AFTER a month’s break President Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci meet again on Tuesday to resume negotiations which, according to those in the know, have been going extremely well. Both leaders seem determined to reach an agreement and have been working together to find solutions to problems that arise rather than digging in their heels and refusing to compromise. They do not see the negotiations as a zero-sum game but as a process that through constructive dialogue will lead to a win-win situation.
While the unprecedented, positive approach adopted by the leaders has created a sense of optimism among people on both sides of the dividing line, it has also mobilised the enemies of a compromise who have been methodically working on undermining the procedure and building opposition to it. There are people on both sides that fear their interests would be hurt by a deal and are being used in the anti-solution, propaganda war being waged by politicians and media.
The agreement on how to handle the property issue has been used by both sides to turn people against a settlement. In the north there have been press reports about Greek Cypriots showing up at their houses in the north and telling the Turkish Cypriot living there that they would be kicked out. On this side, newspapers have been carrying indignant articles complaining that the right to property will not be respected and that users had been put on a par with owners. The objective on both sides is to cause resentment and stir hostility in the hope that the improving climate would become toxic again.
Akinci and Anastasiades need to address this issue together and agree on a basic communication strategy, so they do not unintentionally cause problems for each other in their communities. At every meeting they should agree what they will tell the media and how this will be presented in order to minimise the scope for misinformation, which appeared as soon as the property arrangements were announced. Admittedly, the property agreement was so general it could have been interpreted in any number of negative ways, as was the case.
This failure to agree on how things should be presented was evident again this week, as representatives of the two leaders attempted to re-assure their respective sides about the agreement on the property issue by putting their own spin on it. Akinci’s ‘foreign minister’ said on Thursday that a lot of money would be needed to settle the property issue, the implication being that owners would be compensated and users would stay in the houses they were living in. Anastasiades’ spokesman, speaking to overseas Cypriots on the same day, said the criteria submitted by the president for settling the property issue were in double digits, implying the objective was to protect the right of the house owner.
This would suggest that the old antagonism might be slipping back into the process. It highlights the need for the leaders to transmit the same message and be seen to be on the same wavelength, even if they are speaking to different audiences with different concerns and fears. Only then will people be re-assured that their leaders are not misleading them. More importantly, it would bring home the fact Anastasiades and Akinci are deciding together what is in the interest of both communities. Such a strategy could also help gradually dispel the widely-held view that a peace deal is, by definition, a zero-sum game. It is not, and leaders speaking the same language (even if it is in different languages) would be making the point convincingly.
The Cyprus talks have always been plagued by suspicion, mistrust, prejudice and often open hostility. This is what people have been accustomed to for the last 40 years and what they have come to expect. Even the talks between Christofias and Talat, who had a good relationship and were committed to a settlement, never gave the impression there was a real unity of purpose and that they had put behind them the zero-sum game. This may have been because Talat was facing elections, while Christofias lacked the resolve to deal with the relentlessly tough criticism he was subjected to by the hard-line parties.
Anastasiades and Akinci, in contrast, have shown that talks move very fast in an environment of trust and openness. This unity of purpose needs to be reflected in their common communication strategy as it will reinforce the view that the talks have progressed from a zero-sum game to a win-win status.
