Every few days the leading circulation daily Phileleftheros publishes a front-page story aimed at stirring opposition to a settlement, which is immediately picked up by the parties of the so-called centre that issue indignant and fiery announcements against the peace talks, the Turkish side and the Anastasiades government. It is as if the paper and the parties are in cahoots and this was an orchestrated plan to undermine the peace efforts and turn Greek Cypriot public opinion against any prospective deal.
The latest example of this was witnessed on Monday when the paper led with a report claiming that the regime in the north was granting “citizenships” on grand scale and that a plan to “to register as citizens 26,500” was being “implemented” on the instructions of President Erdogan. The story was based on allegations made by Izzet Izcan, the leader of the small, left-wing party BKP, who was quoted as saying the ‘government’ in the north was granting citizenships to 500 Turkish settlers every month in order to scupper negotiations.
Interestingly, the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Havadis, which has a co-operation agreement with Phileleftheros’ sister paper the Cyprus Weekly, reported on the same day that there had been an increase in applications for ‘citizenships’ and that the ‘ministerial council’ had 10 to 20 such applications on its agenda every time it met. The paper also reported that the last meeting had granted 11 “citizenships”; these were published in the last issue of the north’s ‘official gazette’. Izcan’s numbers would be accurate if there were 50 such meetings every month. To achieve the 26,500 ‘citizenships’ mentioned by Phileleftheros, even at Izcan’s rate of approvals, it would take more than four years.
There had been a plan for the granting of ‘citizenships’ to 26,500 Turks, but it had been put on hold until the end of the year, which is the informal time-frame for a settlement. In addition to this, as Phileleftheros reported in the same story, Anastasiades and Akinci had already agreed the number of citizens in each constituent state (220,000 in the north and 802,000 in the south). There will be Turkish settlers in this number, but the population ratio will be the same as it was in 1960. It is a sensible way of settling this matter, without disputes about who is allowed to stay.
Needless to say that none of the parties that issued angry statements in response to Phileleftheros’ battle cry showed the slightest interest in looking at the accuracy of the numbers or the reliability of the paper’s sources. They universally concluded that this was another “provocative and unacceptable” act, which showed “Turkey’s true intention” was to alter the population ratio. They all ignored that the ratio had been agreed, because the objective is not to inform people but to frighten them and turn them against a settlement.
