What Armenia Peace Processors Should Learn from Cyprus and Yemen

Pashinyan also noted that Azerbaijani papers say that Azerbaijani territory is 108,000 square kilometers [41,700 square miles]. However, the same papers say that resolving their border disputes with Armenia and Georgia will make Azerbaijan 141,000 square kilometers [54,440 miles]. By caving to President Ilham Aliyev’s demands and accepting an inequitable approach, Pashinyan now effectively affirms Aliyev’s territorial ambitions.

The celebrations are premature for another reason. Azerbaijan has never honored a single agreement it has made. It remains not only rhetorically but also militarily on a war footing. Caliber.az, an outlet controlled by Azerbaijan’s defense ministry, not only argued this week that Armenia plans a “blitzkrieg” against Azerbaijan that Azerbaijan should preempt, but that European Union observers are part of the plot. Not only is this nonsense, but the foreign observers have been the most effective check on Azerbaijan’s pattern of breaching, cease-fires and other agreements. Without observers and with Azerbaijan controlling its media and rejecting visas for independent reporters and the travel of foreign diplomats, Armenia will be powerless to expose Azerbaijani violations.

While peace is a noble goal, Armenia should consider the case of Cyprus. In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus twice. During its first invasion in July 1974, the Turkish Army seized a beachhead of perhaps three percent of the country. Turkey’s stated goal was to protect Cyprus’ Turkish Muslim minority against the revanchism of the Greek junta. Within days, however, that junta fell; the casus belli dissolved. It was only then — and against the backdrop of Geneva peace talks — that the Turkish Army invaded again, seizing more than one-third of the nation. Last year, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lamented publicly that Turkey ceased its drive and did not conquer the entirety of the country so that Cyprus in its entirety could become a part of Turkey.

The United Nations and international community have tried over subsequent decades to negotiate a peace between Cyprus and the Vichy regime that Turkey set up in the occupied zone. One such effort culminated in the Annan Plan, negotiated by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The basis of the plan was the formation of a “United Republic of Cyprus” comprised of two federal states, one Turkish and the other Greek. The Swiss federal model influenced many of the proposed government structures and mechanisms for power sharing.

In 2004, the UN put the Annan Plan to a referendum: Two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots voted in favor, but three quarters of Greek Cypriots voted against. Turks have argued ever since that Greek disapproval of the Annan Plan conveys a lack of interest in peace.

Such interpretation is nonsense. The reason for the Annan Plan’s rejection was clear-eyed appraisal of its flaws. In a Mega TV exit poll questioning those who said they voted “No,” 75 percent referred to concerns over “security” as their reason for their vote; only 13 percent said they wanted to live separately from Turkish Cypriots. What killed the deal was not Greek rejectionism, but rather the weakness of international negotiators. Faced with Turkish objections, Annan consistently watered down the agreement’s enforcement provisions. The negotiators omitted any mechanism that would compel a party not living up to its obligations to do so. For example, if Turkey failed to withdraw troops, there was no way to make them, nor did the plan address the Turkish settlers on the island who today vastly outnumber the native Turkish Cypriot population. Quite the contrary, Cypriots saw loopholes through which Turks could pour settlers into Cyprus to change the island’s demography, much as Azerbaijan’s Soviet-era leaders and then Ilham Aliyev have done regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.