The issue of recognition in Cyprus is

The Cypriot State(s) in situ
continued

The issue of recognition in Cyprus is, consequently, not only a historically complex one but also the discourse disseminated is quite contradictory. The most striking example of this contradiction involves the primary symbols of statehood, i.e. the national anthem and the flag. None of the two polities have their own national anthem; each uses the anthem of their respective "motherland". Also, more often than not, the flags of their "motherland" are displayed alongside the Cypriot state ones. [9]

On the battleground of international recognition, labelling has become extremely important. The Greek Cypriot side always places the TRNC in quotation marks or refers to it as the "Turkish Cypriot pseudo-state". The Turkish Cypriot side never refers to the Republic of Cyprus as such but to the "Greek Cypriot" or "South Cyprus administration". It never refers to the "President" but to the "Greek Cypriot leader" while the Greek Cypriot side similarly only to the "Turkish Cypriot leader", "occupying leader" or "pseudo-president". These labels have been charged and so highly matter in the reproduction of official narratives. Note, however, that they have become of concern and implicate ordinary Cypriots as well. For example, one of the major political aims of the Greek Cypriot authorities after 1974 has been to obstruct any normalisation of the regime in the north or any possibility of granting recognition to the Turkish Cypriot state after 1983. This has extended to almost any imaginable activity of an international nature, from trade to the landing of civilian company planes in the north, from sports meetings to academic conferences, including meetings or events devoid of any explicit political content. Turkish Cypriots, with equal insistence, have been officially encouraged to participate in such events, often feeling that through them they can also gain some international standing which can then be exploited by the authorities in the north for domestic consumption or to foster recognition. In general, the Turkish Cypriot official aim in international meetings is not so much to block completely the participation of Greek Cypriot individuals or groups (which is not feasible due to the international stance on the issue) but rather to take part alongside the Greek Cypriot organisations. Consequently, if a Greek Cypriot organisation or individuals encounter a Turkish Cypriot group trying to join such events, they frequently protest and try to disqualify its participation and more often than not they are successful; if not, then the Greek Cypriots withdraw. In other words, most Greek and Turkish Cypriots joining international events abroad customarily consider it their pat riotic duty to protect or promote their respective state recognitions. Accepting the official logic of recognition, many Cypriots from both sides accept the necessity and actively reproduce the reality of these rationales that turn every single international site into a political arena.

The shadow of recognition dominates, furthermore, over intercommunal meetings. It is often an issue raised before or during official negotiations. But it also affects semi-official and unofficial contacts. It is important to note that the UN Security Council has strongly and explicitly advocated bicommunal meetings as part of a general set of confidence-building measures. Resolution 789 (1992) states that: "Each side take active measures to promote people to people contacts between the two communities . . .". However, the position of the Turkish Cypriot regime--basically content with ethnic separation after 1974--has been very negative to unofficial contacts, though due to international pressures it shifts from time to time.[10] not only does it generally discourage, but often explicitly forbids and intimidates people from taking part. Security Council Resolution 1062 (1996) criticises both sides for obstructing bicommunal events and contacts, singling out "especially the Turkish Cypriot leadership".[11] The Turkish Cypriot authorities argue that these meetings are exploited by the Greek Cypriot side in order to promote its government internationally as the sole representative of the Cypriot people.

The issue becomes more complicated as far as the Greek Cypriot side is concerned due to the official policy of epanaproseggisi (rapprochement) initiated after 1974. The term epanaproseggisi means `coming together again’ . Since the official Greek Cypriot aim is that the unification of Cyprus is the desired outcome, it is felt that measures of goodwill towards Turkish Cypriots are necessary to display the existence of good intentions with regard to the future. This has been the crux of the major but false dilemma that Greek Cypriots face. On the one hand, they try to avoid any possibility of implicit or explicit recognition of the Turkish Cypriot polity. On the other hand, they need to encourage bicommunal meetings between groups of people in the two sides. The official framework adopted by the Greek Cypriot side is that unofficial meetings that do not entail or imply recognition should be encouraged, but anything that does, prohibited or discouraged. For example, if Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots wish to meet as individuals or as part of an organisation which is not linked to official state capacity then such meetings are officially supposed to be welcome from the Greek Cypriot side. Yet, the line separating ``acceptable’’’’ from ``unacceptable’’’’ meetings is not always clear in advance, sometimes left deliberately obscure, in practice discouraging people by laying upon them the heavy burden of unintentional recognition. As such the policies of the two sides in Cyprus, though differing in degree or intention, in effect produce the same result: namely, ethnic separation or highly controlled cross-ethnic contact. For it is precisely the official interpretation from both sides over what entails or does not entail recognition that is at stake here, and which implicates a range of other factors as well.

