Imagine if Japan had invaded and
claimed (and successfully held) an island of Hawaii as a protectorate and a
separate country due to the number of Japanese living there, and thus not as a
part of Hawaii even though the U.S. recognizes all of Hawaii as a member
state. Let’s say furthermore that the UN
has proposed the unification of Hawaii as a republic composed of two federated
states. Hawaii would be akin to Belgium in the E.U.—a federated state of two
sub-states in a federal union. This arrangement would fit with Althusius’ early
seventeenth-century theory of federalism based on the Holy Roman Empire: each
level of political organization is a federation. While this exists in the E.U.,
none of the U.S. states is itself a federation of states. So, the UN’s proposal
that Cyprus be united politically and be composed of two states even as the
E.U. already recognizes the entire island as an E.U. state is not outlandish to
a European eye. The problem with the proposal lies instead in Turkey, and this
in itself can be interpreted as an argument against Turkey’s accession to E.U.
statehood.
The full essay is at "Turkey on Cyprus: Sidelining the E.U."
