“CRITICAL phase” has become perhaps the most used cliché in the history of the Cyprus problem which has gone through dozens of critical phases, though no serious crisis has ever arisen.
From one “critical phase” to the next, a divided Cyprus was reborn, amassed wealth and joined the European Union. Cypriot society easily overcame the shock from the violent division of 1974; the “drama of Cyprus” has long become nothing more than a rhetorical device. As Hugo Gobi, former UN Special Representative for Cyprus, observes in his book, “Cyprus’ drama is the lack of drama.”
The status quo imposed after the Turkish invasion has proved to be as good as gold. Former President Tassos Papadopoulos once described the status quo as the “second best solution”, acknowledging that the best solution, as he understood it, was unfeasible. And for three decades the status quo was also Rauf Denktash’s most trusty ally.
The fact we haven’t had a single bloody nose in Cyprus since 1974 has been the lynchpin of Turkish propaganda. Turkey claims that the invasion brought calm to the island. By contrast, during its first 25 years the Cyprus problem led to the eradication of the Greek minority in Istanbul, caused the clashes between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in 1958, precipitated the crisis of 1963, led Greece and Turkey to the brink of war in 1964 and 1967 and, of course, brought about the disaster of 1974.
The calm on the island is due to the stability which the status quo offered and which served everyone’s interests. The Greek Cypriots were in control of a Greek state, even if it was half a state, their conscience appeased in that they were “struggling” for the other half. For their part, the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey had finally succeeded in creating a homogeneous body of population and gained control over one-third of the territory of Cyprus. The West pleased the Greeks by not recognising the breakaway regime, and the Turks by tolerating its existence.
The Cypriot model became an international patent for long-term crisis management. The Israelis, for example, increasingly cited Cyprus in their own dispute with the Palestinians. “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad,” commented the Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri.
Thus the Cyprus problem could experience more critical phases without ever actually going through a crisis. And someday, several generations later, partition would come about naturally without causing harm to anyone.
But just as in criminology, so too in diplomacy: the perfect crime does not exist. Somewhere along the line someone makes a fatal mistake, in this case the mistake being the accession of the entire island to the EU. The accession was a silent revolution that shook the very foundations of the status quo. The Cyprus problem is no longer a local dispute, it has become an obstacle to Turkey’s European ambitions. The status quo affects the investments of the 16th largest economy of the world, the EU’s relations with NATO, the security of energy pipelines and the competition between the West and Russia over the fuel pipelines.
The Cyprus problem, then, has entered a critical phase. And this time it’s for real. Those people who are wagering on past experiences and who predict another dead-end without any backlash, have simply not understood that today’s status quo has turned from a source of local stability to one of regional instability and that, one way or another, it will change.
