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81. The Battle of Tannenberg in 1410: Strategic Interests and Tactical Implementation

Author:
LTC (GS) Dr. Martin Hofbauer
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Teutonic Order dates back to the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192). Around 1190, during the siege of Acre in the Holy Land an order of nurses was founded. This order was converted in 1198 into an order of knights, the so-called Teutonic Order. It was confirmed a year later by Pope Innocent III. The Order acquired its first properties in Palestine, Armenia and Cyprus, and from 1200 on also in Germany. Eventually it spread over large parts of Europe. The competition with older orders of knights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the failed crusades prompted the order to look for a new field of activity.
Political Geography:
Europe, Lithuania, Palestine, Germany, Armenia, and Cyprus

82. Conduct and Discipline in Un Peacekeeping Operations: Culture, Political Economy and Gender

Author:
Catherine Lutz, Matthew C. Gutmann, and Keith Brown
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
Systematic patterns of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) have emerged around UN peacekeeping missions over the course of many years.1 Reports of abuse by peacekeepers in Cambodia and the Balkans in the 1990s were followed by news of similar problems in West African missions in 2001 and 2002. The Secretary General subsequently issued a 2003 Bulletin outlining a zero-tolerance policy, but the abuse continued. In 2004, peacekeeper misconduct became widely known through mainstream media reports that UN personnel in MONUC, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had been engaging in sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of local women and children. The SEA included, most egregiously, peacekeepers' exchange of UN food supplies or money for sex with young girls and sometimes boys. SEA has been a particular problem in mission areas where extreme poverty and conflict or post-conflict trauma and social dislocation drive local people to sell their bodies, but it has occurred in more developed contexts as well, such as Cyprus and Kosovo. The UN response to these problems has been to establish, in 2005, a Conduct and Discipline Unit with offices in New York and mission areas, charged with addressing the problem in a variety of ways. SEA continues to occur since then, with serious incidents revealed in Sudan, Liberia, Haiti, Cote d'Ivoire, and again in the Congo.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Corruption, Crime, Gender Issues, Sex Trafficking, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
United States, New York, Sudan, Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, Liberia, West Africa, and Cyprus

83. Britain and the 1960 Cyprus Accords: A Study in Pragmatism

Author:
Michael Moran
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Political Trends Center (GPoT)
Abstract:
One of the main factors that led directly to the present status quo in Cyprus tends to be forgotten. This was the extraordinary display of timidity on the part of Great Britain in the 1960s when confronted with determined Greek Cypriot attempts to make Cyprus Greek. And, needless to say, the subsequent forceful division of the island by Turkey in 1974 should always be seen in this earlier context: not, that is, as some kind of unforeseeable interruption in the island's natural and peaceful progression towards its Hellenic 'redemption'; least of all as the result of a brutal and arbitrary interference in a sovereign state on the part of a 'foreign power', both of which notions still circulate among many Greeks and their political sympathisers.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus

84. Cyprus: Unity and Difference

Author:
Michael Moran and Rauf R. Denktas
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Political Trends Center (GPoT)
Abstract:
This series of letters came about as follows. Sometime late in April, 2008 I went to see President Denktaş at his office in Nicosia, partly as a courtesy visit and partly because I thought he would be interested to read two documents I brought with me. One was a long article on Cyprus by Perry Anderson, a well-known British leftist, now teaching at an American university. Anderson's piece had recently appeared in the London Review of Books to which journal he was a regular contributor. The other thing I gave Denktaş was a letter I had sent to the LRB pointing out, in effect, what a one-sided, slapdash assortment of misinformation Anderson had inflicted on the British reading public.
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and Cyprus

85. Suing for Sovereignty: Property, Territory, and the EU's Cyprus Problem

Author:
Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Global Political Trends Center (GPoT)
Abstract:
This article explores the actual and potential effects of recent European legal judgments on ongoing reunification negotiations in Cyprus. In particular, we argue that the European Union's failure to formulate a policy regarding the position of Turkish Cypriots in Europe has had increasingly negative consequences both for negotiations between the island's leaders and for relations between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities. The EU has chosen to ignore the suspension of constitutional order in the Republic of Cyprus, in the process refusing to acknowledge the legal and political effects of the RoC's EU entry on Turkish Cypriots. We use a recent European Court of Justice judgment to illustrate the substantive effects of this hands-off approach, showing how the political use of transnational courts threatens to undermine what many have called the island's “last chance” at reunification.
Political Geography:
Turkey and Cyprus

