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Talking Turkey

By OSMAN ERTUG

Representative/Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 
The Washington Times/ 27^th August 2002

M. James Wilkinson's Friday Op-Ed column "Turkey's tangle with Europe" is insightful yet not beyond reproach. Particularly on the Cyprus issue, your readers (bored as they may be with this decades-old dispute) may be interested to know that it is the Turkish Cypriot side which has proposed certain relevant features of the Belgian model for the future partnership state in Cyprus as well as certain elements from the Swiss, German and Canadian models. The responsibility for failing to adopt the relevant features of these models rests with the Greek Cypriot side.
As far as the issue of sovereignty is concerned, the Turkish Cypriots are not "demanding" sovereignty; they already have it. What is at issue is how much of their sovereignty the two existing sovereign states on the island of Cyprus (i.e. the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot Republic in the South) will yield to the future partnership state in the context of a comprehensive settlement. The Turkish Cypriot position, borne out of concrete experience, is to retain sovereignty in areas which will fall under the powers and competencies of each partner state. Otherwise, the Greek Cypriots will have a free hand to repeat their past crimes against the Turkish Cypriots and present them to the world as an "internal matter."