Reconsidering Claims of Recognition
Note, in this regard, that there have already been quite a number of official meetings between the two sides, and officially interpreted as not constituting recognition of the other side. The leaders of the two sides, nowadays Clerides for Greek Cypriots and Denktash for Turkish Cypriots, occasionally meet to negotiate under the titles "The Representative of the Greek Cypriot Community of Cyprus" and "The Representative of the Turkish Cypriot Community of Cyprus", respectively. (Note, however, that since the EU Luxemburg Summit in December 1997, Denktash announced that he would not be meeting Clerides or negotiating again unless recognised by the Greek Cypriot side or invited by the UN Secretary General as "Head of State". The November 1999 invitations from Kofi Annan for negotiations in New York required two additional letters of clarification--the last of the three satisfied Denktash by describing both leaders as "excellencies".) The municipal leaders of the two sides of divided Nicosia also have met under the titles "The Representative of the Greek Cypriot Community of Nicosia" and "The Representative of the Turkish Cypriot Community of Nicosia".[12] Neither side claims that these official and semi-official contacts have given recognition to the other side, nor for that matter have they changed the positions of the two sides internationally. Still, the official criteria used for unofficial contacts, at least from what we experience from the Greek Cypriot side, continue to be arbitrary in practice. If, for example, a Greek Cypriot contemplating his or her participation at an event with Turkish Cypriots seeks advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the advice given may vary according to the latest official pronouncement, or the particular bureaucrat one happens to consult. That is to say, the official discourse on the matter is not always consistent and may shift depending on political and international constellations. It is usually better to take the risk by not asking, but then one may be publicly reprimanded for not consulting the "experts" of recognition and for betraying the Cyprus cause. Similar considerations apply with regard to the reaction of the Greek Cypriot press, in terms of whether a certain meeting will be castigated as implying recognition or not.[13]

The two regimes share more than they care to admit in complicating and exploiting the issue of unofficial contacts. For through their officials and mass media they have simplistically appropriated and fervently exploited the international law of the recognition of states and governments. This has not been helped by the fact that the law on the matter is politicised anyway. As put by Ian Brownlie: "Unfortunately, when the existence of states and governments is
in issue, a proper legal perspective seems to be elusive."[14] In other words, to put it less euphemistically, recognition has primarily been a governmental political decision justified by reference to certain "objective" legal prerequisites, which are, however, invariably interpreted and sometimes only selectively applied.

In the case of Cyprus, however, the problem goes further. For the proponents of the argument, that unofficial contacts in themselves and increasingly promote the state or government claims of the other side, tend to base their thesis on the law of "implied recognition". That is to say, the argument is that, despite the express and explicit statement from the authorities of either side rejecting the claims of the other, such unofficial contacts may still provide probative value of
opposing claims, and so in effect constitute recognition inadvertently and through the back door.

From the international legal perspective, at least, this argument is fundamentally misplaced for two reasons. First, the law is clear in saying that implication cannot be construed if the other side formally, expressly, and consistently withdraws recognition. Furthermore, international custom provides a lot of room for the official conduct of parties without necessarily recognising each other:

State practice shows that no recognition is implied from various forms
of negotiation, the establishment of unofficial representation, the conclusion
of a multilateral treaty to which the unrecognised entity is also a
party, admission to an international organisation (in respect to those
opposing admission), or presence at an international conference in which
the unrecognised entity participates.[15]

For example, in the 1999 OSCE conference in Istanbul, the Republic of Cyprus and its Greek Cypriot representatives were accorded full diplomatic protocol and addressed with their full titles, though the state was and remains unrecognised by Turkey.

