It may be the picture that best sums up the surreal reality we live in. On one side, a Turkish warship escorts the research vessel Oruc Reis as it carries on surveying the waters between Anamur and occupied Kyrenia for a planned gas pipeline linking Turkey to the occupied north.
According to the Turkish newspaper ‘Turkiye’, the patrol boat ‘TCG Karatas’ is taking part in Operation ‘Mediterranean Shield’, showing the flag in the area.
That’s half the picture. The other half will be filled in on Saturday by Christodoulides and Erhurman, who will turn up together at the bicommunal peace festival in Pyla.
That was the fruit of their latest meeting on Tuesday, or rather of a whole string of meetings. And no doubt the festival will have a lovely atmosphere. Unless, of course, somebody changes Erhurman’s mind for him. Because we have seen this film before. In 2019, Anastasiades and Akinci were due to attend a bicommunal football match in Pyla together, between Nea Salamina, the refugee club of Famagusta, and the Turkish Cypriot side Magusa, which carries the Turkish name for Famagusta. So Anastasiades went. The UN officials went too, all smiles. Akinci never showed up. Because, he said, he would not get equal treatment.
Anyway. Christodoulides and Erhurman also agreed to take part jointly in forthcoming meetings of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, the Technical Committee on Youth and the Coordinating Committee of the Civil Society Consultative Body. But the festival, an entertainment event with food, drink, music and fun on the futsal pitches in Pyla, is perfectly colour-coordinated with the message of Operation ‘Mediterranean Shield’.
Turkish warships and survey ships circle Cyprus, getting ready to lay a pipeline tying Turkey to the island. Meanwhile, the leaders of Cyprus’s two communities put on a show of fake friendship (frenemies might be nearer the mark) at a fun-filled festival perched on a fragile balance of terror. In Pyla, of all places. With food, drink and music.
Fine, let’s say this sort of thing is needed to improve the climate. Never mind that it has been tried for years on end. But when months of effort to get negotiations restarted produce a joint appearance at a festival in Pyla, it is hard to believe we are heading in the right direction. We are heading in the direction Ankara dictates.
It gets worse. When President Christodoulides was asked whether the agreed joint appearances, such as the Pyla festival, were purely symbolic, he replied: “No, absolutely not, under any circumstances.”
That is the danger, and sadly it is also the reality. They are not symbolic. They are substantive. And it all comes down to the Turkish side’s relentless, unbroken exploitation of even social, sporting and cultural events to entrench the division ever more deeply, along with the conditions for two peoples, two religions and two statelets to live side by side. All in the name of creating a favourable climate, which is also what Guterres’s envoy is after. She is due on the island at some point this month, and has said she will keep encouraging both sides to create the favourable environment required.
Christofias and Talat built themselves a lovely “favourable environment”. So did Anastasiades and Akinci. Then they got down to brass tacks and discovered, along with the UN mediators, that they had forgotten (or pretended to forget) that Turkey was in the room too, standing between them. Year after year, the same saga plays on in endless reruns. The cast changes. The script never does. So why on earth would the ending be any different?
