The United Nations Mediation in Cyprus

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The United Nations Mediation in Cyprus: 1975-1990
The UN mediation in Cyprus during this period is characterised by the complete absence of a clear idea of what the post-1974 political settlement should be. In other words, the UN did not manage to address questions like: should the Zurich-London Agreements be upheld? Did those agreements provide a viable solution to the Cyprus problem at the first place? If not, how could a new political settlement be justified and presented to the affected parties (Turkey and Turkish-Cypriots)? What guarantees could be given to the affected parties for future developments? How committed could the international community be in long-term in providing the necessary guarantees? If such commitments were not upheld by the guarantor powers and the rest of the international community during the events of 1974, why one could expect things to be different in the future?
Instead, the UN tried to bring the two communities of Cyprus together and let them find a solution themselves. But there were two problems that made the reaching of a settlement difficult. First, each of the two communities had different ‘ideal settlements’ in mind. While the Turkish-Cypriot side advocated a return to the Zurich-London principles, the Greek-Cypriot side maintained that a new arrangement should be found and that it should be based on the majority-minority divide. Second, if in the presence of a growing domestic upheaval the inter-communal had failed to produce any concrete results, the Turkish military intervention had, in fact, worsened the situation. Mistrust and hostility had grown to the point that it was impossible for the two sides to agree. Instead, encouraged by the UN stance, they sought to use different international fora to advance their cause and ‘ideal settlement’.
One of the developments that could assist the UN in its mediation efforts was that the idea of unification of Cyprus with Greece was abandoned by the Greek-Cypriot side. Two were the reasons for that. First, a rivalry arose between Athens and Nicosia due to the involvement of Greece in the coup d’ etat of July 1974 which led to the Turkish military intervention and the de facto division of the island. And second, abandoning of the unification idea was also seen as the only way for the Greek-Cypriot side to convince Turkey to withdraw its troops from the island and keep it outside the Cypriot internal affairs after a new settlement was reached.

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