Forty-eight hours after Nicos Sampson’s death from cancer, the European Court of Human Rights issued a harsh judgment against Turkey over what happened when it intervened, in 1974, to stop Cyprus being occupied and taken over by the Greek mainland.
The mischief that Sampson, briefly self-appointed president, unleashed 27 years ago seems destined to live on long after him. By a vote of 14 to one, the court found Turkey guilty on a range of charges from failing to investigate the disappearance of some 1,500 Greeks after the Turkish intervention, to refusing to allow Greeks to return to their homes and refusing compensation to these unfortunates.
Whatever the justice behind the charges, the basic procedure of the European Court was deeply flawed, because they chose to focus on one side of a set of deeply traumatic events and entirely ignore the other. Many Turkish Cypriots were driven from their homes by Greeks, no compensation was ever given and there were many unexplained disappearances among Turkish Cypriots which the Greek authorities have never investigated. Thus what was done by both sides in those fatal weeks in 1974 is perhaps a matter for shame and regret. But singling out Turkey for censure, when it was the rebellious Sampson, backed by the then Greek mainland government, who precipitated Turkish intervention is not only unfair, but undermines the judgment of the court.
Turkey, of course, is its own worst enemy. When it comes to the propaganda war against its enemies, be they Armenians or Greeks, Turkey rarely seems to miss an opportunity to say the wrong thing. In the European Court, Turkey chose to base its case upon the fact that it considers Northern Cyprus to be an independent state. This was entirely the worst approach. Turkey and Greece along with the United Kingdom, the old Soviet Union and the United States, had an obligation under international treaty to protect the independence of Cyprus.
When Turkey acted to stop Sampson and the coup leaders from pushing through Enosis, union with Greece, it acted alone, having been unable to persuade the Americans or British to back them openly. Nevertheless, it acted legally. Now Turkey’s enemies, principally the Greeks, have managed to have Ankara condemned over what happened in Cyprus without, at the same time, being censured for what the Athens government did to encourage and fund the Sampson coup that set in train Turkey’s intervention.
Had Ankara been proactive in its diplomacy instead of waiting for each fresh wave of censure to smash against its policies, things might have been so different. But successive Turkish governments have proven incapable of flexibility and compromise.
This, perhaps more than anything else, is what may worry even European enthusiasts for Turkish EU membership. The European Union works, albeit not very well, via a complex web of constant give and take, trades-off and accommodations. Patience once ran very thin with Greek stubbornness during its last disastrous six month European presidency. The idea of a stiff-necked and inflexible Ankara being added to the process clearly worries Europeans.
