Friday, I spent in Nicosia, where I met with the lead advisors on both sides, George Iacovou and Kudret Özersay (the image below is not of them, but of their respective leaders, Dimitris Christofias and Derviş Eroğlu). The highly charged property issue is on top of the agenda. Both parties have presented their new position papers, with detailed suggestions for how properties are to be categorized, ownership decided, and various forms of compensation secured. The positions are worked out in meticulous detail, phrased in legalistic language, and there is little convergence between the positions on the two sides.
It seems to me that the positions reflect fundamentally different conceptions of the conflict; its causes; who has done injustice to whom; and how past injustices should be addressed. I am not convinced that the technical legal language in which the positions are currently formulated helps getting at these underlying differences. The good news, of course, is that the parties stay engaged in a political process, also after the change of leadership in Northern Cyprus this spring, when the supposedly less reconciliatory Derviş Eroğlu took office. As Marit Haug pointed out over breakfast this morning, just having read the 1997 Minority Rights Group report, which concludes that the coming year is critical: every year over the past four decades has been critical to the resolution of this conflict. The coming year is no exception.
No comments:
Post a Comment