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In an interview, Kiki Dimoula once said that “it’s the pessimist who consumes hope the most. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the guts to be pessimistic. But they do it secretly and cunningly,” suggesting that natural pessimists (like herself) actually harbour the greatest hopes. She continues: “They’re hypocrites. In the midst of absolute sadness, mistrust and constant questioning, they say, it can’t be that something is true, something is beautiful.”
Regular readers of this column will know I don’t usually pepper my articles with quotes from poets, writers, academics or philosophers (I’ll leave that to the influencers who apparently know more Paulo Coelho aphorisms than the man himself!). At most, I might throw in a Stephen King or Poe reference, or perhaps a “if you build it, they will come” film quote. I don’t read Dimoula because I’m generally not into poetry (I’m far too cynical for its romantic, symbolism-laden world), but I stumbled across this excerpt on Reels, and it’s haunted me ever since. Christ, what if she’s right? What if this massive, supposedly impenetrable wall of pessimism I’ve spent nearly all my adult years painstakingly building wasn’t actually to keep hope out, but to stop the hope hidden inside from escaping? A shocking twist worthy of The Silent Patient or anything by Sebastian Fitzek (and that’s the difference between being into culture and pop culture).
But don’t worry, this isn’t one of those columns where the inner workings of my soul will be unleashed upon you like little Regan’s pea soup in Father Karras’s face. The reference to pessimism (or sly hope, according to Ms Dimoula) relates purely to the election results in the occupied territories. However, before you continue, an essential trigger warning: This text does not include an overkill of inverted commas and cringe phraseology like “so-called,” “the so-called,” and “pseudo-” which have been the mainstay of Greek Cypriot armchair resistance for the past 50 years. Right, now that we’ve established this piece won’t read like it was written by the Cyprus News Agency, let’s proceed.
Tufan Erhürman’s landslide victory is indeed a powerful f**k off to Ersin Tatar and his partitionist politics, but still it remains something that is radical, brave, groundbreaking and practically beneficial only for the Turkish Cypriot side. For us, it’ll simply intensify our misery.
I’ve expressed many times my awe and admiration for the tragically lonely and unequal struggle of Turkish Cypriots against Ankara’s theocratic and nationalist steamroller. The way they stand tall against the half-deranged Erdoğan, and his local religious-political lapdogs, is something the Athens- and priest-subjugated Greek Cypriot side could never understand, let alone emulate. How ironic, after all, that the moniker “Iran of the Mediterranean” refers to the Greek Orthodox Republic of Cyprus and not the Muslim north? Consequently, the result not only didn’t surprise me—I was expecting it anyway, as it marks a decade since the last time Turkish Cypriots chose a centre-left leader (Akıncı in 2015), a pattern that began in 2005 with Mehmet Ali Talat. I don’t know if it’s coincidental, deliberate or subconscious, but it seems Turkish Cypriots have decided to give us every ten years an opportunity for genuine rapprochement and a possible solution—an opportunity we traditionally bin like a bouquet from that annoying ex who won’t take the hint.
I’m genuinely happy for our Turkish Cypriot brothers and sisters; they’ve shown once again that they’re decades ahead of the Republic of Cyprus as it sinks into social medievalism. But allow me not to be overly optimistic that this change will cross the dead zone. Of course, the best thing about Erhürman’s election is that Nikos Christodoulides can no longer perform his balancing act on the Cyprus issue with Tatar’s partitionist rhetoric as a safety net. Until now, our President has issued “invitations” and “calls” for dialogue and initiatives towards Turkish Cypriots with the same enthusiasm we say “we should grab a coffee sometime” to an acquaintance you bump into after ages, both knowing full well it’s never going to happen. Now the best thing the new Turkish Cypriot leader can do to screw with ours is, the next time NC delivers one of his familiar quintessentially Christodoulidean formal and vaguely ambiguous “invitations for dialogue with the Turkish Cypriot side,” for Erhürman to reply, “What are you doing Friday lunchtime?” I genuinely want to see our Houdini escape from that one!
But beyond the cold sweat Christodoulides will break every time Erhürman talks about a bizonal, bicommunal federation and not two states, and the rage that’s seized the anti-solutionists who’ve already equated Tufan with Tatar, Denktaş, Erdoğan and even Kemal Atatürk, I don’t believe anything will change on the Cyprus issue. There might be some actions (there’s a limit to how many invitations ours can reject without being exposed), but no substantive developments. And the excuses will be plentiful (first parliamentary elections, then presidential ones), but we know the main one very well: Greek Cypriots don’t want a solution. No solution. No federation. No co-governance with them. They want a solo career, to remain lords of the truncated but purely Greek south, ravaging it like the same five families treating it as a Thessalian feudal estate from the early 20th century (which we’ll never move on from).
Once again, I apologise for the pessimism, and I genuinely hope to be proved wrong (which I doubt will happen because, as we know, cynics are always right). I wish from the depths of my damned soul the best of luck to Tufan Erhürman in his admittedly difficult struggle. Not so much against Ankara, the settlers and Islam. Those, as he’ll discover himself, will seem like a trip to Disneyland compared to NC’s endlessly repeated ad nauseam readiness “for a new negotiation process within the framework defined by the United Nations.”
Brothers and sisters, see you in 2035.
This article was first published on 20.10.2025
