Mission impossible in Cyprus? Legitimate return to the partnership state revisited

Abstract

Cyprus has been divided for far longer than it has been united. There have been many attempts to reconcile conflicting parties but without remarkable success. The two communities – Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – see the solution to the “Cyprus problem” in opposite terms. Although recent public opinion surveys have concluded that the most preferred option for the Turkish Cypriots would be “independence of the TRNC” and “reunification of the country”, for the Greek Cypriots, there is much less information about the legitimacy of these competing regimes and their respective claims. This paper seeks to fill this gap by identifying different legitimacy sources and their effect on the course of conflict settlement. Somewhat paradoxically it appears that those most strongly identifying themselves with the Republic of Cyprus, and approving the regime legitimacy of the Greek Cypriot government, are actually for status quo and not for the reunification of the country which makes the return to the partnership state mission impossible.

Keywords:

• Cyprus
• partnership state
• conflict settlement
• legitimacy
• public opinion

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Erol Kaymak, Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos Peristianis, Zeliha Khashman as well as two anonymous reviewers for useful comments and criticism to this paper. We owe special thanks to Yücel Vural, Muharrem Faiz, Nicos Peristianis and Christoforos Christoforou for the help of conducting public opinion surveys in Cyprus. This article represents a contribution to the Estonian Science Foundation project “De Facto States in the International System: Legality vs. Legitimacy” (grant no. 7951).