SERDAR Denktash yesterday accused the international community of reneging on their promise to lift the Turkish Cypriot community out of economic and political isolation.
Denktash, son of veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash and the north’s ‘foreign minister’, was speaking to reporters during a visit to Vienna Denktash said, “We feel we have been cheated by the international community. They made promises and they should keep them”.
He added that the recent meeting between Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw – and an earlier meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell at who Powell addressed Talat as “Mr Prime Minister” – were unprecedented, but they did nothing to alleviate the day-to-day problems of the Turkish Cypriots.
“We have to think of our people. Diplomatic advances do not impress them. The people’s standard of living has not risen, the economy has not improved and they feel the effects of isolation constantly”.
Denktash believes the international community is now in a conundrum on how to deal with the Turkish Cypriot community, having miscalculated the result of the referenda of the Annan plan.
“We knew from the start they [Greek Cypriots] would say ‘no’. The UN Secretary-general, EU Commissioner (Guenter) Verheugen and everybody was sure they would say ‘yes’,” he said, adding: “They [Greek Cypriots] rejected uniting the island and now they are in the EU. But for us the isolation continues”.
Denktash is adamant the Turkish Cypriot community will not wait indefinitely for the Greek Cypriots to come to an agreement with the north.
“We are willing to wait a year at most. After that we will have no alternative but to seek recognition as a separate state. No one can expect the Turkish Cypriots to wait another 40 years for a second chance,” he added.
But Denktash is also adamant that Turkish Cypriots are not prepared to see negotiations on the Annan plan resumed.
“There is not even one millimetre of a possibility that we will negotiate again. We put the plan to referendum and accepted it. If even the smallest changes are made, it will have to go to referendum again, and no one can guarantee it would be a ‘yes’ vote the second time round”.
Surprisingly, Denktash said he believed President Papadopoulos “played his cards openly” during negotiations and had consistently expressed his dislike for the plan – a view that culminated in his appeal to both Cypriot communities to reject Annan’s peace proposal.
It was the isolation and economic hardship under which the Turkish Cypriots live that led to the plan’s overwhelming acceptance in the north, he said.
“Our people were so fed up of being isolated from the world they felt this was a chance to beak out of it and become citizens of the EU. It was not because they thought the plan was perfect”.
Denktash added: “Since then, all the promises [made to the community] have been forgotten”.
