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There is a perception that I myself stubbornly supported for many years: the belief that we can solve the Cyprus problem with the Turkish Cypriots.
There have been opportunities, and with the exception of AKEL’s U-turn on the Annan Plan in 2004 – which we know had transparently crass party-political motives, the dogma of “take care of the party like you take care of your eyes” – we will never know exactly what went wrong to sink all these efforts. Some more likely failed due to our own fault, whilst the last one foundered because of Ankara’s intransigence, as United Nations records showed several years later, on two points which, yes, we could not and should not have accepted.
We crucified Anastasiades at the time, though it was understandable given the lack of evidence. The others – the “opposition” let’s call them – had the same information and rejected it either because they believed the Presidential Palace’s position or simply because they considered the solution wasn’t good for the country or their interests. We ought to stand apart from our egotism rather than dogmatic insistence, even if it makes us uncomfortable.
Those who consider themselves authorities can of course continue, despite Andreas Mavroyiannis’s explanations and everything else.
The problem with this mindset is that it increasingly resembles… Actually Existing Socialism. Beginning with the romantic yet violent and foolish theory of a conflicted German Jew who was later baptised Christian and subsequently became an atheist, Karl Marx, and all the other deficient ideas added after the Bolshevik Coup of 1917. A coup because it was a move with minimal popular support, was baptised the October Revolution, when the only revolution that had occurred was the overthrow of the Tsars in February 1917, with mass mobilisation of the people. Not by the gang of coup plotters around Lenin, who during the actual revolution was still living in Switzerland, not Russia.
The notion that we can still solve the Cyprus problem with the Turkish Cypriots is not violent, of course, but it is equally detached from reality and as such, especially today, becomes dangerous.
As off-target and lacking in balance as the conviction of the unreformed believers in Actually Existing Socialism – that their bankrupt totalitarian nonsense, which before collapsing of its own accord led tens of millions of people to death and hundreds of millions to misery at the hands of deranged dictators – is the belief today that if Erhürman wins the October “presidential elections”, we can solve the Cyprus problem. With Turkish Cypriots who are now a minority.
When Turkey projects its expansionism in the Middle East, grey-zones half the Aegean with the Blue Homeland doctrine, and claims Cyprus’s EEZ. We have only two choices: Either we continue to hold the line with the West, the EU, the United States and Israel, and try to become as important as possible for our own protection – because that’s how it works – or we simply enter into such a process believing that Erhürman, even if he wants to, will impose the slightest thing on Ankara. And we’ll sign our own fate.
Because whoever thinks the Bizonal Bicommunal Federation is still on the table, or that sovereign equalities and all the rest refer to a BBF or any federation whatsoever, has probably reached a clinical stage.
The hysteria about Israel recently, using useful idiots, isn’t about Gaza. It’s precisely about this critical geopolitical game being played. There aren’t many options. There are two. In the real world, not the parallel universe. The ones we mentioned.
When one hears Erhürman, before even being elected, saying essentially what Tatar says – because the substance, I insist, isn’t the Cyprus problem of negotiations but the broader game – when one hears him making suggestions about our relations with Israel, which has armoured us – and itself certainly – from Ankara’s drones and missiles, hence the Turkish threats, and when one considers that this is the environment, something is missing in the whole approach.
My position on Gaza is well known; I’ve written it countless times, prompted by events years before 7 October. Again, there is still no evidence that genocide is being committed, and to the recent “findings” of politically coloured UN “experts” and various NGOs appearing as genocide researchers, there have been responses from equivalent bodies denouncing these “opinions” as politically coloured and politically motivated. And so they are. There’s a lot of Qatari money involved.
As in every war, I’m certain crimes were committed. That there were extremists who killed civilians, as happens everywhere. But if Israel, with the power it possesses, wanted to commit genocide in an area of 365 square kilometres (a quarter the size of Larnaca district!), it wouldn’t still be going two years later. It would have finished in a month. Nor would it drop leaflets for area evacuation before the IDF enters, nor send messages to residents’ mobiles, nor let them leave.
The issue isn’t Gaza. The truth will emerge after the war. We’ll be here. The issue is where we’re heading in this new environment.
It’s whether we’ll continue to be where we should be, in the West, with our allies, critical where necessary, with good relations with all states in the region, or whether we’ll do the somersault – first abandoning this course, then allowing the dogmatists who were tested and didn’t simply fail but destroyed us as well to sell us selective morality and give us lessons. And from there becoming romantic suicides.
To make a solution “with the Turkish Cypriots” and Erhürman, who will naturally be more conciliatory, and probably authentically is, forgetting that whoever Erhürman is means nothing anymore – he suits Ankara to detach from Tatar’s extremism, because that extremism has given what it could give and now Ankara needs the West and Europe and must appear good. Erhürman is the glove.
Truly, what would our foreign policy look like today in a common state, and what scope would it have not to stand against but to at least distance itself from that of Ankara, of Tatar, of Erhürman, and of the useful idiots here who are pushing things to extremes and onto Erdoğan’s pitch as well as that of the rest of the Islamic brotherhood, just so the party might come off life support, even if the country burns? Is this what we want?
This article was first published on 26.09.2025
