Pooling Sovereignty, Losing Territoriality? Making Peace In Cyprus And Moldova

Whereas territory contains a platform for units to participate internationally, it should also have sovereignty to render relations legitimate. Sovereignty is not only dispersed or pooled but also accumulated. Territory makes sense as long as there are attempts to strive for new nation‐states or to maintain the territorial integrity of the old ones. One may argue that the less important is territoriality nowadays, the more complex and multifaceted the issue of sovereignty becomes. This comparative paper draws on the parallel developments in partition processes, which gave birth to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) and Transnistria (TMR). The paper then analyses factual sovereignty and federalisation attempts in Cyprus and Moldova, with the final focus on recent legitimising constitutional provisions proposed in the Annan Plan and the Kozak Plan. My argument here is that even with the best intentions to agree on shared sovereignty, territoriality remains of primary concern for involved parties in the conflicts.