Tim W Hayes  01/23/2008 03:20:24 PM  From  DB/Inbox:  Search Results

Cable 
Text:                                                                      
                                                                           
      
C O N F I D E N T I A L        NICOSIA 01955

SIPDIS
CX:
    ACTION: POL
    INFO:   CONS TSR PMA ECON DAO DCM AMB RAO FCS PA MGT

DISSEMINATION: POLX /1
CHARGE: PROG

VZCZCAYO506
RR RUEHAK
DE RUEHNC #1955/01 3481149
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 141149Z DEC 05
FM AMEMBASSY NICOSIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5254
INFO RUEHAK/AMEMBASSY ANKARA 4448
RUEHTH/AMEMBASSY ATHENS 3414
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 1082
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0417
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NICOSIA 001955 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/12/2020 
TAGS: PREL PHUM PGOV UNSC CY
SUBJECT:  SUBJECT:  "SETTLERS" AND CITIZENSHIP:  THE 
MAKINGS OF A CYPRIOT 
 
Classified By: CDA Jane Zimmerman, for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
 
¶1.  (C)  Summary:  Questions of "settler status" and ROC 
citizenship have become increasingly entwined, further 
complicating an already contentious issue that lies close to 
the core of the Cyprus dispute.  Issues of citizenship, 
status, and the definition of a "settler" are of more than 
academic interest.  These deeply intertwined 
questions--together with the issue of "legitimate" ownership 
of disputed property--lie at the very heart of the Cyprus 
problem.  What is clear is that on these emotionally-charged 
issues, rationality, proportion, and basic fairness are often 
pushed aside in favor of score-settling.  This is an 
unhelpful but all-too-common motif in the Cyprus dynamic. 
Public debate on these issues comes in fits and starts, but 
they will remain central to any future efforts aimed at 
brokering a comprehensive Cyprus settlement.  End Summary. 
 
 
Just Who is a Citizen? 
----------------------- 
 
¶2.  (C)  There is a fundamental anomaly built into ROC 
citizenship law that may well constitute a prima facie 
violation of the right of EU citizens to equal protection 
under the law.  Under the relevant provisions of the ROC 
citizenship law, children with even a single Cypriot parent 
are automatically entitled to ROC citizenship.  The 
government, however, has reserved for itself a review 
mechanism requiring the Council of Ministers (COM) to 
specifically approve applications for citizenship from 
children of mixed Turkish Cypriot/mainland Turkish parentage. 
 The expressed goal of this procedure is to identify those 
children with a "settler" parent so that they might be denied 
citizenship on the grounds that the children of settlers are 
themselves "products of a crime."  In our own reading of the 
law, we can find no explicit requirement--or even 
authorization--for this discriminatory review.  It is simply 
asserted by ROC authorities as both a necessity and a right. 
 
 
And Who is a Settler? 
--------------------- 
 
¶3.  (C)  The COM periodically reviews such lists of 
application for citizenship, but evidently without much 
enthusiasm.  The criticism leveled at ROC officials by the 
Greek Cypriot public has been that the government is too lax 
in performing this duty, rather than too rigid.  Following 
the last round of  adjudications, nationalist politicians and 
journalists launched a sharp attack against Interior Minister 
Andreas Christou for being too liberal in interpreting the 
law and encouraging the COM to approve a list of 1048 
applications for citizenship from children of mixed Turkish 
parentage.  In his defense, Christou maintained that the 
Ministry had conducted the research necessary to establish 
that none of the children in question had a "settler" parent. 
 Christou also offered a definition of "settler" that was 
significantly more restrictive than that which the ROC uses 
to bolster its claim that there are now more "settlers" than 
Turkish Cypriots in the north.  Christou maintained that a 
"settler" was a person "who, as part of an organized group, 
arrives in Cyprus to change the demographic character of the 
Turkish Cypriot community and people."  This narrow 
definition would apply only to a relatively small number of 
Turks who came to Cyprus as part of a Turkish-sponsored 
emigration program in the 1970s. 
 
¶4.  (C)  In debating "the settler question" under the 
auspices of UN-brokered settlement negotiations, however, the 
Greek Cypriot side uses a significantly more expansive 
definition.  The ROC includes soldiers, students, and 
seasonal laborers in the inflated figures it pushes in 
seemingly endless "Aide Memoires" distributed at the UN 
or--more recently--in the EU. 
 
