FEW GREEK Cypriots seem to believe in the likelihood of a solution emerging from the current talks, according to a survey published this week, with 61 per cent of those asked saying they had no hope the process would deliver a settlement. At the same time, a large majority – 69 per cent – would like to see a successful outcome leading to a comprehensive settlement.
It’s a paradoxical situation, but one that should in no way surprise us, reflecting as it does the mantra of Cypriot political life: a constantly repeated desire for a solution wrapped in a monologue of mistrust for the partner we claim to want to coax back into a common future.
It’s a scratched record we’ve now been playing for so long that we no longer realise the impact of our words, the blatant contradictions or the absurdity of our situation, let alone the way we have come to be perceived from the outside.
Once again we find ourselves drinking from the last chance saloon, at a “critical stage” of the Cyprus problem. For as long as we can remember we have been at a critical stage of the Cyprus problem, but, padded in the cocoon of our own self-delusion, we fail to realise that this time it truly is critical.
The international community has had enough. It had had enough after Tassos Papadopoulos’ demolition of the Annan plan in 2004. Yet somehow, Demetris Christofias convinced them he was the man to turn the situation round, buying the Greek Cypriots one last dose of international good will when he swept into power with arms outstretched to his partner in the north.
Time and time again, we have run to the international community to seek their good offices in facilitating a solution. And for as long as Rauf Denktash was in power, backed by the monolithically nationalist, militarist Turkish establishment, our own good will was never questioned. But with more nuanced interlocutors in Turkey and the north, we are becoming dangerously exposed.
When Turkey was saying the Cyprus problem had been solved in 1974, there was sympathy for our actions before the international courts, our clamour for a punitive diplomacy against Turkey. But when we are sitting in last chance talks to reunify the island in a compromise solution, such actions smack of bad faith, especially 2004’s “resounding no” still fresh in the ears of our international partners.
With painstaking progress at last being achieved on identification of the missing, what purpose is served by strident calls for war crimes trials and actions before the European Court of Human Rights? Why are we talking about war crimes trials, when the solution we claim to be seeking would envisage a truth and reconciliation committee to draw a line under the undoubted sufferings of the past?
When we know that Turkey’s EU accession course – without which Ankara will never give an inch on Cyprus – is hanging by a thread (for reasons quite unconnected to Cyprus), why are we doing everything in our power to force it off the rails every time Turkey’s progress comes up for review?
What is the impression that we give? That we have no desire for a solution (other than the pie in the sky solution of our dreams), that we feel more comfortable with Turkey as big bad neighbour than a more flexible Turkey whose stated desire to solve the Cyprus problem puts our credibility on the spot.
Take the positions of some of our MEPs: seven out of eight questions put by DIKO’s Antigone Papadopoulou have been on the Cyprus problem, with subjects ranging from the Turkish flag on Pentadaktylos to the fate of missing persons; Eleni Theocharous for her part submitted three questions to the Commission – on the destruction of cultural heritage, the return of Famagusta, and the colonisation of Cyprus.
And when we are not berating the Turks, we are berating our European partners for their failure to endorse our positions – worse, giving them lessons in democracy for their failure to take actions against Turkey that would bring an immediate halt to the talks we claim to want to succeed.
It was bad enough to have a single issue foreign policy when our partners felt sympathy (and perhaps a little guilt) for our plight. Now that they increasingly see bad faith, our credibility is fading fast. The world is grappling with climate change, economic and financial crisis, war in Afghanistan, nuclear crisis in Iran, the ever-simmering volcano of the Middle East, and we expect them to pay attention to our little games on Cyprus.
Giving sanctimonious sermons on political principle is no way to convince people of the rightness of our cause. We lament that the world is against us. If we carry on this way, our rhetoric will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
