A People's Solution Needed, Says Scholar

By Demetra Molyva

"People from both communities in Cyprus have to start working together in order to create something new for the future. No solution will be found by the politicians if the people of Cyprus are not ready."

This is the view of Fulbright scholar Dr. Benjamin Broome, who has spent the last thirty months conducting seminars and giving lectures to bicommunal groups on ways of bringing the two sides together.

He told The Cyprus Weekly shortly before his departure from the island that one result of his particular experience is that "the Greek and Turkish Cypriots are now curious about each other and are willing to understand how the other side views the past and to build a collective vision for the future."

Dr. Broome spoke about "a huge series of bicommunal activities on the island which not many people know about," involving around 300 people from the two Cypriot communities and described them as "proof of the Greek and Turkish Cypriots' willingness to work for peace building."

Dr. Broome initially headed and coordinated a Conflict Resolution Trainers' Group comprising 15 Greek Cypriots and 15 Turkish Cypriots, working on peace-building and training others in the field of conflict resolution.

"These people have achieved a great deal," he said. "They spent time together trying to see and understand each other's past and identity, and they also tried to accommodate the others' needs, even thought they did not necessarily understand them."

He said that during a nine-month period, the two sides had "gone a long way in understanding and placing trust in each other," and he stressed that this is necessary on a national scale "if the people of Cyprus are to be ready for a solution to their conflict."
 

Trust

Dr. Broome noted the different view that the two communities have of their past. The Greek Cypriots, he said, talk of "good times of cooperation and friendship with the Turkish Cypriots," but the Turkish Cypriots' memories are of "an unpleasant situation of being the minority group with a few moments of friendship and cooperation with their Greek Cypriot neighbours."

The group had worked together to create a collective vision of their future together, and this served as "a kind of prototype of what has to happen in Cyprus in the future," he said.

Several major bicommunal events on the island, including the UN's 50th anniversary, a meeting at the Ledra Palace in October and another in December had attracted up to 2,500 people from both communities, which, Dr. Broome said, showed the "vibrant interest" in both communities in creating conditions of peace with the other side.

Asked to comment on the issue of settlers from the Turkish mainland living in the occupied areas, Dr. Broome said: "that is a different question altogether. However, the embargo imposed by the Greek Cypriots on the north of the island has created such difficult conditions for the Turkish Cypriots that they have been forced to leave. They have not been getting positive messages from the Greek Cypriot side and consequently choose to go abroad instead of coming to settle in the south."
 

War

He also made the point that despite Turkey's superior military strength, the Turkish Cypriots are "just as afraid of war as the Greek Cypriots, because they know that no one stands to gain anything from military conflict."

During Broome's lecture at the American Center, EU Ambassador Gilles Anouil referred to how France and Germany had resolved their differences following World War II.

"The French and the Germans overcame their differences through a mechanism which included meeting and getting to know each other through economic cooperation and a willingness to move towards each other rather than away," he said.

Anouil also noted that both France and Germany had revised school textbooks to reflect common ground rather than past conflict.

Meanwhile, at a meeting at Famagusta Gate in Nicosia this week, the Turkish Cypriot poet and sociologist Neshe Yashin, who lives in the government-controlled area of the island and has been working as a member of a bicommunal peace-building group with MP Kate Clerides, said that her understanding of the "unification" in Cyprus is "not the politicians' idea of land, the capital or two states. What I care about first is the unification of the people."

She conceded that a great deal of time is being spent on the technical details of a possible solution and called these "very important" but she spoke of her disappointment that after such a long period of time, "change has still not come" and said that among the main obstacles to a solution is the fact that "the decision-makers are acting according to the rules of the power politics.

"They are stuck in the past, acting out fear, doubt and despair," she said.
 

Benefit

Yashin also referred to those she called "conflict-breeders" who benefit from the lack of a solution to the island's problems.

"The people on both sides of the island are not entirely responsible for their fate. We do not have full democratic participation in decisions about our future. Under cease-fire conditions, there is no possibility of experiencing democracy on either side" she said.

Earlier in the week, Dr. Daniel Elazar, an expert on federalism, told The Cyprus Weekly that a federal solution is the only option for Cyprus.

Elazar, the Director of the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University, Pennsylvania, and President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said that federalism is "the best way of coping with the globalization of modern times" and stressed that "it can be applied differently in specific situations as it entails self-rule and shared- rule."

Asked whether he agreed with Rauf Denktash's concept of federalism or that of President Clerides, he declined to take a stand, saying that "the two sides will have to work out what is the best form for them."