Newsroom
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman has stepped into the row over FC Barcelona’s planned youth football camp in the occupied north, saying children should not be denied opportunities because of the island’s political division.
His comments came after Barcelona advertised two September camps at Near East University in occupied Nicosia. The club’s official academy website listed the location as “Lefkosa, Northern Cyprus,” prompting objections from the Greek Cypriot side.
“The sadness of a young Greek Cypriot cannot be my joy, nor can I accept that the sadness of a young Turkish Cypriot be turned into joy for any Greek Cypriot,” Erhürman said.
He argued that young people, artists and sports clubs taking part in events in the occupied areas does not amount to recognition of the breakaway administration. In the same way, he said, a Greek Cypriot attending an event in Turkey does not mean Ankara recognises the Republic of Cyprus.
The Cyprus Football Association has already asked its Spanish counterpart to intervene, while Nea Salamina has called on Barcelona to reconsider the camp and remove wording that could be seen as legitimising the occupied north.
Erhürman sees the matter differently. He referred to long-standing calls by the United Nations, European Union and Council of Europe to ease the isolation of Turkish Cypriots, arguing that sport and culture should not become further casualties of the Cyprus problem.
A cancelled festival or children being prevented from playing football may be presented by some as a “diplomatic success,” he said, but from a human point of view it would be “a clear defeat for humanity.”
For many Greek Cypriots, however, the concern is not that Turkish Cypriot children want to attend a football camp. It is that one of the world’s biggest clubs used “Northern Cyprus” on an official platform, presenting an entity recognised only by Turkey as though it were an internationally accepted country.
That distinction matters in Cyprus. A place name on a website may seem harmless to someone abroad, but here it carries the weight of occupation, displacement and an unresolved conflict stretching back more than half a century.
At the same time, Turkish Cypriot families are likely to see the campaign against the camp as another example of ordinary people, and particularly children, being shut out of international life.
The argument therefore goes well beyond Barcelona. It asks whether sporting opportunities can be separated from the political language used to promote them, and whether a compromise can be found that allows children to play without turning the event into a question of recognition.
