Paper Short Abstract:

Before the long-divided island of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, the ‘Annan Plan’ was placed before the two communities in a reunification referendum. I trace how its enduring effects reshaped the Cypriot Left and play a key role in how peace and re-unification are debated by Cypriots today.

Paper Abstract:

Before Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, hope was briefly raised that the long-divided island could be unified. In November 2002, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan released a plan for the reunification of the island and the solution of the ‘Cyprus problem’. After countless rounds of negotiations, what became known as the ‘Annan Plan’ was placed before the two communities in a vote in the reunification referendum of 24 April 2004. Political discussions on the plan took interesting and, in some cases, unexpected directions to the extent that they ‘seem to have transformed the historical division between left and right into a much more complex confrontation’ (Vural and Peristianis 2008: 40). The strongest supporters of the plan appeared to be the leftist CTP (the Republican Turkish Party) on the Turkish Cypriot side and the right-wing DISI (Democratic Rally) on the Greek Cypriot side. Although it initially supported the plan, the Greek Cypriot communist party AKEL invited its supporters to reject it in a last-minute manoeuvre, for a number of reasons that will be unpacked in the paper. While the proposal received a 65% favourable vote from the Turkish community, the Greek Cypriot community rejected it by over 75%. Based on long-term fieldwork in Cyprus and the Cypriot diaspora, I trace here how hope and disappointment around the referendum reshaped the Left in Cyprus, and how the enduring effects of the referendum play a key role in how peace and re-unification are debated and considered by Cypriots today. On the other hand, I also argue that different visions of and desires for the future also shift the ways in which the referendum is remembered, narrated, and historicised.