Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Carolyn Stephenson, a peace researcher at the University of Hawai'i, talks about how the "carrot" of EU membership helped push Greeks and Cypriots into negotiations on Cyprus.

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

How EU Membership Affected Cyprus Negotiations
Carolyn Stephenson
Professor of Population Studies, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawai'i

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

One of the big catalysts in the move toward Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiations during the spring of 2002 was that they were set to join the European Union (EU). The goal was before joining the EU to see if you could get a reunification of the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. It was a big incentive to move those negotiations along after roughly 25 years of not working. As part of that the EU had brought in grant programs to try to bring Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots together on projects, primarily development projects, but any kind of projects.

No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise. -- Marian Anderson

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict

The Young Israeli Forum on Cooperation

Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability

A User's Guide for Third Siders
The Third Side concept was developed by William Ury. Third Siders are people who try to see both sides of a conflict and encourage cooperative solutions, fair fights, and decision making that advocates solutions which meet everyone's interests and needs as much as possible.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Lech Walesa
Trade union leader, and 1983 Nobel Peace Laureate

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