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A US Military Base in Iceland or Northern Cyprus?
Feburary 2010 There can be little doubt that Iceland was the greatest casualty of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The disaster has been portrayed as a financial event, yet it should actually be classified as a geopolitical event because of Reykjavik’s once special relationship with the United States. After WW2 the US built a major air and naval base at Keflavik which they used mainly to monitor the Soviet navy in the north Atlantic. The US closed the base four years ago because of the end of the cold war. There is an old geopolitical tradition that countries with US military bases never default, last demonstrated in South Korea 13 years ago. If the US had not closed the Keflavik base, Iceland would have been offered IMF assistance as soon as the currency began to weaken. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke would have called for European banks to maintain credit lines. The Pentagon would have told Her Majesty’s Treasury it could not invoke an anti-terror law to seize the assets of the island’s largest banks. The credit rating would have been stable and there would have been no run on the banks. On the contrary, Kaupthing Bank might have taken advantage of the global financial crisis to launch a takeover bid for Royal Bank of Scotland. The challenge for Iceland today is to reopen the US base. It would no longer have a military function but could be an ideal solution to President Barack Obama’s problem of where to place the Guantánamo prisoners. The US has offered Palau $200m to accept 13 prisoners. Bermuda accepted a few to protect its status as a tax haven. The US could show its appreciation to Reykjavik for hosting prisoners by allowing its banks to join the troubled asset relief programme. The US Treasury could cover the cost of repaying Iceland’s retail deposits in the UK and the Netherlands with just one-half of the profit it made on its Goldman Sachs shares. I love the way this article demonstrates that, despite all the Obama talk, geopolitics is still a very dirty game. Had Iceland been useful to the US it would have been saved - just as the people of Iraq were 'liberated' from tyranny, but the people of Zimbabwe were left rotting. I am not a natural conspiracy theorist, so I find this point eyebrow raising. Nevertheless, the article's solution to Iceland's financial crisis has a problem: I can think of a better place for Obama to send his prisoners. That place is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Over the course of this article we will see how turning the TRNC, like Kosovo, into a US protectorate with a large US military base is an old idea whose time appears to have finally come. As well as allowing the US to get her hands on a military base with a hugely strategic geographical location, it delivers a base inside a small unrecognised county, which by total dependence on US financial aid would never object to anything the US choose to do with that base (unlike the nearby US Air Force base in Turkey). In addition, it allows Turkey to completely disengage from the Cyprus problem by handing responsibility for the TRNC to America, clearing a major roadblock in her EU relations. The TRNC is a self declared independent state which is recognised only by Turkey and has de facto control over 40% of the land in Cyprus. It was created in 1974 after the Turkish Army invaded the island and divided it into Greek and Turkish speaking halves. After partition almost all the Greek speakers caught inside the Turkish side were forced to migrate to the Greek side, likewise almost all the Turkish speakers on the Greek side migrated to the Turkish side. Why did Turkey invade? A couple of weeks before the invasion Nikos Sampson had become the ruler of Cyprus and had declared the island a part of mainland Greece (Enosis). Sampson was a notorious EOKA terrorist, now promoted to President, who had personally committed many murders and was determined to rid the island of all Turkish Cypriots. From 1967 to 1974 even mainland Greece was run by a tyrannical and xenophobic military junta who imposed martial law, censorship, mass arrests, beatings and torture. The plight of the Turkish Cypriots had been deteriorating since 1963, they now faced essentially untrammelled ethnic cleaning. Many Turkish Cypriots had already withdrawn to "armed enclaves" in the mountains which were supplied by air drops from Turkey, now Sampson ordered the army to annihilate these camps. Unsurprisingly, all this went down rather badly with the Turkish mainlanders just 50 miles away. The existence of Northern Cyprus is an anathema to Greeks Cypriots who complain that the vast majority of the land inside Northern Cyprus once belonged to them (it's about 88%). The Greek Cypriot cause is also very popular with mainland Greeks, who themselves were the unhappy subjects of the Ottoman Empire up until 1830. Since both Greece & Cyprus are members of the EU they now wield a great deal of international influence. Given how horrified these countries would be, could the Americans really do a deal with Northern Cyprus? No problem - think Kosovo with its 