RAUF Denktash is surpassed only by Cuba’s Fidel Castro in terms of political longevity. He saw off six UN Secretary-generals, ten US presidents, five Greek Cypriot presidents, seven Turkish presidents and 36 Turkish prime ministers since 1960.
His long career looked as if it was all crumbling after his ‘no’ to the UN plan at the EU summit in Copenhagen in December 2002 and as Turkish Cypriots finally woke up from their 30-year-plus slumber and took to the streets only months later.
Denktash said at the time that the massive demonstrations by his people had reduced him to tears.
One Turkish newspaper said at the time: “Denktash has, for quite a long time, failed to take the pulse of his people. He lives in an entirely different dimension. I am sure that Denktash sincerely believes that these people who fill the streets are wrong. Unfortunately, the realities of the day are quite different and Denktash cannot — or is not willing to — see these facts.”
Politician, lawyer, former terrorist, would-be photographer, simple family man, animal lover, master of manipulation and drama… Denktash pulled the strings of the international community for 45 years with the sole aim of making northern Cyprus into a state. He didn’t even allowed major heart surgery and other health problems to stand in the way.
The root of his philosophy is contained in the introduction to his 1982 book The Cyprus Triangle. It says: “There is not, and there has never been, a Cypriot nation. That may be the misfortune of Cyprus and indeed the root cause of its problem, but it is a reality which has to be faced and understood by all concerned.” Or to be more blunt, he once said that the only thing Cypriot on the island were the Cyprus donkeys.
His mantra to diplomats over the years was: “Give me 30 years and I will create facts no one can change.”
“The man never tires of pushing buttons,” said one diplomat in 2003 after the failed talks in the Hague in March that year. “In the proximity talks, whenever progress was made or he was cornered he pressed the button feigning anger. His gamble was: ‘I will do it until you recognise the TRNC,” said the diplomat.
Denktash dramatically called the Kofi Annan plan a “crime against humanity”, and refused to go to Burgenstock in 2004. “This is against justice. This is merciless. We cannot pay this price, nor will we pay it,” he said. In a similar theatrical fashion in 1997, after two rounds of failed proximity talks, he wailed: “I cried out at the Troutbeck and Glion talks that our rights were being taken away from us.”
His antics in The Hague however cemented his unpopularity in the international community – not that it appeared to bother him much.
Denktash forged strong ties with the Turkish generals when he founded the terrorist organisation TMT in the fifties and, indicative of his modus operandi, blew up his own office in 1962 and blamed the Greek Cypriot communists. “The British once offered him the post of Attorney-general in Hong Kong to get him off the island, which at that time was a tremendous post to have. He turned it down.
This refusal is an indication of Denktash’s one-track mind in devoting his life to partitioning the island. His mind was so focused on his goal that for all his shenanigans he appeared uninterested in wealth and was never tainted with corruption, apart from one report that he possessed a Greek Cypriot property for his personal use.
Most people who came in contact with Denktash would attest to his pleasant demeanour, but he never lost any time in switching to Cyprus problem mode. Indeed Denktash was known to have affable relations with former president Glafcos Clerides, but only socially. He said once during a round of talks that he didn’t want to meet Clerides because Clerides made jokes which made him laugh. In fact the relationship between the two men led former UN envoy Diego Cordovez to mistakenly believe he was making progress on the Cyprus issue.
Indeed many Greek Cypriots opposed to the Annan plan at the time had been hoping Denktash would ‘save us’. Archbishop Chrysostomos II, when he was still Bishop of Paphos, revealed that he had been “praying for Denktash to reject the peace plan” and his prayers were answered. One Greek nationalist writer even described Denktash as the last “Greek politician of Cyprus”.
