4.AVİM’s earlier Cyprus work and the law–narrative gap
The limits of the DW narrative become clearer when it is viewed against the line of analysis developed in AVİM’s earlier work on Cyprus. Those commentaries and analyses have consistently approached Turkish Cypriots not as a humanitarian appendix to the Republic of Cyprus, but as a constituent people with treaty‑based rights anchored in the 1960 arrangements and in the bi‑communal character of the state. In this perspective, the problem is not simply that Turkish Cypriots suffer from everyday inconveniences, but that a co‑founding community has been progressively pushed to the margins of representation and decision‑making.
AVİM studies have also underlined how this marginalization has been accompanied by a steady erosion of the original legal balance and by a discursive shift in which European narratives describe Cyprus almost exclusively through Greek Cypriot perspectives. Legal texts and founding treaties continue to acknowledge bi‑communality and political equality, yet public and EU‑level discourses often translate this into a one‑sided story in which Turkish Cypriots appear mainly as a “problem” or as “invisible Europeans” requiring management. The resulting law–narrative gap is precisely where the DW article sits: it offers a useful glimpse of Turkish Cypriot frustrations, but it does so within a frame that underplays the community’s status as an equal partner in the constitutional order that still formally underpins the island’s relationship with the European Union.[6]
[6] Teoman Ertuğrul Tulun, “Admission by Kati Piri: ‘Allowing Cyprus in (EU) without a Solution to Cyprus Problem… Is a Big Mistake,’” Analysis, Center for Eurasian Studies (AVİM), April 1, 2019, https://avim.org.tr/en/Analiz/ADMISSION-BY-KATI-PIRI-ALLOWING-CYPRUS-IN-EU-WITHOUT-A-SOLUTION-TO-CYPRUS-PROBLEM-IS-A-BIG-MISTAKE