1,000 acre US Military Base called "Camp Bondsteel" which helps to protect Caspian Oil interests. Behind the scenes it was the US that created Kosovo by recognising her and providing her with financial aid. Kosovo is another Ex-Ottoman State whose Christian majority attempted to cleanse the country of its Muslim minority after independence. Currently only 65 UN states recognise the independence of Kosovo - Cyprus, of course, is not one of them. We know the US supported the Turkish invasion - why? I would not dare to comment on the morality or legitimacy of the invasion or partition for fear of receiving hate mail in Greek, and the fate of a few Turkish Speaking Cypriots is irrelevant to the US anyway, so ethics is incidental to this article. Instead we need to arrive at the US motive by considering US interests, and for that we need to consider the importance of relations with the Muslim World post the 1973 Oil Crisis. But why didn't the US recognise Northern Cyprus after the 1974 partition she helped to create? No doubt any geopolitical expert will explain that a 'charitable action' should never go to waste so long as the beneficiary has something to offer in return. So if the US have been after a base since 1974 why hasn't the TRNC provided them with one in return for US recognition and aid? It is not as if the little country has flourished under the economic embargo that has been inflicted upon it since partition. Even today you can not fly directly to the country from anywhere except Turkey, and there is no McDonalds nor any other major international company doing business on the Island. Up until 2000 the TRNC was especially poor and isolated, although also notoriously unspoilt and beautiful. In fact the prospect of a deal with the US has come up a number of times, but each time it has fallen through for various reasons. In the 1980s, for example, a TRNC ~ US deal was said to have blocked by Asil Nadir, the countries richest man at that time, for personal reasons. Conspiracy theorists speculate that the subsequent downfall of Poly Peck in 1990 was related. 1990 was also the year the Iron Curtain fell and the EU began thinking about enlargement. In 1993 the 'Copenhagen Criteria' for expansion were agreed and over the next several years many states joined including, in 2004, Southern Cyprus. For a while it looked as if, sooner or later, Northern Cyprus was certain to join the EU. The Americas became enthusiastic backers of an EU solution, for example the Bush Administration pledged Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan up to $35 billion in inward investments if he could procure a deal. With reunification inside the EU, replacing the UN peacekeeping force with NATO troops would allow the US a military presence in the island. In 2000 a number of Turkish Cypriots disillusioned with the poor economic progress of the TRNC campaigned for reunification with the slogan “This Nation is Ours”. The UN then began negotiating a treaty, and in November 2001 Kofi Annan's peace plan was presented to the two sides for the first time. The 'Annan Plan' came to feature a bizonal federation with Turkish speaking Cypriots controlling 30% of the inland in the North, and Greeks speaking Cypriots controlling the remaining 70%. This 70-30 spilt reflected the island's stable long term demographics pre the 1963 troubles. Since the Turkish armed forces sized 40% of the island in 1974, the Annan plan called for the return of a large chunk of Northern Cyprus to the Greeks (see Annan Plan territorial adjustments map). In addition, and simplifying the agreement somewhat, the total value of all 1974 Greek landholdings in the Turkish zone was to be calculated along with the total value of all 1974 Turkish landholdings in the Greek zone. The difference, expected to be in favour of the Greeks, who were significantly more wealthy in 1974, was then to be paid out to the Greek side by the EU as compensation for having lost their land in the North. From the moment the Annan plan was conceived, up until the referendum upon it in April 2004, Northern Cyprus land prices rallied from almost nothing to approximately one third of the value of land on the Southern Side (for example, in Esentepe land that had belonged to the Greeks pre 1974 rose from approximately £1,500 to £90,000 an acre). This rally was driven by foreign investors counting on reunification, and the many land sales made during this time caused living standards in the North to rise dramatically. However, the Greek Cypriots, who were admitted to the EU the month before the referendum took place, then voted against reunification. Their decision came as a huge shock to UN and EU officials, and many now believe it was a grave mistake to allow the Greek Cypriots to join the EU before they had approved on the Annan Plan. The EU's unanimous decision making, a weakness only recently addressed by the Lisbon treaty, made it virtually impossible for the EU to take a constructive stance on the problem afterwards. In 2005, after the death of the Annan Plan, a US deal is said to have been quickly put back onto the table. Although the details are secret the deal was thought to include a large Military Base, US recognition