In April 2003, when the checkpoints opened, few imagined what would follow. Decades of propaganda, fear and division collapsed in the face of a simple human need: contact. The myth peddled by Rauf Denktash — that people would end up slaughtering each other in the streets because hatred and blood stood between them — fell apart. And today, 190 million crossings now speak for themselves, so loudly that they can no longer be ignored.
What is striking is not just the number. It is the fact that this movement has continued despite the obstacles first imposed by Denktash and later by the Greek Cypriot leadership and those obsessively fixated on the checkpoints. Despite the hassle. Despite the bureaucracy. Despite the lack of infrastructure. Despite the shrill voices of those who profit politically from division.
Ordinary people imposed this contact on the ground, while politicians and journalists pretend it does not exist. They would rather talk about “red lines” and “guarantees”, ignoring the thousands of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots who cross those same lines every day to see friends, to work, to live. The figures from the Turkish Cypriot side — because on the Greek Cypriot side they are rare, as though we are afraid to see the truth — speak for themselves. Thousands of Cypriots, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike, interact every day, even in periods when a political settlement seems like a distant dream.
In fact, the first quarter of 2026 recorded, for the first time, an increase in movement towards the government-controlled areas: 1,404,608 compared with 1,400,480 towards the occupied areas. A small reversal, but a symbolic one. Turkish Cypriots are now coming more to our side. That is not just a statistical point. It is a political fact.
These millions of crossings are the most powerful answer to those who refuse to see reality. To the lovers of the “second-best solution”, who have made their peace with permanent partition because it is more convenient, or because it serves narrow interests. To the believers in the logic of “a wall — them over there, us over here”. To the partition zealots, who feed off fear and ignorance, who see the person on the other side not as a fellow human being but as a threat.
That, of course, does not apply to Turkey and its troops. But communication has already outpaced the partitionist status quo. All that remains is for the leaders to recognise it. Not with words, but with deeds.
Because the citizens are already ahead.
It is time we stopped pretending the island is divided by walls. It is divided only by a lack of political will. And that wall comes down every time a person crosses to the other side.
190 million times.
And counting.
This article was first published on 16.04.2026.
