Cyprus Problem: from Impasse to Post-helsinki Hope

For more than four decades, the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have been negotiating in an effort to find a solution to the Cyprus problem. The perspective, assumptions and hypotheses that underpin the respective approaches to the Cyprus problem disclose the general framework that renders understandable the impasse that has characterised the long history of negotiations on Cyprus. The Helsinki deci­ sion by the European Union to accept Turkey as a candidate state has fundamen­ tally modified the framework within which the stakeholders will, henceforth, have to negotiate a possible solution for Cyprus. This shift in framework may provide the basis of hope for resolving the long overdue Cyprus problem. State Sovereignty and Self-determination: The Perennial Problem As far back as 1977 and 1979, the Greek Cypriots (G/Cs) and Turkish Cypriots (TICs), at top-level talks, have agreed in principle that the solution to the Cyprus problem will be· a Bicommunal, Bizonal Federal Republic. However, since then, there has been total lack of progress. One of the major reasons for this arises from the fact that over the years, in the very process of the negotiations, the GlCs and TICs, and Greece and Turkey respectively assumed their point of departure from within the structure of the conflict. This structure can be identified as the classic conflict reflected in the history 0fdlationalism between state sovereignty and self-determi­ nation. Inasmuch as sta~~ and political self-determination are perceived in eth­ nocentric and monoethnlc terms, unless society is ethnically homogeneous, the two principles will inevitably stand in contradiction to one another. In societies that are ethnically mixed but nationalistically oriented, the requirements of state sovereignty and the demand for self-determination increaSingly come to operate as divergent forces, usually leading to conflicts and crisis.