Frank and Joan's news for 20 January 2008 in Northern Cyprus

Frank and Joan's Adventures in Northern Cyprus

Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

Bit of a lazy morning to start with. The newspaper and a mug of coffee in bed.

One headline is "Coming to you by courier: 5 months of speeding fines". The TRNC traffic police have given up and handed the task to the private sector. So we are all sitting around waiting for the knock on the door in case we got caught sometime. As they are busy installing new cameras all over the place they need to sort this out and soon because there is apparently a huge backlog.

A full schedule of road tax costs for vehicles during 2008 has been published. I am pinning a copy to my notice board so if anybody wants to know just ask. The costs are based on fuel type, weight and vehicle age.

There is a continuing argument about unifying the island and much political talk which all seems to get nowhere. Why am I not surprised. One thing that is coming up more frequently is the strong possibility of partition. This article was published during the last week:-

The International Crisis Group ICG has written a new Cyprus report, "Cyprus: Reversing the Drift to Partition" in which it was stressed that a new and major effort, encouraged by the United Nations and European Union, should be made to resolve the so far intractable Cyprus problem, warning that "If no settlement is found, the process referred to locally as 'Taiwanisation' will inevitably speed up, consolidating partition."

In its report, the Brussels-based ICG

has said in very clear terms what many Cyprus analysts have been discussing for some time behind closed doors: Cyprus is heading fast to consolidation of partition and if something could not be done after the Greek Cypriot elections to reverse the trend and launch a process that could provide a resolution to the Cyprus problem in a year or so "tomorrow will be too late..."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Cyprus special envoy, Joan Ryan, was in Ankara last week. Together with some colleagues, we had an opportunity to discuss the Cyprus problem with her. It was an off-the-record occasion; therefore I am unable to reveal in full our discussions. The summary was that Britain believed time was running out for a Cyprus solution and together with the passing of time the target of ending the Cyprus problem with the creation of a unified Cyprus was becoming less and less probable...

Resumption of Cyprus peacemaking - as Ryan, the ICG, the entire international community, Turkey, Greece... that is everyone has full consensus on - must be with the "mutual political will" of the two sides on the island. Turkish Cypriot leadership has been stressing its commitment for a "pro-settlement resolution." The Greek Cypriot side has been stressing that its target remains to be a united Cyprus. But, the problem remains to be "what is a united Cyprus?"

Political equality "An answer to that question requires an answer to the question of "political equality" first. That term, which after years of struggle by Turkish Cypriots finally has become part of the U.N. jargon related to the Cyprus problem, has different meanings for the two sides on the island.

In our discussion with Ryan it was apparent that Britain was not at all against "political equality" of the two sides on the island becoming one of the pillars of the new peacemaking effort, but we understood as well that what Britain understood from the term was far more different than how the term is perceived in Ankara or in northern Cyprus.

For Turkish Cypriots and for Ankara political equality means nothing less than acceptance of "two founding equal states" and "two founding equal peoples" who in the new "united state" established on the island will have a relationship not based on minority and majority but one of two equals.

Any effort to resolve the Cyprus problem is doomed to fail as long as Greek Cypriots continued to approach Turkish Cypriots as a minority demanding some privileges.

Lets wait until after the presidential election in the South next month. The result could influence any further developments.

A centre page article says that there are 216,000 registered cars in the TRNC, which means that 82% of the population are car owners. The article also says that whilst we top the lists for car ownership, we also top the lists of worst offenders for accidents.