Denktash asks Turk Cypriots to strive for independence

Veteran leader tries to sway voters against pro-unification candidate Talat

Turkish-Cypriot laborers work on the construction of a factory in front of a huge Turkish-Cypriot flag painted on the Pentadaktilos mountain range in the Turkish-occupied north of Cyprus yesterday. European investors have shown a strong interest in northern Cyprus since the internationally recognized south of the island joined the European Union in May last year.

By Alex Efty - The Associated Press

NICOSIA - Just two days before elections that mark the end of his three-decade era as founder of the breakaway Turkish sector of Cyprus, a defiant Rauf Denktash yesterday warned his people that they must always strive for independence.

Turkish-Cypriot voters go to the polls on Sunday to choose Denktash’s successor.

A symbol of the Turkish Cypriots for many, the 81-year-old has long insisted that their future lies with Ankara and complete division from Greek Cypriots.

But Denktash’s power began to sway ahead of the divided island’s accession to the European Union in May 2004. EU laws only apply in the internationally recognized south and not the north, which depends on Turkish support to prop up its moribund economy.

Front-runner for Sunday’s polls is Mehmet Ali Talat who has made reunification with Greek Cypriots his top priority and would be expected to reverse Denktash’s guiding policies. Talat’s call is especially popular with young Turkish Cypriots who see little future in the isolated north and do not remember the bitter intercommunal fighting that led to the island’s division.

Talat’s party won 24 of the 50 seats in February elections and Denktash did not register to run for leader afterward.

Yesterday, Denktash again warned his people that they must push for sovereignty. “A confused settlement that does not guarantee our sovereignty, our independence, will bring about strife and new pains,” Denktash said. “The basis for a lasting peace is independence, sovereignty. No one has the right to remove this.”

But that call has become increasingly unpopular in the north.

Washington and the European Union have strongly favored Talat, whose gains are also important for Turkey as Ankara presses for its own membership in the EU.

“Turkey has not given up on Cyprus, Turkey will not give up on Cyprus,” Denktash said. “No one should believe such false propaganda. Our salvation is with Turkey, it lies with walking alongside Turkey and by standing against the EU together.”

For decades, Denktash’s call for a separate state to protect ethnic Turks from what he and many other Turkish Cypriots describe as massacres at the hands of Greek Cypriots was doctrine in the north.

But in later years, many Turkish Cypriots considered Denktash’s insistence on a separate state an obstacle to resolving the island’s division. The breakaway state in the north, which is only recognized by Ankara, is unable to trade with any other country, leading to a stagnant economy and growing poverty among its population.

Denktash repeatedly blocked efforts to reunite Cyprus, claiming unification would open the way for Greek-Cypriot domination and raise the threat of a repetition of the intercommunal conflict of the 1960s and 1970s, in which thousands of Cypriots were killed.

Denktash had been strongly backed by Turkey until two years ago, when he rejected a United Nations plan for the reunification of the island that had been accepted by Ankara. Ankara then began increasing its support for Talat, who strongly supports the plan.

Both Greek Cypriots and some Turkish-Cypriot opposition parties argue that Sunday’s election will not reflect the feelings of native Turkish Cypriots, claiming that more than half of registered voters are settlers from mainland Turkey.