The Effects of European Union Border Security Policies on Cyprus Conflict

1. IntroductionThe "border" concept is closely connected with the sovereignty of Westphalia system. In the case of Europe, border have reshaped modern nation state and beginning with the 19th century it was used as the "effective map" for the European colonial empires (Anderson and Borth, 2001: 15).The argument that liberals point out is the increasing irrelevance of national borders to the conduct and organization of economic activity. They focus on the growth of free trade, the capacity of transnational corporations to escape political regulation and national legal jurisdiction. Even if the state is no longer prepared to insulate its citizens from the vicissitudes of the world economy, it is still expected to secure them from the threats. Only the state can meet these and many other challenges such as "border protection" and transnational crime. There are no market-based solutions to these dangers (Burchill, 2005: 72-80).EU enlargement and the inter-state and inter-societal integration it forges is a fundamental process of conflict resolution and peace building that is particularly relevant for the era of globalization. With the enlargement of the EU borders, the community's possibility of facing new problems towards its exterior borders has been increased, so "Europe Integrated Border Management Model" which has been developed to solve problems. (Diez, 2006: 563).Changes in the understanding of security make an effective border security system as a basic necessity for all countries. Besides, Border Security is considered as a common problem of every country. Border Security is playing an important role in the establishment of international cooperation and in confidence building. The weaknesses that countries show in their border security also affect neighbor countries and other countries as well. Specifically, with the approval of the free movement of people in the interior borders of the EU, border management in the neighbor countries have become important for all EU countries. There is a new and dynamic border management understanding that have been developed for the sake of finding common applications related to border checks within the EU Schengen legislation and other EU legal acquis. Such actions of the EU emerged "Integrated Border Management" approach. The new border management approach has a structure which requires cooperation and coordination with transportation firms, non-governmental organizations and institutions that have direct or indirect links with border management. This also aims to have open but controlled and safe borders (Akman, 2010: 9).The candidate states to EU membership need to solve the existence of border conflict in their region before their membership. In the framework of enlargement principals, the conditions related to the solution of the border conflicts which is applied to other candidate states, was not applied to the Greek Cypriot Administration. With the Treaty of Accession, which was put into practice in 2004, TRNC gained a new position in the EU level. In this protocol, TRNC soil was mentioned as "the Republic of Cyprus area which the government has not active control". The implementation of community legal acquis in this region has been suspended. Related protocol puts forward that the measures can be taken for economic development "in the regions of Cyprus Republic that is not under the effective control of Cyprus Republic government" In this respect, European Council accepted the regulation, named as "Green Line Regulation", which organizes the movement of good, service and people between the TRNC territory and the Cyprus Republic (EU Protocol 10, 2003).The existence of seven border gates underestimates the embargoes on TRNC. Due to TRNC's lack of recognition in the international arena, it is possible that the Greek Cypriot Administration would abuse TRNC's weaknesses regarding its border security. In respect to the EU border security policies, on contrary to other member states' exterior borders, a different model for Greek Cypriot Administration borders was not offered. …