SUBJECT: "SETTLERS" AND CITIZENSHIP: THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 NICOSIA 001955

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/12/2020
TAGS: PREL PHUM PGOV UNSC CY
SUBJECT: SUBJECT: "SETTLERS" AND CITIZENSHIP: THE
MAKINGS OF A CYPRIOT

Classified By: CDA Jane Zimmerman, for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)



1. (C) Summary: Questions of "settler status" and ROC
citizenship have become increasingly entwined, further
complicating an already contentious issue that lies close to
the core of the Cyprus dispute. Issues of citizenship,
status, and the definition of a "settler" are of more than
academic interest. These deeply intertwined
questions--together with the issue of "legitimate" ownership
of disputed property--lie at the very heart of the Cyprus
problem. What is clear is that on these emotionally-charged
issues, rationality, proportion, and basic fairness are often
pushed aside in favor of score-settling. This is an
unhelpful but all-too-common motif in the Cyprus dynamic.
Public debate on these issues comes in fits and starts, but
they will remain central to any future efforts aimed at
brokering a comprehensive Cyprus settlement. End Summary.


Just Who is a Citizen?
--------------


2. (C) There is a fundamental anomaly built into ROC
citizenship law that may well constitute a prima facie
violation of the right of EU citizens to equal protection
under the law. Under the relevant provisions of the ROC
citizenship law, children with even a single Cypriot parent
are automatically entitled to ROC citizenship. The
government, however, has reserved for itself a review
mechanism requiring the Council of Ministers (COM) to
specifically approve applications for citizenship from
children of mixed Turkish Cypriot/mainland Turkish parentage.
The expressed goal of this procedure is to identify those
children with a "settler" parent so that they might be denied
citizenship on the grounds that the children of settlers are
themselves "products of a crime." In our own reading of the
law, we can find no explicit requirement--or even
authorization--for this discriminatory review. It is simply
asserted by ROC authorities as both a necessity and a right.


And Who is a Settler?
--------------


3. (C) The COM periodically reviews such lists of
application for citizenship, but evidently without much
enthusiasm. The criticism leveled at ROC officials by the
Greek Cypriot public has been that the government is too lax
in performing this duty, rather than too rigid. Following
the last round of adjudications, nationalist politicians and
journalists launched a sharp attack against Interior Minister
Andreas Christou for being too liberal in interpreting the
law and encouraging the COM to approve a list of 1048
applications for citizenship from children of mixed Turkish
parentage. In his defense, Christou maintained that the
Ministry had conducted the research necessary to establish
that none of the children in question had a "settler" parent.
Christou also offered a definition of "settler" that was
significantly more restrictive than that which the ROC uses
to bolster its claim that there are now more "settlers" than
Turkish Cypriots in the north. Christou maintained that a
"settler" was a person "who, as part of an organized group,
arrives in Cyprus to change the demographic character of the
Turkish Cypriot community and people." This narrow
definition would apply only to a relatively small number of
Turks who came to Cyprus as part of a Turkish-sponsored
emigration program in the 1970s.


4. (C) In debating "the settler question" under the
auspices of UN-brokered settlement negotiations, however, the
Greek Cypriot side uses a significantly more expansive
definition. The ROC includes soldiers, students, and
seasonal laborers in the inflated figures it pushes in
seemingly endless "Aide Memoires" distributed at the UN
or--more recently--in the EU.


Damned If You Don't
--------------


5. (C) Christou's limited definition of a settler prompted
angry attacks from the nationalist right. Loukis
Loukaides--who is paradoxically a judge in the European Court
of Human Rights--argued that "any Turkish national who
arrived in the occupied area was, on the evidence, a
settler." Adding a dose of bile to his argument, Loukaides
concluded that "the children of settlers are the product of
the crime and cannot be legalized." Andreas Angelides, a
prominent Greek Cypriot lawyer and a member of the DIKO
Executive Committee, reasoned that any Turkish citizen on
Cyprus was a settler "even in the case where a Turkish
citizen has married a Turkish Cypriot abroad and then
traveled to the island."


And Damned If You Do
--------------


6. (C) Former Attorney General Alekos Markides dismissed
these arguments as absurd and told Polchief that he
considered the citizenship law to be "arbitrary and
capricious," and a violation of equal protection rights. If
a Turkish Cypriot married--or had a child with--a Swede or a
Spaniard for example, his or her children were automatically
considered ROC citizens. I he other parent was a Turkish
national however, the law required government aprovalbefore
citizenship could be granted. Markde di nt kowof ay
case in which the ROC use thisautorty,an he noted that
any individual denied citizenship n these grounds would have
recourse to the ROC an, if necessary, to the EU courts to
overturn theruling. Markides defended Christou's definition
of a "set
er" as legally correct, but observed tht the
presence of a large number of economic migants in the north
with claim to "TRNC" citizenshi produced a grey area in the
law that was best "andled quietly."


7. (C) Other prominent GreekCypriots who played a ole in
negotiating the "sttlr"proisonsofthe Annan Plan
supported Chisou' rading of the legislation an stesed
thei discofort over the discriminatoy apliation of the
law. United Democrats leadr and former Clerides-government
spokesman Michais Papapetrou told us that Christou's
definitionof a "settler" was legally sound, but politically
unsustainable Irrespective of the question of "setler"
status however, was the underlying argumen that the ROC
could not deny citizenship to chilren with one settler
parent without violating a aft of international agreements.


8. (C) Former Cypriot UN PermRep Andreas Mavrommatis agreed.
H argued that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
superseded Cypriot citizenship law and shuld be read as
prohibiting the singling out of cildren of mixed
Cypriot/Turkish parentage for special, discriminatory
treatment. He added that the issue of granting Cypriot
citizenship to the spouse or parent of a Cypriot citizen was
a separate issue that would need to be considered as part of
an eventual settlement agreement.



9. (C) Toumazos Tsielepis, a member of the Greek Cypriot
negotiating team during the last round of settlement talks
and the AKEL party's leading constitutional expert, defended
the ROC citizenship legislation as a "practical necessity."
There was little risk, Tsielepis maintained, that anyone
entitled to ROC citizenship would be denied. Rather than
argue over the definition of a "settler," the two sides
should work towards agreeing on a specific number of
"settlers" to be allowed to remain on the island under the
terms of a solution. From such a number, he was certain that
the necessary modalities of implementation would naturally
emerge.


Comment
--------------

1O. (C) The human rights concerns stemming from the
discriminatory and unequal application of Cypriot citizenship
law are self-evident. As we have no information that the COM
has ever denied ROC citizenship to a child with one Cypriot
and one "settler" parent, it may be difficult to prove
material harm, but the principles at issue are deeply
troubling.


11. (C) At the same time, there may well be something
constructive in the principle underlying Christou's argument
that not all mainland Turks in the north are "settlers," and
not all settlers are the same. "Settler-dom" is not a binary
status, but more a sliding scale of legitimacy, with children
of settler extraction born in Cyprus at one end of the scale
and those deliberately relocated to Cyprus at the direction
of the Turkish government at the other end. The majority of
mainland Turks who are living more-or-less permanently in the
north fall somewhere in between. It may be worthwhile to
consider a criteria-based approach to negotiating who will be
allowed to remain under the terms of a settlement package
rather than the quota-based approach of the ultimately
unsuccessful Annan III-V negotiations.
ZIMMERMAN