The Cyprus Peace Talks: A Critical Appraisal

Abstract

Despite three decades of persistent efforts to bring about a negotiated settlement, the small island of Cyprus still remains physically and demographically divided. Failure of the 2004 Annan Plan has compounded the need for a thorough reassessment of the Cyprus peace process with a view to ascertaining the reasons for its collapse. Drawing on the findings of research that attributes the failure of earlier negotiations to the negative balance between impeding influences and facilitating factors, the author examines the manner and the extent to which the Annan initiative internalized the lessons learned from these past failures. Was the collapse of the Annan initiative best explained in terms of the shortcomings of the mediating strategy, or did it fail because of the continuing intractability of the conflict (i.e. the two sides remain too far apart on the fundamentals for any mediating strategy to work)? This article examines how the Annan strategy sought to change the imbalance between impeding and facilitating factors, asking, in particular, where it made headway, where did it not, and why. It goes on to characterize the overall impeding/facilitating balance in the post-Annan period and advances a number of propositions on how the imbalance may be shifted in a more positive direction.

Journalism matters: reporting peace in Cyprus

“…It stationed the UN peacekeeping force (UNFICYP) on the island in 1964 and became a third-party mediator in 1968. Since then, the peace process has included many peace initiatives to settle the disputes between the two communities (Michael, 2007, Micheal, 2015). The negotiations to establish a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation are carried out with the mediation of the UN representative between TC and GC leaders and their teams, which include technical committees that work on various aspects of the conflict such as governance, territory, security, and property.…”

Why Do Peace Negotiations Succeed or Fail? Legal Commitment, Transparency, and Inclusion during Peace Negotiations in Colombia (2012–2016) and Turkey (2012–2015)

“…Stable talks that do not fall victim to spoilers or exogenous shocks are a subset of all peace talks (Heger and Jung ). On‐and‐off negotiations between the Cypriot government and Turkish Cypriots since 1974 (Michael ), the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement from 2000 to 2003 (Aspinall et al ), the Philippines government and the National Democratic Front (Bell and Farahnoosh ), the Angolan government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola in 1992, the Sudanese government and various rebel factions in the early 1990s, Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 1997 (Joshi and Mason ), the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 2000, the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers in 2001 and 2003, the Nepalese government and the Maoists from 2003 to 2006 (Sapkota ), and more recently the Syrian government and the armed opposition in 2014 (Camp ) are cases in point. Peace negotiations may have been predestined to fail in some of these cases due to unfavorable structural and contextual factors or exogenous shocks, but this hypothesis should be assessed rather than assumed, keeping in mind that the negotiation framework may explain the variation in the success of peace negotiations.…”

Do peace negotiations shape settlement referendums? The Annan Plan and Good Friday Agreement experiences compared

“…In the Cypriot case, several authors have argued that, because the Annan Plan was negotiated secretively between political elites, the mediators failed to consider, involve and gain support from the larger society (Drath, 2004;Lordos, 2009;Michael, 2007). The arbitration process by which the Secretary-General decided on the issues left unagreed at the last round of negotiations in Bürgenstock is also considered to have allowed the political leaders to appear unaccountable for the final Plan and to campaign against it (Kaymak, 2012: 106;Michael, 2007: 597-598).…”

“…Existing analyses of the Annan Plan and GFA negotiations and referendums reflect that wider gap in the literature. Here, with a few exceptions (Kaymak 2012;Michael 2007), authors who analyse why the Annan Plan negotiations 'failed' and the GFA negotiations 'succeeded', seldom consider the referendum campaign period and its impact on the 'successful' or 'failed' referendum result. Studies of voting behaviours or the campaigns in each of the referendums, on the other hand, do not investigate if the negotiations process shaped them (Hayes and McAllister, 2001;Lordos 2008;Webster and Lordos, 2006;Somerville and Kirby, 2012).…”