Second, international law is again clear that neither individuals nor entities other than states as represented by governments have the right to give or withdraw recognition. Individuals and non-state entities have no such express right, let alone the capacity to recognise in an implied manner. In short, the possibility of implied recognition exists only if the official authorities and their designated representatives give unclear and confusing terminology in their statements; to put it bluntly, mess up by not making clear and explicit enough their intention not to recognise. Given the intensity of the debate, there is clearly no such danger between the two sides in Cyprus.

Implied recognition may have some merit as an argument concerning the recognition of governments. Because of a recent change in the recognition policy of a number of states (mainly Commonwealth countries) current practice for these states has been limited only to the recognition of states--not of governments.[16] To that extent, in lieu of an explicit statement, the recognition of governments is usually implied by state practice, e.g. acceptance of credentials, official visits, communications, etc. Even in the case of such policy, however, if conflicting claims arise then, this can be easily resolved through an explicit statement. Specifically, in the case of Cyprus, the British government that adopted such policy in 1980, stated through the Foreign Secretary in parliament that: ``We recognize the Government of the Republic of Cyprus as the Government of the whole of Cyprus."[17] The contacts of British officials with officials of the Turkish Cypriot regime do not affect or alter in any legal sense the explicit statement of the British government, nor does the Greek Cypriot side claim that they do, though it may sometimes complain about the level of representation. Moreover, in this instance too, unauthorised individuals have no express or implied capacity to give or take recognition of governments.

By contrast, a Greek Cypriot IR academic taking issue with the ``rapprochement naiveties" of cross-ethnic contacts has suggested recently that the ``international factor tells us [sic]. . . that it is obliged to legitimise [the TRNC] and to give it the status of a `state’" since Greek Cypriot pro-rapprochement activists ``daily, through [their] social and political practice, recognise it as legal."[18] To that extent, in the Cyprus case, an unsupported legal claim has been made casually by those opposed to unofficial contacts between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. Interestingly, whereas they seem to assume (wrongly) that individual contact can have legal effects concerning state or government recognition they do not extend to those individuals the rights and safeguards afforded by the law of recognition. In other words, if recognition is really the problem an easy way out (though unnecessary and invalid in view of the above) is for individuals to state expressly that their personal contacts should not be construed as recognition of the legal claims of the other side. That this will not do is a sign that the legal side of recognition (which is important and does have implications for the settlement of the Cyprus problem) is, however, when it comes to unofficial contacts, only a cover for local political agendas. Specifi-cally, this is the attempt by the respective regimes of power to control how Cypriots ought to communicate with each other as well as to determine how they ought to think about and
define the Cyprus problem.

Re-addressing Ethnic Postures
This brings us to the wider and more politically subtle side of recognition. The debates on state-government recognition could be seen as a historical continuation of attempts in both sides to frame and accredit particular cognitions of each other, both locally and internationally. These attempts to produce essentialist and totalising visions of the other were attempts that at different historical periods sought to demonise, marginalise, or domesticate the other. Fixing how the other was to be known was in effect a means of delegitimising rights or claims of the other at the same time as legitimising discourses and empowering policies against it. Combined with that, the current discourse of recognition and the critique or support of cross-ethnic contacts has been invariably disseminated through the factional pronouncements and party political debates. The official frames in both sides respect the above--and occasionally minor shifts occur--but these local debates have not altered the general negat ive framework within which questions of recognition and cross-ethnic contact are approached.

