Thanasis Photiou
Last May, the news was cause for celebration. So much so that, for a moment, you could almost believe that somewhere, in some corner of the planet, far from the spotlight, things (and miracles) had happened that we simply knew nothing about. The President of the Republic had not merely told us there was movement. He spoke of an initiative by the secretary-general that was already under way and could lead to “something very specific.” He prepared us for “significant and potentially difficult decisions” and even went so far as to put the possibility of a settlement plan before the end of 2026 on the horizon.
When a president speaks like that, you are entitled to assume that he knows something you do not. That behind the words there are facts, some movement, a message from Ankara, an indication from the secretary-general. Something, at any rate, that would explain the distance between “we are at an impasse” and “we may have a settlement plan.”
Three months passed. António Guterres came to Cyprus, contacts took place, and Christodoulides and Erhürman met a few days ago for almost three hours, only for us to learn that we are entering… a phase of acceleration. They will meet every week. I do not underestimate this. Direct communication between the two leaders is clearly preferable to having none. But if the two leaders meet the secretary-general separately in New York on September 18, “every week” means two meetings between now and then. And I wonder how much work we expect to get done in two meetings when, for months, we have been unable to agree on opening new crossing points. Let’s say we do get somewhere. Let’s say we pull it this way, push it that way, and finally agree on two new crossing points. Let’s hope so. But do you call that progress on the Cyprus problem? And then what? Do we convene a 5+1 and, after taking months to agree on where cars will cross, sit down to resolve territory, property, guarantees, and security?
Doesn’t this story sound somewhat problematic?
Let me not be misunderstood. Those who follow me know that I would be the last person to say we should not try. We have to try. But after half a century, we ought to have learned to distinguish between activity and actually seeing a path forward.
The real question, then, is who came up with this new process and on what basis. If it was pushed by our side, as Nikos Christodoulides himself credits his government with restoring momentum, then what exactly did we know? When we were calling for engagement, applying pressure and, according to the government’s narrative, digging the channel so that the water of the Cyprus problem could flow again, did we have some indication that there was water, or were we simply digging? Because we do have something of a history of drought in this part of the world.
If, on the other hand, the initiative belongs to the secretary-general, what were his indications? What substantive change has there been in the Turkish position? And if the European Union is behind the effort, where exactly is the much-vaunted linkage between the Cyprus problem and EU-Turkish relations, when Brussels does not always appear willing to apply it in the way we understand it? So? Are we heading into the unknown in a boat powered by hope?
This is not a rhetorical question. It is a question of strategy, because a process does not acquire political substance simply because there is a process, nor can the frequency of meetings, by itself, substitute for the absence of real movement.
There is something else, too. We appear to be the bold side. We call for negotiations, momentum, UN involvement, and declare ourselves ready to return to the table tomorrow morning. But bold we are not. We are allowed to appear that way by the certainty that opposite us stands a Turkish side clinging to its maximalist positions and that, therefore, our readiness will never actually have to be tested to the end. What if, at some point, Turkey, for its own tactical reasons, makes a move that is not enough to solve the Cyprus problem but is enough to shift the pressure onto us? It has done so before. Then the alibi goes out the window, and we will have to answer not whether we generally want a solution, but which of the “difficult decisions” the President announced in May we are actually prepared to take.
Because somewhere, the equation simply does not add up.
In May, a secret initiative was under way that could potentially lead us even to a settlement plan. In August, the big news is that the two leaders will meet weekly in an effort to agree on how to proceed. Either there were facts then that we still do not know about, or there were not. And if there were not, someone needs to explain why such expectations were created. Because you cannot, in May, be potentially just a few months away from a settlement plan and, three months later, regard an agreement to meet once a week as acceleration. Unless, in the Cyprus problem, arithmetic has been abolished along with so many other things.
I genuinely want to be proved wrong. I want it to turn out that behind this activity there is something we cannot see, that there are messages, developments or shifts known to those inside the process but not to us. It will be one of those rare occasions when a journalistic assessment will be only too happy to have been so completely wrong.
Until then, however, the question remains painfully simple.
We may have dug the channel. We may have worked very hard to dig it. Is there any water?
And suppose it remains dry. It would hardly be the first time, nor the last.
But… what if the sea recedes?
And how will we then claim that the shoreline was crooked, that it was not we who were sailing crooked, when we had not even anticipated where the shoreline would be?
