Despite breaching the 1960 treaty, they are still treated by the UN as if they are in a guarantor relationship with their respective communities in Cyprus

The talks in Geneva between the Cypriot leaders and the guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the UK next week convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the hope that an informal broader meeting would find a way forward from the deadlock is a good time to put the spotlight on the relevance of the guarantor powers in 2025.

The guarantor powers’ role under the 1960 treaty of guarantee was to ensure Cyprus stayed an independent bicommunal state that did not unite with any other state and was not partitioned into two independent states.

In the event of a breach of the treaty, the three guarantor powers are supposed to consult together about what to do to ensure the treaty is observed, and if concerted action is not possible each guarantor reserved the right to take action to reestablish the state of affairs created by the treaty. This last provision has been very controversial, but it does not fall for discussion in this article as it is not relevant to the role Guterres has in mind in for the guarantor powers in the forthcoming talks.

All the parties to the treaty of guarantee, except the UK, have acted in breach of the treaty. Greece acted in breach when it overthrew the government of Cyprus in July 1974 in an attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece. Turkey is in breach because after taking unilateral military action in 1974 – ostensibly to prevent union with Greece – it partitioned Cyprus in the process.

The Cypriot communities are in breach too: the RoC government has not functioned as a bicommunal state since 1964; and the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)” acted in breach of the prohibition on partition when it unilaterally declared independence in 1983.

This is not an exhaustive list of the breaches of the parties and people can fill in the blanks from their own knowledge of the facts. The point here is that despite demonstrable breaches of the treaty of guarantee, the guarantor powers are still treated by the UN as if they are in a guarantor relationship with their respective communities in Cyprus.

Greece and Turkey are guarantor powers in the traditional sense of the law of guarantee in private law in which the obligation of the guarantor of a party to a contract is to “see-to-it” that the party guaranteed performs its obligations.

Transplants of concepts from private domestic law into international law to regulate the relationship between states are not unusual. They are applied with adjustments to take into account the different context in which they arise in international relations.

The need for guarantors in Cyprus arose because an independent republic was not what the Cypriot nationalists who ruled the roost prior to independence really wanted: Greek nationalists wanted union with Greece and Turkish nationalists wanted partition as a counterweight.

The concern at the time was that after independence the nationalists would take advantage of their newly found freedom and seek to extinguish the fledgling republic. Greek nationalists in particular felt that the creation of the RoC was a betrayal of the national struggle for union with Greece. 

Hence the need to make the motherlands guarantors as only they had the necessary leverage with their respective communities in Cyprus to see-to-it that the RoC survived as an independent state in one piece.

The idea was that the guarantors would use their influence on their own side by exhortation to ensure compliance with the independence arrangements. And although provision was included for unilateral action if the guarantee system failed, this did not deprive the treaty of its character as a contract of guarantee of the see-to-it variety. Indeed, this is the role which Guterres must have had in mind for the broadened talks next week.  

The UN secretary-general and the UN Security Council believe the guarantor powers can still help find a way forward in the face of sustained resistance from the Cypriot communities. The RoC pays lip service to a bicommunal federation to get the talks started but what it really wants is to reintegrate northern Cyprus in a majoritarian unitary state.

The Turkish Cypriot leadership wants sovereign equality to start negotiations with a view to partitioning Cyprus into two states, which is unrealistic as it begs the question what the talks would be about if the RoC were to agree to two states at the outset?

The RoC will not agree to two states not least because the international community will not countenance an independent state in northern Cyprus as its Greek Cypriot population was displaced contrary to a peremptory rule of international law whose breach cannot have legal consequences.

Union with Greece is no longer a political aspiration among Greek Cypriots. The problem now is partition because although Turkey invaded Cyprus ostensibly to forestall union with Greece, it created the conditions conducive to the partition of Cyprus which is just as unlawful.

Turkey’s argument is that governments led by President Erdogan have supported a federal way forward from 2003 to 2017 to no avail. It is true that Erdogan has been flexible and deserves credit for his preparedness to go the extra mile. But Turkey’s role is still to persuade the “TRNC” that as a guarantor power it cannot support a course of action it is treaty bound to prevent.

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a former part-time judge