Knowing the Past
The current issue of recognition has other hidden or neglected dimensions. Primary among these is the acknowledgement or denial of the existence of another as a political entity, ethnic group, or distinct community. Arguments concerning historical origins and continuity become very important in this respect. Most typically employed are the classic nationalist notions of (trans)his-torical continuity, cultural distinctiveness and purity of the nation. The self is presented as natural and historically given; the other as historically ambiguous and ethnically impure. In this sense, the discussion in Cyprus regarding each other’’s historical origins and their links to Cypriot land shows similarities to prevalent views in Greek and Turkish traditional historiography regarding each other’’s origins. The formula and moral lesson are strikingly clear as much as they are simplistic: our own continuity and tie to territory has been historically and scientifically proven whereas the others’’ is fictitious, mythical, and a product of propaganda.
Specifically, Millas points out how such arguments have been employed in both Turkish and Greek historiography.[19] One common Turkish argument is that the Greeks do not descend from ancient Greeks but are a mixture of races that lived in the area of Greece during various ages. A more extreme form of this point may even posit that at least those living in the islands or in Asia Minor were in reality somehow Turks, a thesis that assumes that contemporary Turks
are the direct descendants of the early inhabitants of Asia Minor. The usual Greek counter argument is that the Turks who defeated the Byzantine Empire also proselytised by force many Byzantines (a category treated as equivalent to Greeks). Racially, but also culturally in other versions of the argument, contemporary Turks thus feature as an amorphous mixture and to some degree also Greeks.
These ideas are quite prevalent among Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot writers, though in the case of these two groups more specific arguments are employed. Turkish Cypriot authors, for example, sometimes proudly point out that the first inhabitants of Cyprus came from Asia Minor, which is somehow supposed to make them Turks.[20]
This thesis is often geologically reinforced by pointing out that Cyprus had been a land prolongation of Turkey that later was separated and became an island.[21] Another common argument is that even if Myceneans came to Cyprus in the 14th century b.c.e., so many other people came later and ruled the island, the present day Greeks of Cyprus are at best a mixture of peoples. As starkly expressed in the standard Turkish Cypriot school text on the history of Cyprus in use since the early 1970s: "Today the Rums found in Cyprus are not Greek."[22] It is important here to note that Turkish Cypriots (and Turks) refer to Greek Cypriots in Turkish as Rum, not Yunan, which is the term used for Greeks. Rum was the name previously employed for the Christian Orthodox people living in the Ottoman Empire, and it is currently employed for present day Greeks living in Turkey or Greek Cypriots. Not only does this deny the Greekness of Cypriots but it also lends connotations of a "subject people". Typically, the standard Greek Cypriot argument has been that the present day Turkish Cypriots are in reality "islamicised Greeks", that is, people who were forced to convert during the Ottoman Empire.[23] If one wishes to push this argument even further: ". . . and who knows, even those Turks who came from Turkey to Cyprus were in reality islamicised Byzantines".

All these arguments need to be contextualised in order to show how they have emerged historically, an exercise that exposes both the practical significance and aims of such claims. It is important to note that these arguments begin to be stated explicitly and strongly only after the 1960s. It is in the post-independence period that both sides start taking a more pronounced interest in the origins of the other side. Previously there was little interest in knowing-defining
the other, and all intellectual effort was expended into proving the historical existence, presence and continuity of one’s own ethnic group. The Greek Cypriot demand for enosis was justified through an argument positing the historical presence of Greeks on the island who should thus be given the right to unite with the "motherland". The subsequent Turkish Cypriot demand for taksim was equally premised on the existence in Cyprus of another distinct group, the Turks
of Cyprus, who also had a right to self-determination in the form of division and part territorial union. [24]
It was the Greek Cypriots who first strongly voiced their own anti-colonial demands from the early years of the 20th century and the reply of the British colonial authorities was directed towards this challenge in two ways. First, that Cypriots are a "slave-race" and hence in need of benevolent rule and guidance; second, that Cypriots are not truly Greek but rather an amorphous composite mixture. To address these claims, Greek Cypriots produced historical studies
proving their Greekness and continuity as a self-conscious actor who always resisted foreign domination, claiming, in Given’’s term "a pedigree of resistance".[25] The British counter argued by also employing historicist arguments, namely that the history of Cyprus rather gave Cypriots `"a pedigree of subjection".[26] The second interlinked strategy employed by the British was to claim that one could trace as far back as the Iron Age a distinctly Cypriot people and culture (the
Eteocypriots, a group which pre-dated Greeks), and from whom contemporary Greek Cypriots descended. The existence of the Eteocypriots was used to undermine Greek Cypriot claims to Greek stock suggesting instead a "melange’’culture.[27] Such arguments made Greek Cypriots more prone to stress their Greekness in scholarly texts.
If the debate during the colonial period was mostly one between Greeks and the British, things changed at independence. The main subjects in question became Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and this is when attempts to negate or redefine each other’s ethnic identity began to be articulated more intensely.[28] As stated, both ethnic groups were not satisfied with the outcome of independence but more keen on their respective goals of enosis and taksim.[29] The two groups employed Greek and Turk as their self-designations, while also denying each other’’s claim to Greekness or Turkishness. Whereas before 1960 Greek Cypriot scholars would simply write about Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, after 1960 while they continue speaking about Greeks, they now talk of Turkish or Muslim Cypriots. The main argument proposed was that Turks or Muslims of Cyprus are not really or fully Turks but rather descendants of "Greeks converted to Islam" during the Ottoman period of Cyprus (1571-1878), an argument that posits blood as the determining factor of ethnic identity. Turkish Cypriot writers replied with equal vigour in denying the existence of Greeks in Cyprus, as already mentioned in the case of the school text published in 1971 and with other works up to the present. A Turkish Cypriot academic, for example, published a paper in response to the usual Greek Cypriot claim that "Turkish Cypriots are not Turks" where he actually employed evidence from blood samples in order to argue that they "scientifically" indicate close similarities between Turkish Cypriots and Turks. According to the blood samples, it was the Greek Cypriots, he argued, who should instead worry about their Greekness.[30] The above provides a general view of the kind of argumentation about each other’s historical existence and identity whose basic premises informed, and sometime still inform, scholarly discussions on the issue of how the other is to be recognised. Such premises also provide the broader socio-cultural background within which more specialised and technical arguments regarding political recognition are articulated. Here we arrive at the crossroads of another issue that has to do with internal political and party positions.

