Football Diplomacy

15 October 2009
Sabine Freizer

The images of Turkey-Armenia reconciliation over the past few days have been stunning: high politics and world class leaders standing together in Zurich for the signing of bilateral protocols on 10 October; four days later, a down-to-earth meeting of national football teams in Bursa for the World Cup qualifying match, watched by Turkish President Abdullah Gül and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian. Who knows which event was viewed by more in Turkey, Armenia and beyond.  But what is clear is that the process has something to offer everyone.

This is one of the main differences between the Turkey-Armenia and the Azerbaijan-Armenia reconciliation processes. The first has been developing for the past decade, not only (or even mainly) at the negotiations table but amongst all levels of society. As far back as 1995, Turkey reopened the air corridor between Istanbul and Yerevan and allowed free travel for Armenians. Tens of the thousands of Armenians vacation on Turkey’s Riviera each summer, while up to 40,000 Armenian passport holders are now employed in Istanbul. For a decade, civil society organizations have been setting up a wide range of Turkish-Armenian joint events amongst artists, photographers, youth, journalists, intellectuals, business persons…The very day of the Bursa match, twenty of the most prominent Turkish and Armenian journalists met in a nearby hotel to discuss how they could further support reconciliation.

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Turkey and Armenia vow to heal past wounds

1 September 2009
Hugh Pope

It's been a long time coming, but Turkey and Armenia's vow on 31 August to establish diplomatic relations, open their long-closed border and begin to talk seriously about the past is excellent news. As laid out in our 14 April report Turkey and Armenia: Opening Minds, Opening Borders, normalisation between Turkey and Armenia will benefit not just the bilateral relationship. If successful, it could win back for Turkey and its AKP government much of their recently faded prestige as domestic reformers, as regional peace-makers and as a country seriously intending to push forward with its accession process to the European Union.

The brief joint announcement from Ankara, Yerevan and the Swiss mediators in Bern said that two protocols had been initialled on the establishment of diplomatic relations and the development of bilateral relations. The two sides committed to seeing the protocols through to parliamentary ratifications within six weeks -- that is, two days before a 14 October World Cup qualifier match between Armenia and Turkey due to be played in the western Turkish provincial city of Bursa. Turkey hopes that Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian will accept its invitation to attend, just as Turkish President Abdullah Gül initiated the current process by attending the first round match in Yerevan in September 2008.

Texts of the two protocols circulating in Turkey and Armenia set out a fully rounded and reasonable plan. In a "Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations" the two sides promised to establish diplomatic relations on the first day of the first month after ratification; to exchange diplomatic missions; to reopen the border within two months of ratification; and to mutually recognize the existing border. In a "Protocol on Development of Relations" -- to go into effect simultaneously with the diplomatic opening -- the two sides promised to promote cooperation in all areas from energy infrastructure to tourism; to set up a mechanism of regular foreign ministry consultations, including a main intergovernmental commission and seven sub-commissions; to act jointly to preserve the cultural heritage of both sides; and to establish consular cooperation. The protocols are accompanied by a detailed timetable, in which all steps and commissions would be fully implemented and in motion within four months.

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Can Cyprus Buck the Partitionist Trend?

20 July 2009
Hugh Pope

"Everyone in my community is clairvoyant," a Belfast politician is quoted as saying in Divided Cities, a new book by Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). "My community knows how evil and devious the other side is going to be even before the other side has thought about being evil and devious."

Participants in every conflict believe their dispute is unique, especially in cities where divisions reflect old wars, different ethnicities and interests of outside powers. In fact, the Belfast politician could have hailed from any of the apparently disparate situations in Calame and Charleworth's study -- Nicosia, Jerusalem, Beirut, Mostar and Belfast -- and inbred, irrational suspicion is just one of many patterns that communities in these cities share.

In the case of Nicosia, there's plenty of reason to take a deeper look, and not just because of the lessons to be learned from the histories of the other conflicts. Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots are in talks that, over the next year, will decide whether the two divided sides of the Mediterranean island will reunite, or whether, after three decades of keeping the peace and failing to negotiate, they will simply continue the slide to full partition. As this book points out, partition is avoidable, but takes a tremendous effort of will. As for rooting out dividing walls completely, well, nobody seems to have managed to do that yet.

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Privileged Partnership Offers Turkey neither Privilege nor Partnership

23 June 2009
Hugh Pope

Right-wingers won big in the European elections this month, and one of their rallying cries has been that the EU should renege on its promise of an eventual place for Turkey in the European Union. In its place, they are offering a vision of "privileged partnership". Yet leading proponents in France, Germany and elsewhere have failed to spell out what this policy might be, even though talk of a substitute arrangement for Turkey puts European credibility, intellectual honesty and long-term interests at stake.

