“The Cyprus problem, yet again, for the umpteenth time, sacrificed on the altar of electoral expediency!” writes former minister and current political player Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis. Yet in her analysis, all the electoral expediency belongs to one man: Nikos Christodoulides.
The parties, you see, are utterly devoted to the Cyprus problem. We can all see it! Especially the big party of the right, which puts Cyprus and the solution of the national issue above all else. They do nothing but fight the good fight, far removed from any electoral expediency. And Tufan Erhurman, too, is devoted to solving the Cyprus problem. This is the same Erhurman who faces elections not in two years but in two months, on 6 December. Not for him personally, but for his party, which wants to top the poll and form the “government”.
But never mind that, even though last February UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin issued a written statement bidding us farewell. On one side, she said, Erhurman needed time for the “consolidation of the new leadership”; on the other, “there are the parliamentary elections and the Presidency of the Council of the EU”. Now that there are “parliamentary” and “local” elections in the occupied north, there’s no problem at all.
I point this out because our great analysts, who put the Cyprus problem above everything, don’t see the whole picture. They see only what their ideological tunnel vision lets them see.
“President Christodoulides is constantly trying to create the impression that something is moving on the Cyprus problem,” writes Erato, adding that “to date we have seen dozens of soap bubbles burst, exposing the emptiness, the hollow words, behind the big talk and pompous statements”.
Granted, the President is fond of statements. He churns them out one after another. But for anyone who genuinely wants a process to move towards a solution, that observation can’t be what counts. And on what counts, Nikos Christodoulides did get things moving and created some chance of a return to the negotiating table.
Beyond that, though, there is another reality our enlightened experts refuse to touch. Nobody wants to sit on the other side of the table. Not Ankara, and not the sainted Erhurman (sainted by them, that is).
So, as I wrote on Monday, they had better tell us what they want our side to do to get talks started. If they mean it should accept Erhurman’s terms, let them spell it out and not be shy about it. To get talks started, mind you, not to solve the Cyprus problem. Once they start, there will be further demands.
I’d like to see one of these Cyprus problem experts, who can’t stand soap bubbles but love a surreal soap opera, set down just once everything our side has agreed to (themselves above all). Then perhaps we’d understand the abyss they’ve led us into, and that they’re busy digging another.
Where we stand now is no secret. Christodoulides is being blackmailed into making concessions so that a favourable climate can be created. Holguin says as much in her latest statement from New York. She will come in October, she says, to “continue to encourage both parties to create the conducive environment required for the start of a new process”.
She too has been persuaded that a favourable climate is what we need, rather than Turkey, the occupying power, changing its aims. And for that favourable climate, nothing is asked of Erhurman. Only of Christodoulides. He must grant citizenship to 30,000 to 40,000 children of settlers, open the Mia Milia crossing, clear mines from the buffer zone so the migrants Turkey dumps can come and go safely, and more of the same. None of it helps the climate. All of it helps normalise the entity in the occupied north (that’s what Ankara calls it now: “the two entities”).
But bravo to our bright sparks! Give, give, give, because we want a favourable climate. We do want one, yes. But one that holds out the prospect of ending the occupation, not of legitimising it.
