our human rights, about how they want a “European solution” and about how the Annan plan violated just about every rule in the EU book (though the EU seems to disagree).
Yet here are these people railing against a law that is an EU law giving anyone with one Cypriot parent the right to citizenship, irrespective of the nationality of the other parent, and irrespective of whether they may be a legal or an illegal immigrant. The issue was discussed and approved in Cabinet – which is headed by Pittokopitis’ own party leader President Papadopoulos and contains members of Omirou’s EDEK. It was discussed with individual party leaders, including Omirou. No one raised a fuss at the time, and now all of sudden this has become an issue of vital national importance.
Who do our patriots think the European court of human rights would support were we to refuse citizenship to a person whose parent has a Republic of Cyprus passport on the grounds that the other parent was an illegal settler? The Republic, which would be breaching its own law as well as European law, or the frustrated applicant?
What’s more, by raising the issue of children born to mixed marriages involving a settler, DIKO and EDEK are saying they are unwilling to accept even the absolute minimum demand concerning settlers in any future settlement. The Annan plan provided that anyone with a Cypriot parent would automatically get citizenship (as indeed does current Cyprus law) as would another 40,000 settlers. Yet the indignation over the issue of naturalisations suggests those raising the question expect any solution to see all mainland Turks expelled, including those married to Cypriots and their children.
Clearly, the possibility of a settlement is now so remote that many politicians feel fit to revert to the kind of fantasy rhetoric on the Cyprus problem that bears no relation to the realities of any solution. The problem is that those fantasies have over the years moulded public opinion, making any genuine reconciliation an ever-receding prospect.
