NATO is back on the political agenda, quite possibly thanks to the summit in Turkey, which Erdogan was only too happy to turn into a personal showcase for Turkish dominance in the region. This isn’t the first time NATO has resurfaced in the Cypriot political conversation, and as ever, it collapses into the same tired tug-of-war between DISY and AKEL, one that ends up having precisely nothing to do with the actual substance of the issue.
Rather than the usual vague sloganeering, it would be far more illuminating to hear exactly what position the two parties put to María Ángela Holguín when the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy sat down with them at the corner of Pindarou and Ezekias Papaioannou. Because, according to reports, Holguín has been raising with every single interlocutor the prospect of Cyprus joining NATO as a replacement for the existing guarantee system.
NATO, once a peripheral footnote in foreign policy discussions, now appears, and some reporting bears this out, to have worked its way to the very heart of what the UN is either openly discussing or quietly testing the waters on with those it’s talking to.
So far, there’s been no serious debate on whether NATO can actually replace the 1960 guarantee system, a system which isn’t just dead in the water, but actively stands in the way of any Cyprus settlement.
AKEL has a crystal-clear position on swapping the guarantee system for one involving NATO. Stefanos Stefanou, the party’s General Secretary, told EU ambassadors that AKEL flatly opposes NATO involvement, warning that if that’s the road taken, they can forget about AKEL altogether. At the same time, he made a point of stressing that without his party’s backing, a Cyprus settlement is a tall order. He referred to those testing the waters, but carefully avoided naming names, Holguín included.
AKEL’s objection is specific: replacing the 1960 guarantee system with a new one involving NATO, in their view, runs directly counter to UN Secretary-General Guterres’s own position, which calls for scrapping the guarantee system entirely and replacing it with a mechanism to implement the settlement, minus any military dimension.
DISY hit back at Stefanou’s stance, accusing Cyprus’s Left of “ideological hang-ups.” And yet, on the substance, as Holguín’s meeting with Annita Demetriou made clear, DISY isn’t actually saying much of anything. “DISY believes that resolving the Cyprus problem, along with matters of security and the prospect of NATO membership, must be judged solely on national interest and on safeguarding the Republic and its citizens, not through ideological filters left over from another era,” read the party’s statement, among other things, conveniently sidestepping the actual question of whether it backs swapping the current guarantee system for NATO guarantees.
Beyond the political and ideological positioning of DISY and AKEL, the question left standing is refreshingly simple: can NATO actually replace the guarantee system and scrap the right to unilateral intervention?
Legally and technically, no. NATO cannot extend guarantees to a non-member state. Which means any “NATO as guarantor” solution requires either a reunified Cyprus joining the Alliance outright, or some bespoke mechanism sitting entirely outside the standard guarantee framework.
Politically and practically, scrapping the unilateral right of intervention already looks to be embedded into the Guterres framework. But the real danger, according to those who object, isn’t the formal abolition of the existing right, it’s what replaces it: a new, far less visible mechanism of influence, embedded in NATO structures, command posts, and zones of responsibility, where Turkey, as a full member, is dominant.
On scrapping that unilateral right, everyone agrees, DISY, AKEL, and the government alike. Where AKEL parts ways with DISY and the government is on whether NATO is even the right vehicle to get there, without simply recreating the same old imbalance.