Of Right and Left
From which positions then do accusations frequently emerge that meetings of Turkish and Greek Cypriots as part of various kinds of groups, non-governmental ones, lend recognition? In the south, up to the present, those mostly opposed to such meetings tend to come from right-wing political groups, mass media, or political parties.[31] Right-wing groups, in contrast to left-wing ones (as will be explained below), tend to be strongly nationalist and in favour of the development of linkages with Greece as well as proponents of the view that Greek Cypriots are first of all Greek. Thus, more often than not it is right-wing politicians, journalists, academics, or individuals who accuse people of lending recognition to the Turkish Cypriot polity when they attend meetings with Turkish Cypriots. This, however, should not be taken as an absolute statement but rather as an indication of a general--yet clear--trend as people of the Right may sometimes support such initiatives, and of the Left obstruct them.[32] The argument they put forth in order to support their case against meetings of people and groups from the two sides is simple as it is simplistic: any type of organisation--say, a professional association, broadcasting corporation, a university in northern Cyprus--exists as an organisation by virtue of operating in the legal, social and political context of the Turkish Cypriot polity and thus any contact with them by Greek Cypriots lends recognition to the Turkish Cypriot state. In this sense almost any kind of meeting can be viewed as lending recognition and should, according to this view, be prohibited. As graphically put by a leading right-wing journalist, bicommunal meetings are "poisonous painkillers which bear extremely serious dangers of direct or indirect recognition of the occupying pseudo-state".[33]

There are important reasons why this stance is adopted by the Greek Cypriot Right. First, among these groups one finds the strongest nationalist and extreme nationalist factions in Cyprus who tend to regard the Turks as Hellenism’s historic arch-enemy. Second, they argue that the Cyprus problem has only one dimension, the international one, being fundamentally a post-1974 problem and the result of the Turkish invasion of the island. In this respect they belittle the internal dimension (e.g. past interethnic conflict, lack of trust, need for mutual understanding, etc.) as completely irrelevant. Their stance is, however, more revealing of their own attempts at self-justification and self-absolution. During the late 1950s when EOKA entered into fighting with Turkish Cypriots and the TMT, but, more importantly, later during the 1960s when interethnic fighting erupted on a much wider scale, it was mostly people of the Right who participated.
The various fighters’’ associations which currently represent those who fought then are organisations linked to the Greek Cypriot Right. From the perspective of such groups implicated in these events, the current attempts at rapprochement appear not only wrong and unpatriotic, but highly dangerous. For as the political goals of Greek Cypriots changed after 1974 and the rhetoric regarding Turkish Cypriots shifted, they may now be accused of having fought against those who Greek Cypriots now officially, at least, term "compatriots." Even worse, they could even be accused of fratricide, for left-wing political rhetoric goes even further than compatriots talking of Turkish Cypriots as "brothers".
A further related reason why people of the Greek Cypriot Right tend to claim that there is no internal dimension to the Cyprus problem has to do with the 1974 coup which set about the events leading to the Turkish military campaign.
This was executed by right-wing extremist groups following instructions from the Greek junta that then ruled Greece, and for this reason they are accused by other Greek Cypriots as sharing a large part of the blame for the tragedy
which eventually befell Greek Cypriots. The typical response of these groups is that ``Turkey, being an inherently barbaric and expansionist country would have captured Cyprus on another occasion’’; in short that all the blame lies with
Turkey ab initio and thus the problem is nothing but an international one. [34]

