Now that we have marked the 50th anniversaries of the coup and Turkish invasion, we should heed the advice of the UNSG’s envoy Maria Angela Holguin, who said in her farewell letter that “to heal the past and improve the present everyone must look at the future in a healthier and more hopeful way.”
This has never happened in the 50 years since the invasion. While it was perfectly understandable for people to think about the past in the aftermath of the war, when the wounds were open and they were still suffering its devastating consequences, there is less justification for this behaviour half a century later. This was the point Holguin was making in a diplomatic way.
In fairness, none of our presidents ever sold a prospective settlement as a win-win, at best, describing it as a ‘painful compromise’, while the majority of the party leaders and the politicians invariably focused on the negative aspects of any proposal, dismissing it as ‘unworkable’. More recently, former president Nicos Anastasiades came up with the slogan that we cannot accept ‘any settlement’ to justify his rejection of a proposed deal in Crans-Montana. He did not want Cyprus to become ‘a Turkish protectorate’, a slogan he has been repeating ever since.
The Turkish Cypriot leadership, after the sidelining of Rauf Denktash in 2004, was more positive about a settlement, seeing EU membership as a big incentive for the north. But Ersin Tatar, the current leader is more like Denktash, setting conditions for a resumption of talks that the Greek Cypriot side would not accept, rather than discussing the big prospects of a unified Cyprus for all its citizens.
President Nicos Christodoulides, although he has the inclination to put a positive spin on everything he talks about in public, has avoided ever mentioning the settlement dividend. He has repeatedly stated that the status quo was unsustainable and insisted he was ready for a resumption of the talks, but has never spoken positively about a settlement, nor has he taken any practical, positive initiative to help break the deadlock of the last seven years.
Indicative of the president’s ambiguous stance was a speech last weekend at a memorial service for soldiers that were killed in the invasion. “I believe that soon we will have a substantive effort to achieve our aim of ending the occupation and reuniting our country, because we cannot do otherwise; the current situation cannot be the settlement of the Cyprus issue and the future of our country,” he said.
The only reason he wants a settlement is because the status quo is unsustainable and not because he sees any benefits for the people from a reunited country, without foreign troops, that is a member of the EU, that has normal relations with Turkey, that can develop its energy reserves and become a real pillar of stability in an unstable region. This is the only way the ensure peace, security and prosperity for future generations. A unified and stable Cyprus will attract more international business and more investment, and its economy will take off, benefiting everyone.
As Holguin said, “history teaches us that positive changes occur when leaders recognise what is at stake and focus on the long-term wellbeing of their communities.” No leader, with the exception of Mustafa Akinci, has had the courage to focus on the peace dividend and talk about the countless benefits of a settlement that would return the whole country to normality and ensure the peaceful future of its residents. Instead, they deal with all the perceived negatives of a prospective settlement, playing on people’s fears and insecurities that the leaders had been cultivating for years.
The steadily improving relations between Greece and Turkey have now created an opportunity for Cyprus. With the mother countries working constructively on normalising their relations, they are opening the way. This is the reason the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has not given up on Cyprus after Holguin’s failure to find common ground between the two sides and there is talk of him “proposing the next steps to the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders”.
That there will be next steps is encouraging, but only the leaders can move things forward. And for this to happen they need to tell people how a settlement would improve their lives in the future. Alternatively, they can remain anchored in the past, so the that the future generation can mark the 100th anniversary of the invasion.
