European diplomats and many United Nations officials, including María Angela Holguín Cuéllar, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s personal envoy for Cyprus, are optimistic that they can make progress on the fifty-one-year dispute, especially after residents of the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus ousted hardliner Ersin Tatar in favor of the more moderate Tufan Erhürman, a mild-mannered lawyer and former negotiator.
Erhürman might be sincere, but he is not the ultimate power in the occupied region of Cyprus; Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is. Erhürman commands a phone to Ankara. Erdoğan issues the orders for the approximately 30,000 Turkish troops who occupy the region and provides subsidies that the pretender state needs to operate. Still, Erhürman’s election showed the unease even among Cypriot Muslims about Erdoğan’s religious agenda, which is foreign to the tolerant, laid-back practices that Turkish Cypriots traditionally favor.
Turkish diplomats and many frustrated U.N. and European officials have heaped blame upon Greek Cypriots for missing the opportunity for peace.
It is impossible for any diplomat to discuss Cypriot peace without learning lessons from the failure of past peace-making. Unfortunately, too many U.N. officials, Western diplomats, and Turks blame Greek Cypriots for the failure of the U.N.’s 2004 Annan Plan to make Cyprus a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. In the subsequent referendum, Turkish Cypriots accepted the plan by a two-thirds majority, while three-quarters of Greek Cypriots rejected the plan.
In the decades since, Turkish diplomats and many frustrated U.N. and European officials have heaped blame upon Greek Cypriots for missing the opportunity for peace. Turks responded by increasing their unilateralism. U.N. negotiators and too many European Union officials may not say so publicly, but in private conversations they rationalize subsequent Turkish actions in the Greek Cypriot rejection of the Annan Plan. Call it what it is: a three-decade-long temper tantrum.
Greek Cypriots were correct to reject the Annan Plan for two reasons: First, it laundered Turkish aggression. There is no difference between forcing Cyprus to make political concessions in the face of Turkish aggression and demanding Ukraine make diplomatic or territorial concessions to Russia. More importantly, the idea that it would have brought peace to the island is nonsense.
It would have allowed both the Turkish Army and Turkish settlers to continue their occupation permanently. Turkey and its proxy state would collect concessions within days, while Greek Cypriot rights would only kick in years later. Should Turkey or Turkish Cypriots violate the Annan Plan, there would be no recourse or consequence. Put another way, the Annan Plan was all smoke and mirrors, but no substance.
The United Nations pulled the same stunt nearly a quarter-century later in Yemen. The United Nations does not recognize the Houthi government of Yemen and views its 2014 seizure of Yemen’s capital Sana’a as illegitimate. Still, the United Nations sends mixed message by maintaining its offices in the occupied capital even though it recognized an alternate government based in Aden. As it appeared an Emirati-led force might attack the main Houthi port at Hudaydah, many within the U.N. system pursued the need for an agreement to bring calm to Yemen, if not peace.
Human rights activists, both within and outside the U.N. system, argued that any military effort to clear Hudaydah of Houthis could interrupt humanitarian assistance and cause unacceptable suffering; the U.N. simply did not calculate the suffering that might occur should Houthis continue their reign of terror.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani resigned in disgust at the U.N.’s willingness to substitute a virtue signaling and a signing ceremony for meaningful peace and security.
The U.N. hosted a week of negotiations in Stockholm between the Houthis and Yemen’s Internationally-Recognized Government; the two sides never met, but U.N. officials shuttled between them. Donors exerted huge pressure on the legitimate Yemenis to accept the deal, which the U.N. said would create both an inspection regimen and a mechanism to unravel Houthi control over the port. The Stockholm Agreement did neither. The Houthis retained control over customs and port operations, albeit with a uniform change and the facade of being apolitical port workers. Inspections became optional; the agreement only mandated boarding for those ships that officially declared themselves to inspectors. The Houthis thrived and strengthened. Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani resigned in disgust at the U.N.’s willingness to substitute a virtue signaling and a signing ceremony for meaningful peace and security. History has proven al-Yamani correct. Tens of thousands of Yemenis have died since the Stockholm Agreement as a result of its perpetuation of Houthi rule.
As Guterres, Holguin, European leaders, and perhaps even President Donald Trump—who sees in Cyprus an opportunity to both appease Turkey and pad his Nobel Peace Prize application—promote a new peace process, the Yemen experience should reinforce the reality that the United Nations, United States, and Europe have not learned its lesson from its 2004 failure. Each continues to prioritize appearance and congratulatory press releases over substance and lasting peace.
Until the international community recognizes aggressors for who they are, stops seeking to compromise with Ankara and its Vichy forces on the island, and dispenses with agreements that have no enforcement mechanism, there will be no peace. The Turkish Army may be a danger to Cyprus, but diplomatic naivete and ambition today pose as great a threat.