and financial aid for the TRNC, and possibly the return, to the Greeks, of the land outlined in the Annan Plan. So what went wrong? It is thought that Turkey eventually balked at the prospect of a huge US military presence so close to their country and blocked the deal. Although the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is theoretically independent, its existence has depended on the military and financial support of Turkey, and many Turkish troops are still stationed in the country, so Turkey has the power to veto any solution. Although America already has a Military Air Base called Incirlik inside Turkey, which safeguards the vital Ceyhan outlet and was indispensable during the Iraq War, Turkey has the ability to shut the base should it ever wish to do so. A US military base in the US protectorate of Northern Cyprus would be quite another matter, so it is a major security concern for the Turkish Army. Today most commentators are privately writing off any chance of reunification between the Greek and Turkish speaking Cypriots under some kind of modified Annan Plan. Emboldened by the economic success of Southern Cyprus since joining the EU, the Greeks are even less likely to compromise these days. Besides what possible interest could a Pathos hotel owner have in opening himself to competition with the comparative paradise of unspoilt Karpaz? Although the recent judgement by the European Court of Justice and the UK Court of Appeal has made the life of Northern Cypriots increasingly untenable (the Orams case has suddenly rendered 88% of the real estate potentially worthless - with potentially disastrous consequences for the banking system and the economy at wide), instead of forcing the Northern Cypriots to return more land including Karpaz, the ruling has probably backfired by stoking public animosity towards the EU. Northern Cypriots are now expected to elect a new more nationalist President in April 2010. This man, Derviş Eroğlu, is already talking about a 'Plan B'. Some have speculated that Plan B is the unification of Northern Cyprus with Turkey. Yet the Northern Cyprus issue is damaging Turkey's EU relations, and annexing the small country would hardly help matters. Greek Cypriot cases against Northern Cypriot land holders have limited traction inside an unrecognised country, but for Turkey they might be much more serious. Although the plight of the Turkish Cypriots is a popular issue, so political considerations prevent Turkey from turning it's back on Northern Cyprus, a little country of 250 thousand people can hardly be allowed to dictate policy to a rising regional superpower of 75 million. Is it really worth Turkey's while to keep on blocking a US base in Northern Cyprus if allowing one extricated herself from the political quagmire? Besides, the power of the Turkish military to block economic and political decisions on security grounds must have diminished since the Ergenekon scandal. On top of all that, if the Northern Cypriots had a lot of courage they might be able to negotiate a deal with the US directly and present it to Turkey as a fait accompli. By handing complete responsibility for Northern Cyprus to the US, Turkey has washed her hands of the problem, yet at the same time lost no political face with voters at home, for the Turkish speaking inhabitants will not have been abandoned to a terrible fate. All Turkish troops will leave and Turkeys EU accession plans, or rather special relationship plans, would get back on track. These plans are not just important to Turkeys export heavy economy, they are important to America's number one foreign policy goal, Islamic rapprochement. Neo-Cons in the Bush government once dreamed of getting their hands on a Muslim country and turning it into a pro-western success story as an example to the Islamic world - unlike the Iraqis, the Northern Cypriots might be willing. They could call the country "The Islamic American Liberal Democracy of Northern Cyprus" for maximum PR effect! World public opinion could be easily turned against the South, so the move becomes righteous American support for a people who were ethnically cleansed by the "Castro of the Mediterranean". The tourism potential of the North is far better than the overdeveloped and downmarket South, so the economics has real potential. Imagine the next Ibiza being half Islamic and half American! This is stuff Neo-Con dreams are made of. With Turkish disengagement, the US would take on the role of both guaranteeing military security in Northern Cyprus, and providing the country with financial assistance. Northern Cyprus would become a US protectorate with a very large air and sea base which, unlike Incirlik, could be used for anything. The UK army could pack up and leave, much to the relief of the reluctant UK taxpayer and the bored English soldiers. Who knows, EU officials sick of the intractable Cyprus problem might be secretly relieved. Lefkoşa would probably get direct flights and McDonalds, but the country would remain unrecognised by most of the world, and unable to sign the Geneva Convention, so the shiny new prison for Guantánamo inmates would remain nicely out of human rights radar range. Sounds like a perfect plan. |