86. Cyprus: Reversing the Drift to Partition

Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
One more major effort, strongly encouraged by the UN and European Union (EU), should be made in 2008 to resolve the long-running dispute between ethnic Greeks and Turks on Cyprus and achieve a comprehensive settlement to reunify the island. All sides have much to gain from such a settlement. For the Greek Cypriots, it would end lingering insecurity, give them access to the Turkish economy, the most dynamic in the region, and increase their service industry's value as an eastern Mediterranean hub. For Turkish Cypriots, it will mean being able to enjoy the benefits of EU citizenship of which they are presently largely deprived. For the EU, the unresolved Cyprus problem now hampers its functioning on issues as diverse as cooperation with NATO in Afghanistan and Chinese shoe imports. And for Turkey a settlement would overcome a major obstacle to its convergence with the EU.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution and Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Cyprus

87. Turkey and the EU: Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, and the Cyprus Issue

Author:
Kıvanç Ulusoy
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The paper analyzes Turkey's democratization efforts between 2004 and 2008. In addition to the challenges that the EU accession process brings to the Turkish political structure, an assessment of the current impasse of Turkey's democratization along the EU accession process is made with respect to the detailed analysis of two major issues: the Cyprus issue and civil-military relations. With an eye to studying the EU's impact on the domestic politics of accession countries with special reference to Turkey, the paper concentrates on the current government's performance over the past three years in EU accession negotiations, showing how this immediate experience reveals the main problematical issues of Turkey-EU relations under these two headings. The concluding remarks focus on two crucial problems of the post-2004 period in Turkey: the sustainability of the reform process and the importance of the time factor in evaluating the EU's leverage on democratization.
Political Geography:
Turkey and Cyprus

88. Trauma, Identity and Search for a Solution in Cyprus

Author:
Vamık Volkan
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Massive traumas at the hands of “enemies” affect both individuals and societies for decades. For the Cypriot Turks, their massive trauma started in 1963-1964 when they were forced to live in subhuman conditions in enclaves geographically limited to three percent of the island for eleven years. What happened during the summer of 1974 obviously traumatized the Cypriot Greeks too on a massive scale. Psychoanalysts who have studied the trans-generational transmission of massive social trauma inform us that if the impact of such trauma is denied or repressed, it will still manifest itself in various ways in new generations. The “therapeutic” way of dealing with previous generations' massive social traumas is not to deny or repress what happened to the ancestors, but to be aware of the history. There could be no solution on the island without understanding and addressing traumas of both communities.
Political Geography:
Cyprus

89. Cyprus: The Belgian 'Tool Box' Revisited

Author:
Ergün Olgun and Dirk Rochtus
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Bi-ethnic Belgium has skillfully developed cooperation and concertation arrangements which meet even the EU's rigid "one voice" requirement, taking into consideration the continuing increase in the powers and functions of its regions and communities. Belgium consequently offers a huge box of tools, particularly to bi-ethnic or multi ethnic partnership states. Probably the most distinguishing differences between Cyprus and Belgium are the chronic conflictual relationship between the two ex-partner peoples of Cyprus, and the absence there of a common vision of co-existence and equal power-sharing. If the two sides in Cyprus could be incentivized enough to sincerely opt for equal partnership, the Belgian multi-tier governance experience, despite some significant differences between the two lands, could still offer some practical lessons from which eager parties in Cyprus could benefit.
Political Geography:
Belgium and Cyprus

90. Promise to Keep: Time to end the international isolation of the Turkish Cypriots

Author:
Marsel Brus, Mensur Akgün, Steven Blockmans, Sylvia Tiryaki, Theo Van Den Hoogen, and Wybe Douma
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
The objective of writing this report has been twofold, namely, to assess the legal validity of the continuing international isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community, and to demonstrate that lifting the isolation currently imposed on Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) will not necessarily amount to – or require – its recognition as a nation-state. This report asserts that the isolationist policies directed towards the Turkish Cypriots living in the Northern part of the island do not have any legal basis and therefore should be revoked immediately. The point of departure for the study is to call on the fact that the EU membership of the RoC created a unique status for the Turkish Cypriot community, under both international and EU law.
Topic:
European Union, International Community, Nation-State, and Isolationism
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Cyprus, and Mediterranean