 
Damned If You Don't 
-------------------- 
 
¶5.  (C)  Christou's limited definition of a settler prompted 
angry attacks from the nationalist right.  Loukis 
Loukaides--who is paradoxically a judge in the European Court 
of Human Rights--argued that "any Turkish national who 
arrived in the occupied area was, on the evidence, a 
settler."  Adding a dose of bile to his argument, Loukaides 
concluded that "the children of settlers are the product of 
the crime and cannot be legalized."  Andreas Angelides, a 
prominent Greek Cypriot lawyer and a member of the DIKO 
Executive Committee, reasoned that any Turkish citizen on 
Cyprus was a settler "even in the case where a Turkish 
citizen has married a Turkish Cypriot abroad and then 
traveled to the island." 
 
 
And Damned If You Do 
--------------------- 
 
¶6.  (C)  Former Attorney General Alekos Markides dismissed 
these arguments as absurd and told Polchief that he 
considered the citizenship law to be "arbitrary and 
capricious," and a violation of equal protection rights.  If 
a Turkish Cypriot married--or had a child with--a Swede or a 
Spaniard for example, his or her children were automatically 
considered ROC citizens.  I he other parent was a Turkish 
national however, the law required government aprovalbefore 
citizenship could be granted.  Markde di nt kowof ay 
case in which the ROC use thisautorty,an he noted that 
any individual denied citizenship n these grounds would have 
recourse to the ROC an, if necessary, to the EU courts to 
overturn theruling.  Markides defended Christou's definition 
of a "set 
er" as legally correct, but observed tht the 
presence of a large number of economic migants in the north 
with claim to "TRNC" citizenshi produced a grey area in the 
law that was best "andled quietly." 
 
¶7.  (C)  Other prominent GreekCypriots who played a ole in 
negotiating the "sttlr"proisonsofthe Annan Plan 
supported Chisou' rading of the legislation an stesed 
thei discofort over the discriminatoy apliation of the 
law.  United Democrats leadr and former Clerides-government 
spokesman Michais Papapetrou told us that Christou's 
definitionof a "settler" was legally sound, but politically 
unsustainable  Irrespective of the question of "setler" 
status however, was the underlying argumen that the ROC 
could not deny citizenship to chilren with one settler 
parent without violating a aft of international agreements. 
 
¶8. (C)  Former Cypriot UN PermRep Andreas Mavrommatis agreed. 
 H argued that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 
superseded Cypriot citizenship law and shuld be read as 
prohibiting the singling out of cildren of mixed 
Cypriot/Turkish parentage for special, discriminatory 
treatment.  He added that the issue of granting Cypriot 
citizenship to the spouse or parent of a Cypriot citizen was 
a separate issue that would need to be considered as part of 
an eventual settlement agreement. 
 
 
¶9.  (C)  Toumazos Tsielepis, a member of the Greek Cypriot 
negotiating team during the last round of settlement talks 
and the AKEL party's leading constitutional expert, defended 
the ROC citizenship legislation as a "practical necessity." 
There was little risk, Tsielepis maintained, that anyone 
entitled to ROC citizenship would be denied.  Rather than 
argue over the definition of a "settler," the two sides 
should work towards agreeing on a specific number of 
"settlers" to be allowed to remain on the island under the 
terms of a solution.  From such a number, he was certain that 
the necessary modalities of implementation would naturally 
emerge. 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
1O.  (C)  The human rights concerns stemming from the 
discriminatory and unequal application of Cypriot citizenship 
law are self-evident.  As we have no information that the COM 
has ever denied ROC citizenship to a child with one Cypriot 
and one "settler" parent, it may be difficult to prove 
material harm, but the principles at issue are deeply 
troubling. 
 
¶11.  (C)  At the same time, there may well be something 
constructive in the principle underlying Christou's argument 
that not all mainland Turks in the north are "settlers," and 
not all settlers are the same.  "Settler-dom" is not a binary 
status, but more a sliding scale of legitimacy, with children 
of settler extraction born in Cyprus at one end of the scale 
and those deliberately relocated to Cyprus at the direction 
of the Turkish government at the other end.  The majority of 
mainland Turks who are living more-or-less permanently in the 
north fall somewhere in between.  It may be worthwhile to 
consider a criteria-based approach to negotiating who will be 
allowed to remain under the terms of a settlement package 
rather than the quota-based approach of the ultimately 
unsuccessful Annan III-V negotiations. 
ZIMMERMAN