Regional affairs

Sami Moubayed speaks with President Mehmet Ali Talat about the grievances and future of the Turkish Cypriot community, and their relations with neighboring Syria.

President Mehmet Ali Talat is a good neighbor-and loyal friend-that Syria does not really know. The 55-year old former electrical engineer is now president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which controls the northern third of the island of Cyprus. It has been an autonomous state since Turkish intervention took place, to protect the Turkish Cypriot community, in 1974. For many years the world refused to recognize TRNC, offering official statehood recognition only to the “Republic of Cyprus.” The international community imposed an air, ground, and sea embargo on TRNC. Only local and Turkish banks were allowed to operate on its territory. Many foreign companies were prohibited from opening branches, under pressure from the Greek Cypriots. The Republic of Cyprus declared that degrees offered by TRNC universities were “illegal.” Even athletes wishing to attend international tournaments were denied access, under claims that they did not represent a legal, official state. TRNC’s only friends were a handful of countries in the Islamic world, and Turkey.

Some 25 years ego when I was serving at the Turkish Embassy in Damascus, I once asked a Syrian journalist friend of mine why such little positive news was reflected in the Syrian press regarding Turkey? His answer was rather revealing of the attitude adopted by many high officials at that time. He said that sometimes it was the ego. He gave the example of an instance when he handed over to the editor of his newspaper a piece of news about a major economic achievement in Turkey. The editor told him: “But there is nothing offending Turkey in this news item. So why should we publish it?” I do not know whether the editor was joking, but I was not surprised. I simply wondered whether I would see, anytime in the future, Turkey and Syria become the two countries that their people wanted them to become. I am extremely happy that this question has now been answered positively. Did we achieve everything that we ought to have achieved? Certainly not, but we are on the right track.

Relations between the United States and Syria reached a historic low over the past two years. Rocky since George W. Bush and Bashar al-Assad came to office at the beginning of this decade, the relationship has been in crisis mode since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 – and particularly since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister RaFik al-Hariri in 2005. Although there are clear reasons why the relationship soured, from both a historical and a strategic viewpoint the present bilateral posture is abnormal. Moreover, enough time has now passed to make it abundantly clear to both sides that what is possible under conditions of cautious engagement trumps what either side can accomplish through subversion, estrangement and isolation. This essay suggests a way forward for the two countries, a way to escape the zero-sum dynamic that has taken hold.

Whilst on a first-time visit to Syria in 2003, the international Scottish superstar Sean Connery had made—like many other foreigners visiting the country for the first time—many illuminating and surprising discoveries. The ex-007 was surprised to see the idyllic beauty of the country and its people.

When Bashar al-Assad, the youngest president in Syria history, was inaugurated before the Syrian Parliament in July 2000, he gave a speech that was a sharp departure from the dreary realist pronouncements by Baath leaders during the previous thirty-seven years of Baath rule in Syria. Where did Dr Assad’s high-toned sentiments originate? In his inaugural address, a Syrian might recognize the measured, intelligent, and uplifting rhetoric voiced by the leading lights of the Syrian independence movement, beginning in Ottoman times and ending in Syria’s emergence from French colonial rule in 1946.