In the modern history of efforts to cope with ethnic conflicts, few cases are more complex than Cyprus. The conflict was generated in the context of an ethnically mixed British colony achieving its independence and experiencing difficulties in creating new state institutions. Quite typically, the specific developments, negotiations and outcomes were also significantly shaped by various states and international institutions. By the mid-1990s the conflict was Europeanized, as the European Union became involved through its accession-of-members process, initially with the Republic of Cyprus and then Turkey. The first two sections of the chapter reconstruct the origins of the conflict and its escalation into the island's bifurcation, while the third focuses on the Europeanization of the conflict and evaluates how, over the course of three periods, key EU-level decisions shaped cooperation or rejection of it by the parties to the conflict during the UN mediation efforts. The final section then reviews more fundamental deficiencies that also helped create, then sustain, the Cyprus problem and make it so notoriously complicated and enduring. In doing so it suggests how a successfully unified Cyprus might yet emerge.
The Cyprus Conflict and the Failure of Its Europeanization
BARACANI, ELENA;
2014
Abstract
In the modern history of efforts to cope with ethnic conflicts, few cases are more complex than Cyprus. The conflict was generated in the context of an ethnically mixed British colony achieving its independence and experiencing difficulties in creating new state institutions. Quite typically, the specific developments, negotiations and outcomes were also significantly shaped by various states and international institutions. By the mid-1990s the conflict was Europeanized, as the European Union became involved through its accession-of-members process, initially with the Republic of Cyprus and then Turkey. The first two sections of the chapter reconstruct the origins of the conflict and its escalation into the island's bifurcation, while the third focuses on the Europeanization of the conflict and evaluates how, over the course of three periods, key EU-level decisions shaped cooperation or rejection of it by the parties to the conflict during the UN mediation efforts. The final section then reviews more fundamental deficiencies that also helped create, then sustain, the Cyprus problem and make it so notoriously complicated and enduring. In doing so it suggests how a successfully unified Cyprus might yet emerge.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
