Monday, April 24, 2023

STATEMENT OF DR. AHMET CAVIT AN TO HARAVGI NEWSPAPER (23 APRIL 2023)

23 April 2023 will be the 20th anniversary of opening the Ledra Palace check-point across the dividing line and it has been the only revolutionary development in the inter-communal relations since the war of 1974.

I was the T/C coordinator of the Movement for an Independent and Federal Cyprus, which was formed on 24 September 1989 in Nicosia, as the first bi-communal committee since the terror wave of the T/C underground organisation TMT in 1958. As progressive T/Cs and G/Cs, we organized many political, cultural, medical and social meetings. For example the T/C oppositional political leaders were invited to talk in front of the G/C audience at the Famagusta Gate Cultural Centre for the first time since 1974. During our activities, the participants discussed the ways of rapprochement and more contacts between the two main communities in Cyprus. The T/C leadership was against our activities of enlightening the public opinion about the principles of a real federal system. That’s why no permission was given to us at a later stage. For those who want to research further about our Movement, I have donated all the documents and newspaper material to the Promitheas Research Centre.

Zaim Necatigil, who was previously the “state attorney of the TRNC” and defended Turkey at the ECHR, allocated 20 pages to my case (Djavit An vs Turkey, Application No.20652/92) in his book “The Cyprus Conflict and Turkey in the grip of ECHR: Cases brought against Turkey by the Greek Cypriot Administration and the Greek Cypriots before the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Right”. Although many people do not want to accept the importance of my complaint against Turkey for my freedom of organisation, he wrote the following: “There was a great impact of the Cavit An’s application to the European Court of Human Rights, which announced its decision on 20 February 2003, on the opening of the gates on the “Green Line” on 23 April 2003. It is not possible to see the opening of the gates as a coincidence that came after this provision." (Ankara, 2005, p.189)

More check-points were opened in the later years on the dividing line and both communities had the chance to know each other better and to develop close contacts and friendship. Unfortunately our aim for a united federal state could not be realized, (although those, who support a federal solution, make 48% of the voters on each side of the divide. Both Mr. Akıncı and Mr. Mavroyiannis resigned from politics and the T/C side abandoned the UN parameters for a federal solution after the collapse of the inter-communal negotiations in Crans Montana.) It is now the right time to establish a pan-cypriot federalist front in order to fight for a federal Cyprus, (where its federal constitution was about to be signed. In this struggle we should decipher those who are indirectly supporting a confederal solution or a final partition.)     

(The last paragraph was edited by the newspaper and I highlighted those parts in brackets above.)

https://dialogos.com.cy/ligo-choma-matsikorido-mia-agkalia-20-chronia-ti-dianoixi-ton/