These views contrast with the position of the Left, especially AKEL, which is the largest left-wing Greek Cypriot party. Left-wingers of AKEL in the past had the best relations with Turkish Cypriots with whom they co-operated in a large
number of forums such as trade unions and workers’’ associations. Moreover, they did not participate in any of the violence of the 1950s and 1960s. Rather they sometimes found themselves victims of right-wing violence from Greek
Cypriot extremists just as the Turkish Cypriots did. In other words, their past record and good connections with Turkish Cypriots placed them after 1974 at the forefront of efforts of rapprochement.[35]

This exposes another important internal dimension concerning the debate over recognition. Right-wingers who constantly claim that any kind of meeting runs the risk of lending recognition employ this argument in order to castigate and politically marginalise the Left. By contrast, the leader of AKEL recently described the official policy as hypocritical, taking issue with the government decision not to allow a Turkish Cypriot journalist of BRT to display the logo of his station while in the south for a press conference, as this would have amounted to recognition. Inspired by the gospel of Matthew (23: 24), the communist leader criticised a Pharisaic recognition policy which goes through the legal motions but overlooks justice and good faith: `The government strains off midges, yet gulps down camels.’[36] There are, however, important ideological differences and disagreements among Turkish Cypriots as well; that is, in terms of the Left-Right split discussed regarding Greek Cypriots. On the whole, the split follows a similar pattern. [37] Firstly, it should be noted that the government in the north has to a very large extent been monopolised by right-wing Turkish Cypriot parties in the past.
Right-wing parties argue that Turkish Cypriots are first of all Turks, while left-wing parties place more emphasis on commonalities with Greek Cypriots and differences with Turks, often supporting the idea of a common Cypriot identity
that unites Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Then, comparatively speaking, the left-wing parties are more in favour of a compromise solution while right-wing ones often claim that the status quo is itself the solution. [38]

Finally, as explained, in the past they had significant co-operation with Greek Cypriot left-wing organisations as opposed to right-wing ones generally associated or sympathetic to violent TMT activities, or nowadays linked with extreme nationalist groups like the Grey Wolves. Turkish Cypriot leftist groups often join forums with leftist Greek Cypriot groups, or with other Greek Cypriots in general. For this they are accused by right-wingers as being treacherous, ``rumcu’’’’ (‘Rum lovers’). The starkest example of the Turkish Cypriot Right’’s discomfort with bicommunal activities is the recent (starting from December 1997) and past instances of prohibition of any such meetings by the Denktash regime. The Left,
especially CTP, resents these as evinced during a recent UN Anniversary Open Day which took place at Ledra Palace (a UN-controlled hotel inside the dividing zone) and was open to both sides. Talat, the leader of CTP, accused the Turkish
Cypriot authorities of placing obstacles for Turkish Cypriots to attend precisely because they dislike rapprochement and the development of peace between the two communities. [39] Paradoxically, when it comes to the ongoing bicommunal meetings of Turkish and Greek Cypriot party leaders, the issue that such contacts can lend recognition is never raised. As if by tacit agreement, all Cypriot politicians across the ethnic and ideological divide evade any discussion of the issue. This reinforces the argument that the discourse of recognition is manipulated in order to control the cross-ethnic contact of individual Cypriots, rendering it possible only under official auspices and party representation.

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Notes