Giorgos Colocassides, the well-known lawyer and politician, wrote to me after a recent column of mine on the rotating presidency:
“The problem with the rotating presidency is not just that security and guarantees remain unresolved. I believe it goes much deeper. It entrenches the racial basis of the settlement. It means a significant section of the population will be forced, undemocratically, to accept a president it did not vote for. And because the settlers are not leaving (that is no longer even up for discussion), that president will in all likelihood be a settler. Settlers outnumber indigenous Turkish Cypriots several times over. Those are simply the odds.
“Then there is the fact that the 2:1 ratio does not reflect the lawful population ratio anyway. And, finally, the President has accepted such an arrangement, albeit conditionally, without telling the public and without its approval. Let nobody claim this was Anastasiades’s concession. Since no agreement was reached, the President can renegotiate whatever he likes. Instead, he is reaffirming it by insisting that the convergences be put on record.”
I agree with all of that. Over the years I have made plenty of other arguments that the rotating presidency is anything but a sensible, honest, fair or democratic arrangement for a normal state, which is what Cyprus must be after a settlement. What I have been trying to say in recent days, as Erhurman keeps making acceptance of the rotating presidency a precondition for restarting negotiations, is this: as part of a dialogue, we would discuss even that, if it meant Turkey disappearing from Cyprus.
It is absurd to expect us to swallow it up front, as a show of goodwill to the Turkish Cypriots, when they will not even discuss the withdrawal of the Turkish occupation army or the abolition of Turkish guarantees. So we owe them a clear answer. If there is no chance of them agreeing to build a normal, independent state free of occupation troops and Turkish control, there is no chance of us even discussing a rotating presidency.
Our problem is that even within the Greek Cypriot political leadership, there is a belief that we will never be rid of Turkey and never build a truly united Cyprus, yet will still share the running of the country with the Turkish Cypriots, the settlers, and the Turkish ambassador or whichever Turkish vice-president runs the Cyprus file for Ankara.
Societies mature through democratic principles and human values. They do not mature because an occupation army or an apartheid regime forces them to. Turkish Cypriot politicians, Erhurman among them, keep telling us they cannot conceive of a Turkish Cypriot never being able to become president.
Well, nor can we conceive of anyone being installed as president by force of Turkish arms. That is what happens in coups that install dictatorships. It is the surest route to a fresh ordeal. As I have argued here before, this recipe entrenches racial segregation and blows apart the principles of democracy, and of federation too.
In a system built on democracy, nothing can stop the people from electing a Turkish Cypriot. It may take years before a Turkish Cypriot polls beyond his own community. But only when Greek Cypriots vote for him will our ordeal be over and the foundations laid for a democratic state of Cypriots. As long as we, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike, allow Turkey to dictate the terms of an occupier, we will never reach the maturity of other countries.
Look at the rest of the world, with its democratically elected presidents and mayors, and even its appointed ministers. They should be the best examples to give us all the answers we are looking for to our concerns.
