Phony crisis befalls Cyprus

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "These offensive missiles will definitely not be deployed. If they are deployed, we will do what is needed. If that means they need to be hit, they will be hit," said Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller on Jan. 10.

One day earlier Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said: "Turkish aggression has been expressed for some time. We would be playing Turkey's game if we showed particular concern about this and were swept into an atmosphere of crisis."

This "no crisis" talk is a bit rich coming from Costas Simitis, who last November committed Greece to a US$15 billion arms buildup over the next decade to counter the Turkish "threat". The question is why the Turkish foreign minister is issuing blood-curdling warnings about the new antiaircraft missile system being bought by the Greek-Cypriots, when it knows perfectly well that the missiles will not arrive in Cyprus for months.

The Greek and Turkish leaders are de facto co-conspirators in drumming up an entirely fake crisis over Cyprus. There will be no war there over missiles. I promise.

It's been years now since I spent time with Canadian UN troops on the Green Line that divides Greek Cypriots from Turkish Cypriots, but even in the late 1980s it looked as if it had been there for generations. Walking the patrol routes between the Greek and Turkish lines in Nicosia (which are generally within easy shouting distance of each other), I realized that this was what No-Man's-Land must have felt like during World War I.

My time there was not free of incidents. Many Cypriots of the older generation speak the other side's language, and to fight boredom they would often shout insults back and forth across the Green Line. One evening a Greek Cypriot militiaman, incensed by some inconsiderate remarks about his mother or his manhood, stood up on the parapet and mooned the Turkish lines. But his action was not taken lightly and a Turk shot him in the backside.

Small crisis, not many hurt. Which just about sums up the present situation as well.

Cyprus has really been divided since 1964, when an ethnic civil war left the Turkish minority besieged in scattered villages and towns all across the island. But the present Green Line, which puts the northern 40 percent of the island in Turkish hands, dates from the Turkish invasion of 1974.

"Invasion" is the correct military term, but in this case it does not mean an unprovoked attack. In 1974, a coup by Greek extremists in Cyprus overthrew the existing government (which most people would have called extreme nationalist already), and the new rulers in Nicosia proclaimed their intention to unite Cyprus with the Greek motherland immediately.

The coup was backed by the Greek government in Athens, which was then in the hands of a band of colonels who were as stupid as they were vicious. They had to be stupid to imagine that they would get away with it, for Cyprus has two motherlands -- and the other one, Turkey, has five times Greece's population.

The Turks did not invade at once. First Bulent Ecevit, then the Turkish prime minister, traveled to London to ask the British government, co-guarantor of Cyprus' 1960 constitution, to launch a joint operation from British military bases on the island to remove the coup-makers in Nicosia. Only when the British dodged their responsibilities did the Turkish military operation begin.

It was a piece of cake, for Cyprus is only a 10-minute flight from Turkey's south coast, while it is a very long way from the nearest part of Greece.

Within weeks the Greek Cypriot forces had been defeated, and the island's Turkish-speaking population had all fled within the new line of control. Greek Cypriots living north of that line fled or were expelled, and have not been able to return since. And in Athens, the stupid colonels were replaced by a democratic regime.

It was a rough-and-ready solution, but it has stood the test of time. Two decades later, nobody imagines that Cyprus will ever be incorporated into Greece (or into Turkey either, for that matter). And nobody really believes that the current division of the island into two ethnically pure zones will be undone in this generation or the next.

So what is the current fuss about? Well, if the answer "domestic politics" springs to your lips, you should be congratulated.

According to Simitis' spin doctors, his reason for stoking the present crisis was to stir up a crisis and force the great powers to pay attention. This was done by encouraging the Greek-Cypriot government to buy surface-to-air missiles that would challenge Turkish air superiority over Cyprus. Then the great powers would pressure the Turks into ... well, into what? Evacuating Cyprus? Betraying the Turkish-Cypriots? What?

Nonsense. The spectacle of the great powers milling over a "crisis" in Cyprus would not move the island one bit closer to a settlement, but it would greatly advance Simitis' standing in Greece. And the Turkish government is playing along, even providing blood-curdling comments of its own, because it too could use a little foreign distraction from domestic troubles (including a burgeoning corruption scandal) at the moment.

Most Greeks fear and hate Turks, and few years pass without the Greek media (and the Turkish media too, to a lesser extent) portraying a situation as a brink-of-war crisis. But the two countries have not actually gone to war since the early 1920s, for the simple reason that Greece would lose.

Greeks may be paranoid about Turkey, but they are not stupid. There will be no war over Cyprus.