Among the first to propose "privileged partnership" was German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union in 2004, trying to find ways to fit German public concerns to Turkish expectations. But little perceptible intellectual effort has gone into developing the concept, even though French President Nicolas Sarkozy, outgoing European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering and other European conservatives have joined the bandwagon since then. And at the same time as their leaders are proposing the idea, the German and French governments have published no documents saying how this "privileged partnership" can substitute for Turkey's existing EU Associate Membership. Small wonder that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told journalists last week: "I don't know what privileged partnership means."

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Time for Turkey to Be Visionary in the South Caucasus

15 May 2009
Sabine Freizer

Optimism about the normalisation of Turkey-Armenia bilateral relations, so prevalent on 22 April when the two countries announced that they had agreed on a comprehensive framework for reconciliation, has suddenly faded. Normalisation would include opening of the Turkey-Armenia border, establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up of bilateral commissions to deal with multiple issues, including the historical dimension of their relations. It first seemed that these steps could be accomplished by Autumn 2009. Now they may be delayed for years.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan put a brake on the reconciliation effort when in Baku on 13 May, he did not mince his words: “the closure of the [Turkey-Armenia] border is a result of the [Armenian] occupation in Karabakh […] until the occupation ends, the border gates will remain closed.”

The occupation of some 13.5 per cent of Azerbaijan’s territory by Armenian-backed forces started in 1992, when Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave which was an Armenian majority autonomous region of Azerbaijan in Soviet times. Since the signing of a 1994 ceasefire, there has been no pulling back by any of the armed forces, and the ceasefire line remains an active front line where there are regular casualties.

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Turkish Cypriots Serve Notice on Peace Talks

23 April 2009
Hugh Pope

After the morale-raising 6-7 April trip to Turkey by U.S. President Barack Obama, Turkey is back to facing the reality of its tough neighbourhood: last-minute stresses in its hopeful recent talks on normalisation with Armenia (see our 14 April 2009 report), isolation for Turkey at the 4-5 April NATO summit as it resisted the eventual choice of a new secretary general and now new challenges for the ongoing talks on a Cyprus settlement, a dispute which, left unsolved, remains Turkey's biggest obstacle on the road to the EU.

In parliamentary elections on 19 April, Turkish Cypriots gave victory to the right-wing nationalist National Unity Party (UBP - Ulusal Birlik Partisi), handing it 44 per cent of the vote and 26 of the 50 seats. They voted out the ruling left-wing Republican Turkish Party (CTP - Cumhuriyetçi Türk Partisi), giving it 29 per cent of the vote and 15 parliamentary seats. After years in which Turkish media has all but ignored Cyprus, victory for the Turkish Cypriot opposition suddenly put the issue centre stage for commentators and politicians - some of whom used it to argue that it showed how the ruling AK Party's "defeatist" policy of compromise with Greek Cypriots and the EU had failed.

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From the Ballot Box to Brussels

26 March 2009
Sabine Freizer

Towns and cities across Turkey are festooned with political party paraphernalia as the country's main political parties go all out in the final days of the 29 March municipal elections campaign. To an outsider the intensity of party leader involvement, media coverage, and political debate about these elections can be surprising. These are after all local elections, yet political leaders and high level government officials, from the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan down, have been actively hitting the campaign trail for weeks.

Sunday's election is a continuation of the struggle between traditional secularists and moderate Islamists that threatened Turkey's political stability in summer 2007 when the Constitutional Court ruled that the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) attempt to elect its foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, as president was unconstitutional. The AKP then took the issue to the people with an early general election in July 2007. Voters renewed the AKP's mandate with 46.7 per cent support. With this vote of confidence, Gül resumed his presidential candidacy and was elected to the post. A year later, on 5 June 2008, the Constitutional Court struck down an amendment on the headscarf promoted by the AKP and passed in March in the Parliament. On 30 July, ten of its eleven judges found the AKP guilty of being a "focal point of anti-secular activities" but did not go as far as banning the party as requested by the opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), and the Chief Prosecutor.

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Turkey's Election Prospects

5 March 2009
Hugh Pope

Polls indicate that the ruling AK Party is well positioned to win Turkey’s 29 March municipal elections. This raises hopes that Turkey can build on the series of measures it announced in January to relaunch its stalled EU convergence process. On top of those moves to widen ethnic and religious freedoms, the AK Party has also promised that in April it will return to work on a new constitution.

