We are watching every contact, meeting and conversation on the Cyprus problem closely. For the Greek Cypriot side, the aim at this stage is to get negotiations restarted. That will not be easy, for all the activity.
President Nikos Christodoulides and Ankara’s placeman in the occupied north, Tufan Erhurman, met on Tuesday, clearly aware that time is running out. They meet again on Monday. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is also there. His presence could upend things. Or it could change nothing at all.
Fidan’s presence, along with the comings and goings of Maria Angela Holguin, the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy on the Cyprus problem, is stirring optimism, particularly over the opening of new crossing points. That, it seems, is where all sights are set.
The contacts and talks this November will be the last before Antonio Guterres steps down as head of the United Nations. That is a given, and it plainly shapes what happens next.
On Tuesday, Christodoulides and Erhurman also met technical committees, keen to send a signal. They saw two of them, on youth and on cultural heritage, followed by the Civil Society Advisory Body. Such meetings are useful, certainly.
But what really matters is that the technical committees, not just these two but all of them, are geared towards undoing the realities created by the occupation. It has long been our position that a Cyprus settlement will not come through normalising the occupation, but through overturning it.
That goal serves every Cypriot. The entire population. Because how can any agreement be called a solution if it does not free the country from what the occupation has left behind?
The process will go on. Nicosia wants it to, and everything it does confirms as much. What we have yet to see is something concrete from Erhurman, and above all from Fidan. To be precise, the proof has to come from Turkey, the occupying power. After all, it is Turkey that will decide whether this push moves forward and covers the last mile.
