THE PARTIAL lifting of restrictions on movement has raised countless problems for the Cyprus government. Some have been solved after much prevaricating, some have been ignored by design, while others are being tackled in instalments. The government=s overriding concern is to avoid any legal or political mistakes that could hand an advantage to the Turkish side.
It therefore prefers to sit on the fence, as EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen observed a week ago, than to take the kind of risk that could bring the two communities closer together. In football terms, it is playing the catenaccio tactic associated with Italian sides – deploying an ultra-defensive formation because the primary objective is not to concede a goal. It does not go on the offensive to create scoring opportunities because this involves risk-taking.
This excessive caution may be the reason why the Education Ministry has yet to respond to the English School over whether the government will offer any financial assistance to Turkish Cypriot pupils who are accepted to the school. Despite not receiving a response, the school, commendably, has taken the initiative. It has already allocated 20 places (in years 2, 3, 4, and 6) for Turkish Cypriots, who will be sitting entrance exams on Thursday, and has advertised a vacancy for a Turkish language teacher.
It would appear that the government is uncertain what to do about the fees. Until now, Turkish Cypriot children who lived in the free areas and attended a private English language school had their tuition fees paid for by the government as they could not be obliged to go to a Greek language state school. But if 100 Turkish Cypriot children from the occupied areas come to English language schools on this side this year, expecting to have their fees paid, it would create problems, and the number could increase to 300 the following year. And then wouldn’t expatriate Greek Cypriots, returning to the island, not be justified in demanding their children’s school fees are also paid by the state because they cannot follow lessons in the Greek language?
Paying the school fees of all Turkish Cypriot children would be a mistake, as it would create a precedent and lead to other groups to making similar demands. But in order to encourage Turkish Cypriots living in the occupied area to attend the English School, which had been a mixed school before 1974, the school could offer a 25 per cent discount on fees which it could finance from other sources. The government could contribute by paying for buses to carry the children from the Ledra Palace checkpoint to the school and back every day, but avoid involvement in any other way.
We may have omitted to mention other practicalities, but the real issue is that Turkish and Greek Cypriot children attending the same school is an excellent development that must be encouraged and assisted by everyone. And most of all by the government, which needs to abandon its instinctive caution and seize this great opportunity, which is the first small step toward reintegration of the two communities.
