Opinion
By Michalis Sophocleous
President Christodoulides says something I fully agree with: the Cyprus issue cannot be reduced to a matter of confidence-building measures. So what’s the problem with the President? He does everything humanly possible to undermine exactly what he himself proclaims. Guterres’s visit and its clear failure to produce any result marked the high point of Nikos Christodoulides’s illusions coming apart.
Let’s start from the beginning. Before the visit, the President’s narrative rested on two pillars. The first was that on the road to a third five-party conference during his term, this time they would not discuss confidence-building measures but the substance of the issue, and above all the resumption of negotiations. He even went so far, with complete arrogance, as to announce in advance a solution plan by the end of the year.
Yet Mr. Christodoulides failed miserably to see that the lamp of his credibility had already gone out completely. Neither he nor Mr. Erhürman had done anything of what they themselves had agreed at the two previous conferences. Mr. Guterres had not forgotten that both of them had repeatedly made a fool of him. The international community’s argument that “these people can’t even open a road, and they’re going to solve the Cyprus problem?” is no longer just whispered in diplomatic corridors. We have heard it formally, indirectly but clearly, from the United Nations Secretary-General himself.
Christodoulides’s second pillar was that the new five-party conference, though already agreed at the previous one, was stuck on Turkey’s refusal. That was true until recently. What Nikos Christodoulides once again failed to see was that Guterres’s visit would never have happened if Turkey had not already given the green light for the conference, even under conditions.
That is how we reached the point where journalists were anxiously reporting, based on briefings from the Presidential Palace, on whether the Secretary-General had contacted Ankara while he was in Cyprus to try to persuade it. When I pointed out on a television program the obvious fact that we would not have had the visit if Turkey’s “OK” had not already been in place, the host felt the need to distance himself, saying, “Mr. Sofokleous, we’re listening to you, but that doesn’t mean we adopt what you’re saying.” That is how thoroughly everyone on our side had bought into the hollow presidential narrative.
In the end, the convening of the five-party conference remains pending and has been placed under terms and conditions. Turkey, however, is already getting the credit for its consent. Today, after Guterres’s statement, the ones responsible for the lack of progress are none other than Messrs. Christodoulides and Erhürman, both together and separately.
For us, Mr. Erhürman’s responsibilities are secondary, even with his completely outrageous demand for an arbitrator in the negotiations who would assign blame if they fail and then let his side get what it wants. What matters most is the failure of our own leader. Through his policy, Nikos Christodoulides has managed to make himself the one held accountable for the conference not being scheduled and the talks not resuming. Preconditions are now expected from him if we are to move forward.
I had repeatedly called on and pleaded with President Christodoulides to correctly read the regional reality. That reality requires resolving or working around the obstacles the Cyprus problem creates for ambitious international plans. He needed to assess the Turkey-EU relationship accurately. It is extremely important, but not nearly as decisive as he claims. And he needed to take advantage of Mr. Erdoğan’s need to return to the Western system and soften his image as the authoritarian dictator who persecutes and jails his political opponents.
Above all, I made a sincere appeal to him not to meet Mr. Guterres empty-handed. On February 1, 2026, in this same column and in an article titled “Shall we sell Cyprus for a checkpoint?”, I asked the President to drop the cheap maneuvers that only irritate instead of solving anything. I urged him to open the Mia Milia checkpoint and link it to the resumption of talks. Only that way, at minimal cost, would he stop once again making things easier for Turkey, relieving it for the moment of the inconvenience of the Cyprus problem and shifting extra pressure onto it. He did not do it.
He will probably get one more chance. Will he manage, even at the last moment, to rise to the height of the circumstances? I hope so, even if I don’t really believe it.
