SPEAKING on the eve of Barack Obama’s recent trip to Turkey, House President Marios Garoyian said Cyprus needed to take the US President’s visit “very seriously”. “Turkey remains important as ever to US geopolitical interests, and it will take a lot of hard work, both by the Cypriot and Greek governments, to make the most of our influence within the United States,” he said.
Taking the advice, President Demetris Christofias managed to squeeze in a brief tête-à-tête with President Obama on the sidelines of the EU-US Summit in Prague last weekend. “I detected a sincere response from Mr Obama. I would like to say that on certain matters he complemented our positions. From then on, it remains to be seen how this will translate in real terms,” Christofias told reporters.
Perhaps suspecting that President Christofias’ admonitions might not do the trick, the Kyrenia Refugees’ Association staged a silent demo outside the US Embassy in Nicosia to protest Obama’s visit to Turkey.
Marios Garoyian is right to acknowledge that Turkey remains as important as ever to US geopolitical interests, and naïve to believe it could be any other way. To suggest as some in Cyprus have done that a more “demanding” political line could somehow yield results with the American administration is at best plain stupid, at worst a cynical manipulation of public hopes and fears.
Even if you accept the Greek Cypriot mantra that the Cyprus problem is a simple question of right and wrong, of invasion and occupation – which Washington does not – the fact remains that Turkey has a population roughly a hundred times the Greek Cypriot population, and has the second largest standing army in NATO (its million soldiers outnumbering the whole of Cyprus). Its strategic location places it astride the two great strategic challenges of the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. It is Muslim yet secular. By the standards of the region it is a beacon of democracy. And it has access and influence with all the powers of the region.
Does anyone honestly think that anything we do or say in Cyprus will change US policy on Turkey? Indeed, if anything, Turkey is more important to the US than it has been for a long time. For a President who has made no secret of his desire to heal the rift with the Muslim world, Turkey was always going to be a prized partner, and it was no surprise to see President Obama giving Turkey pride of place on his first overseas tour. Nor was it a coincidence that Turkey was the culmination of the new President’s European tour, and that not once, but twice did he insist on America’s support for its EU accession bid.
Some in Cyprus will have taken solace in the categorical reaction of France and Germany, which reiterated – stridently in the case of Nicolas Sarkozy – their opposition to Turkey’s accession. Such a reaction suggests that Cyprus may still have a role to play in the vast strategic game that is unfolding, but it is the role of a convenient sacrificial pawn, used to sink Turkey’s EU hopes.
We should be wary of such an honour, for while it may give us a certain satisfaction to drive the nail into Turkey’s EU coffin, it will also mark the end of any lingering hope of reunification by destroying the only realistic leverage on Ankara. It will leave us with a resentful Turkey across the barbed wire of the Green Line, more likely to retreat into the isolation of its twin temptations of nationalist Islam or nationalist secular militarism.
We may not like it, but the overwhelming global power of the United States is a fact, and the dominant strategic importance of Turkey is a fact. With no hope of driving a wedge between Washington and Ankara, our only hope is to engage with the United States. The government has got to wake up to this reality. It has got to shrug off its ideological fixations (if Russia and Serbia can sign up to the Partnership for Peace, why on earth can’t Cyprus?), it has got to desist from the reductionist slogans of evil imperialism. The President must realise that he cannot pat President Obama on the back at international summits, while his party officials back home echo the language of crude anti-American street demos for domestic consumption. It’s not as if our hand was brimming with trumps: what few cards we have, we must play with greater tact.
