The international community’s central ambition was to have the Annan Plan accepted and Cyprus reunited before 1st May 2004. If this didn’t come about, only the internationally recognised southern part of the island would enter the EU on that date with 9 other accession countries. Since the plan was put forward, most efforts had been spent wooing the Turkish Cypriots – successfully as it turned out. Large demonstrations took place in January and February 2003, sending a signal to President Denktaş and his government that people wanted change. This came about on 14th December 2003, when the leading opposition party, the Republican Turkish Party (CTP), which supported the plan, narrowly won the parliamentary elections.
During 2003, BHHRG’s representatives visited TRNC on several occasions, including a visit in November to monitor the election campaign, followed by observation of the poll itself. Finally, on 24th April 2004, the Group covered the conduct of the referendum in both the south and north of the island.
Perhaps the most significant recent development in Cyprus was President Denktaş’s decision on 23rd April 2003 to open the border (the Green Line), allowing both Greek and Turkish Cypriots to travel to each others’ part of the island. This move, made, no doubt, in response to internal pressures, was still clever. In the following months, thousands of Greek Cypriots visited their former homes and became reacquainted with places they had last seen nearly 30 years ago. Many returned disillusioned and were confirmed in their belief that life for them was better in the republic proper meaning, they were happy to stick with the status quo. Many wondered who would pay for the elaborate arrangements contained in the Annan Plan and, having never depended on hand outs themselves, they distrusted the plan’s talk of international financial assistance to bring about its fulfilment.
Denktaş himself continued to be a figure of hate both for the politically correct and the major international players. A particularly splenetic example of this appeared in The Guardian in May 2004, where the author talked of the “breathtaking cynicism of the Dentaş regime”. The president himself was referred to as “a sectarian despot” who had “presided over the social and economic collapse of the north”.[1] As parliamentary elections approached in TRNC, the EU commissioner for enlargement, Gunther Verheugen, made no secret of the organization’ş desire for an opposition win and the sidelining of Mr Denktaş, even going as far as saying that "meetings are taking place in New York, Athens, Ankara, Nicosia and Brussels and decisions are being made without informing Denktaş",[2] a breathtaking lapse in diplomatic courtesies.
In November 2003, BHHRG’s representative visited TRNC on a pre-election mission. He held meetings with President Denktas; Chief Justice Taner Erginel (who is also the head of the High Election Board); Mrs Narin Ferdi Şefik, President of the Nicosia District Court and of the Nicosia District Electoral Commission; Ali Erel, the leader of the opposition “Solution and European Union Party”; and Vedat Celik, a former foreign minister of the TRNC. As the titles of the two judges indicate, elections in North Cyprus are run directly by the judiciary. The judiciary in the Turkish Republic, moreover, is structurally totally independent of the government, there being no Minister of Justice or equivalent figure in the Turkish Cypriot government. There are thus at least prima facie reasons for believing that the electoral authorities are independent. Indeed, the Chief Justice even censured President Denktaş himself for breaking the rules on electioneering when he used a presidential speech to attack the opposition.
BHHRG detected a strong desire among the senior election officials to ensure a fair poll in the face of ongoing criticism, especially concerning the validity of the election registers. The opposition alleged that settlers from Turkey were being added to the electoral roles in contravention of the law but obviously with the intention of bolstering support for the pro-Denktaş forces. These complaints were somewhat bizarre because no such problems had been raised about the (same) electoral register used at the recent local elections, when the opposition won power in several urban centres. Therefore, BHHRG sought to examine some of the process of electoral registration.
The election law in North Cyprus is structured so as to take account of the fact that this is a territory in which a large number of people have houses which are not their normal residence. Such people include holidaymakers and retirees, but also Turkish Cypriots and Turks who in fact spend most of their time in Turkey. The law requires three years continuous residence in order to obtain resident status. In order to be able to vote, a person must have both citizenship and resident status. This latter requires either a business or a home in North Cyprus. There are also checks carried out on the number of times a person enters and leaves the territory, to ensure that people are not merely pretending to live in North Cyprus. To have resident status you must be registered in the electoral district where you live. There are also conditions for being a candidate at an election: a person must have citizenship and three years’ continuous residence in the period prior to the election.
Taken together, these laws in fact make it quite difficult for people who have come to work in Cyprus - Turks, say – to obtain voting rights. Turkish Cypriots who live abroad cannot vote either. So the accusation of a sudden influx of Turkish settlers onto the voting list seems difficult to justify. The law was even used to prevent a Turkish Cypriot man from standing as a candidate who had distinguished himself so heroically in the war of 1974 that there is a statue to him in Famagusta. Indeed, there are numerous Turkish settlers who have resident status but not citizenship. In any case, there is no evidence to support the claim that Turkish settlers vote for the government in greater numbers than the Turkish Cypriots. Because of the legal restrictions placed on them, and because of the difficulty they have in obtaining titles to their properties, settlers from Turkey are often quite hostile to the government.
Moreover, the scale of the registration issue seemed to be very small. On its visit to the Nicosia District Electoral Commission, BHHRG’s representative was impressed by the diligence and professionalism of the judges and staff compiling the lists. Applications to have one’s name put on the electoral register closed on 12th November at 6.30 pm. Of the 43,833 voters on the register in Nicosia (Lefkosa) the District authorities accepted 157 objections: people who had either died or moved out of the district were removed from the list. 108 objections originally lodged were withdrawn, of which 80 were because they live in Nicosia but in a different electoral district from the one in which they were registered. The authorities received 1,533 applications to be put on the register, mostly from people who had recently moved into Nicosia from other parts of TRNC. These figures indicate that the suggestion of a large scale rigging of the electoral register is difficult to justify.
BHHRG also talked to the local Turkish Cypriot opposition. Mr. Ali Erel, for instance, who heads the recently-created pro-EU and pro-solution party was abrasive and evasive during his interview with BHHRG’s representative. He refused to say how many members his political party had (he said he did not know the figure); he refused to say what the budget of his party was; and he said that he did not know whether TRNC law forbids or allows the funding of political parties from foreign sources. (It does not forbid it, as BHHRG was able later to ascertain.) These latter questions were put because the government alleges that Mr. Erel has received significant sums of money from the European Union itself, which backs the Annan plan, an allegation Mr. Erel denies. But his refusal to say what the budget is for his party, where the money comes from, or who his members are, indicates that he has a very inadequate understanding of the need for transparency in the democratic process. By the same token, the opposition newspaper, Afrika, is run by Sener Levent, a lifelong Communist and supporter of the Soviet Union. He is entitled to his opinions, of course, but it is odd, to say the least, that a man whose web sites denounce the “CIA-backed invasion of Cyprus by Turkey” (because it prevented Cyprus becoming Communist) now embracers wholeheartedly the American position.