However, the election campaign has been dominated by Middle Eastern distractions and internal politics, rather than EU affairs. The ruling party’s focus on criticising Israel over Gaza was popular in Turkey and boosted ratings in polls, but the manner in which it was done -- with leaders comparing the party’s rise to that of Hamas, rallies with green Hamas flags, and rhetoric point-scoring with Israeli leaders -- made the country look decidedly un-European to Europeans.

Worse, the perception of taking sides in a Middle East conflict was a real setback to years of patient Turkish diplomatic work to build trust with all regional parties, including Israel, pro-American Arab states and more radical countries like Iran and Syria. It is not just Gulf fund-managers who are worried that Turkey may be veering off the highway it promised to follow towards European standards, regulations and security of investments. What Turkey underestimates is that most Middle Eastern leaders and elites are interested in building ties with a European Turkey, not a Middle Eastern one.

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Setting the stage

Turkey has been converging formally with the European Union and its predecessors since it signed an association agreement in 1963, the same year the dispute between Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Turkey and Greece over Cyprus became both a cause and symptom of ups and downs in the EU-Turkey relationship. On the Mediterranean island, armed conflict has been minimal since the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern third, and Turkey and Greece have smoothed over their differences since a 1999 rapprochement. But the 2004 entry of the Republic of Cyprus into the EU as a divided country imported this frozen conflict into the heart of Europe, and created an unbreakable triangle between the EU, Turkey and Cyprus.

Within this triangle, 2009 looks set to be a decisive year. Turkey, negotiating for full membership of the EU since 2005, is unable to start negotiations on at least half of the 33 candidacy “chapters” with Brussels due to freezes linked to Cyprus. Since 2007, France has blocked five others, symbolising European enlargement fatigue and reversing its former support for Turkey’s EU vocation.

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Launch of Crisis Group’s EU-Turkey-Cyprus page

This week, Crisis Group launches a new webpage covering the nexus of issues surrounding Cyprus, Turkey and the EU: “Solving the EU-Turkey-Cyprus Triangle”.

This is a critical year for Cyprus as efforts to resolve the long conflict gather steam, and for Turkey as frustration with EU enlargement fatigue weighs heavy on its chances of approaching membership. With Cyprus a member state of the EU and troops from NATO-member Turkey still in the northern half of the island, the inter-relationships are many.

Will Turkey’s efforts to join the Union be formally blocked if it does not normalise its relations with Cyprus by autumn? Will other EU member states that have a negative stance towards Turkey’s membership continue to argue that Turkey has no place in the Union? Will such moves turn Turkey away from the EU, stifle ongoing reform and push Ankara towards other allies? Will the EU’s need to diversify energy sources and the Nabucco pipeline plans affect thinking in Brussels and member state capitals? And how will all these factors affect the search for a final peaceful settlement between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, elusive for so many decades?

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Up-to-date analysis and commentary on issues surrounding Turkey, Cyprus and the EU, written by:

Sabine Freizer, Europe Program Director

Hugh Pope, Turkey/Cyprus Project Director

Comments or questions? Contact Crisis Group's Communications Unit

Latest Crisis Group reports:

Cyprus: Reunification or Partition?, 30 September 2009

Turkey and Armenia: Opening Minds, Opening Borders, 14 April 2009

Turkey and Europe: The Decisive Year Ahead, 15 December 2008

Reunifying Cyprus: The Best Chance Yet, 23 June 2008

All Crisis Group Turkey and Cyprus reports are listed at the bottom of this page.

Click here for reports from individual countries: Turkey | Cyprus

Latest Crisis Group op-eds and interviews:

"Time Runs Out for Cypriot Solution", Hugh Pope in The Wall Street Journal, 19 October 2009

"Last Chance for a Settlement in Cyprus", Hugh Pope in Yeni Duzen, 13 September 2009

"EU Support Is Needed for Turkey to Progress", Hugh Pope in The Independent, 21 July 2009.

"Opening Minds, Opening Borders", Hugh Pope in Today's Zaman, 29 April 2009

"We Are All Armenians", Hugh Pope in The Wall Street Journal, 27 April 2009.

More op-eds can be found under the media section

Background:

Turkey conflict history

Database of CrisisWatch entries for Turkey and Cyprus - a month-by-month rundown of developments since September 2004

Several of our reports have been translated into Greek and Turkish, click here to access them.