Guterres working hard to unravel tangled Cyprob knot

Antonio Guterres is probably the best UN secretary-general since Dag Hammarskjöld of Sweden who was killed in an air crash trying to bring peace to the Congo. Guterres’ attendance at the BRICS gathering in Kazan in Russia last week is proof that he is not beholden to the West, and his principled stand on Gaza and Lebanon show that he is a great humanitarian prepared to come off the fence and tell it how it is at great personal cost – he has been declared persona non grata by Israel.

He is very much persona grata in Cyprus. His working dinner with the two Cypriot leaders in New York last week went well enough that a return dinner in Cyprus is possible, not least because Cypriots usually insist on reciprocating with traditional Cypriot hospitality.

The dinner he hosted was in-house at the UNSG’s dining suite. The menu card was embossed with the UN logo in gold. It said the dinner was in honour of HE Mr Nikos Christodoulides and HE Mr Ersin Tatar and read as follows: crab cake to start; baked fillet of red snapper main; chocolate cake dessert; and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to drink.

The conversation at dinner was about the way ahead in light of the lack of common ground to begin talks on the Cyprob. The search for common ground has been particularly elusive after huge areas of common ground were wasted at Crans-Montana in 2017 under the banner of zero troops and zero guarantees. It led to a change in leadership on the Turkish Cypriot side who now insist on recognition of sovereign equality to engage in talks.

The debacle at Crans-Montana was Guterres’ first of a number of disappointments at a time when peace is difficult to keep in a world that is getting more dangerous daily. Still, he seems to have a soft spot for Cyprus and a determination to resolve the Cyprob before he leaves office in December 2026. It would be a great valedictory event if he ends his time as UNSG with a successful conclusion of the Cyprob.

How then to get there? Rather than search for common ground, it may be more helpful to identify the right starting point and then pave the way forward.The 1960 agreements are a good place to start because both the RoC and Turkey still operate those agreements. For the RoC the 1960 agreements and its constitution are of existential significance – not for nothing did the legally astute Tasos Papadopoulos famously argue as president in 2004 that he was not prepared to give up the RoC for the bureaucratic mishmash contained in the Annan plan.

For Turkey the 1960 treaty of guarantee is the international law she invoked to take unilateral action in Cyprus in 1974 after President Makarios was overthrown by the military government then in power in Greece. The treaty of guarantee authorises action with the sole aim of restoring the state of affairs established by the treaty and the basic articles of the constitution of Cyprus, provided the action is proportionate to restoring that state of affairs.  

The RoC rejects the legality of Turkey’s presence in Cyprus. To Greek Cypriots the action Turkey took was an unlawful invasion and occupation of 35 per cent of the territory of Cyprus. They argue that the overthrow of President Makarios was an internal Greek Cypriot problem; the Turkish Cypriots were not attacked during the internecine fighting; the coup was not an attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece; and the treaty of guarantee did not authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.

No useful purpose is served in blaming one side or the other because, even if Turkey had the right  to take unilateral action in 1974, the fact is it had to be proportionate to the aim of restoring the state of affairs established by the treaty and the basic articles of the constitution.

The basic articles of the constitution are conveniently set out in the Zurich agreement signed by the Greek and Turkish prime ministers on February 11, 1959 whose contents were incorporated as basic articles of the constitution of Cyprus. Those articles and the treaty of guarantee are about setting up an independent republic whose government and governance were supposed to be shared that excluded both union of Cyprus with another country and its partition into two states.

Turkey did not just guarantee that Cyprus would not unite with Greece, she also guaranteed that Cyprus would not be partitioned into two states. After claiming to have acted in northern Cyprus as a guarantor power for 50 years to prevent union with Greece, it is an untenable position for Turkey to insist on two states in Cyprus in breach of a treaty of which she is a guarantor. 

That is the starting point of Turkey given her obligations in international law. So far as the RoC is concerned its starting point is that the RoC is here to stay. The Turkish Cypriots can reintegrate as a constituent state, in accordance with the basic articles of the constitution adapted to take account the division of the territory of Cyprus, but not as a separate state. Whether and how that can be made to approximate to sovereign equality is a matter for clever constitutional lawyers.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge