Cyprus Mail
Guest ColumnistOpinion

The Cyprus problem: a tragic farce

nicosia a divided captial

By Victor

When Turkey invaded and occupied a third of Cyprus in 1974 the international community condemned Turkey’s actions, but its strong words were not met with actions or results. To this day, Cyprus remains divided.

One of the reasons for the ongoing stalemate is that tiny Cyprus has lost the information game regarding the occupation. Outsmarted by a sharp Turkish foreign policy that lobbies everyone at will, we struggle to keep up. Our allies talk the talk, advocating the rule of international law, but the invading army remains. The so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, as the occupied area calls itself, is embargoed and unrecognised, but for how much longer? With time, its presence is normalised. It has roughly 150,000 native Turkish-Cypriots and 150,000 settlers from Turkey, making up a sizable market. The international embargo is a huge opportunity cost for many organisations. They would love to lift it and begin trade.

In fact, the process has begun. The tourism and real estate industries are prospecting the occupied area, setting up a number of enterprises.

The Republic of Cyprus protests, but its stance is overlooked, playing out like a farce, and here’s why.

It started in the 1950s …

Cyprus, a British colony at the time, rises up in arms against the British Empire to seek union with Greece. What it achieves instead is independence, its sovereignty and safety guaranteed by Greece, Turkey, and the UK.

Unsurprisingly, trouble breaks out between the 80 per cent Greek Cypriot majority and the 20 per cent Turkish Cypriot minority (see the India-Pakistan model), leading to population partitions and sectarian violence.

In the wake of growing instability, the Greek Junta orchestrates a coup d’état in 1974 that gives the excuse to Turkey to invade in the name of a Turkish Cypriot minority. The Greek junta abandons the island to the Turks and then collapses (Kissinger laughs his Mephistophelian laughter) and the Restitution of Greece begins. Democracy returns to Athens while Cyprus is a partially occupied and divided island.

The UK, by the way, sits this one out.

In time, the so-called TRNC is formed, which no one recognises. The UN wags its finger at Turkey and the Security Council condemns the status quo, but nothing changes.

The parody is underway. Cyprus diplomacy enters the international political arena ill-prepared, bringing knives to the gunfight, so to speak. It’s a disaster. Every round of talks leads to a worse situation, a more dangerous position for our tiny state. Breakthroughs are temporary, followed by even greater setbacks. Turkey strengthens its grip over the occupied area, undermining the Cyprus Republic, turning it into a paraplegic entity.

Turkey’s latest leader, neo-Ottoman – and aspiring sultan – Recep Tayyip Erdogan, takes it a step further. He foments partition, threatening a war with Greece, with anyone who opposes him. Cyprus feels the heat. The pressure is on, militarily and asymmetrically. Everyone yak-yaks about facing up to Erdogan regarding Syria, Libya, and the European migrant crisis, among other things, but they lack resolve. They talk about solving the Cyprus Problem, but all they do is trade lemons – bitter lemons – the bulk of which end up in Cypriot mouths.

Turkey consolidates its grip on the Eastern Mediterranean. The Cyprus Republic loses the battle of information. With so many things going wrong in the world – Syria, migrants, Trumpian politics, the rise of far-right nationalism, the Covid-19 pandemic – patience wears thin. The international community becomes unsympathetic. There are much bigger issues to worry about.

The fact that Cypriots can’t form a policy of national unity makes matters worse. It sends the wrong signal. If we can’t band together in the wake of national disaster, who has time for us?

It doesn’t help that in 2010 (before Erdogan flipped the Sultan switch), Turkey makes a brilliant tactical move. It comes to the support of a pro-Palestine flotilla, then uses the global media attention to brand itself a human rights champion, peddling its ‘TRNC’ propaganda. Its duty, it says, is to come to the aid of the oppressed, ethnic Turks most of all.

Talk about a maximalist policy.

It’s part of a strategy that dates back generations, and which goes something like this: install populous minorities in sovereign nations, then have these minorities exercise their political power. Make sure their overall loyalty lies with their Turkish motherland, not their resident country, to meddle in that state’s affairs, if necessary, on their behalf.

The strategy was tried and tested in Bosnia and Kosovo, an area where an Ottoman seed had been planted centuries earlier. Turkey took advantage of the Muslim identity of the region, exploiting the Bosnian cause for its own expansionist agenda, using ethnic Albanians in Serbia and Kosovo to further destabilise the region.

It now has its sights on Eastern Greece while seeking to destabilise Northern and Northwestern Greece through Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia.

It also invaded Syria (a humanitarian disaster) and stirs trouble in Germany where ethnic Turks make up 5 per cent of the population.

In Cyprus, the idea is (was) to set up a confederate statelet for the Turkish ethnic minority.

Imagine dissolving a sovereign state on behalf of an ethnic minority. Talk about maximalism/imperialism.

(Can you imagine Turkey setting up a Turkish confederate statelet in Germany?)

Caught between the sea and an aggressor, Cyprus seeks help, trying to make the best of a bad situation, but things get progressively worse. Turkey turns up the pressure in due course and no longer wants a confederate state. It threatens with partition/annexation of the occupied area, blaming Cyprus for the turn of events, and the world nods in agreement because it has bigger issues to worry about.

Sadly, we have ourselves to blame to a large degree. This is what happens when one mis-frames the problem from the get-go. We refer to our situation as the Cyprus Problem, describing it as such to the international community: the Cyprus ‘Problem’, like it’s an algebra exercise. (Wanted: Political prowess!)

Forgive me, but it’s the Invasion of Cyprus. The Occupation of Cyprus.

Cypriots, by and large, don’t pay attention to such details. We think words don’t matter, that international politics is a game of justice that will serve our interests. We wallow in the warmth of familiarity’s quagmire, sleeping the blissful sleep, feeding the island’s endemic corruption, living the lie, dreaming up Cypriot utopias – golden passports, alignment with non-western powers, plus a number of other ‘clever’ schemes, depending on who’s in charge. Rest assured, all political parties are complicit and accountable, to each their own. They peddle nonsense, fairytales in which the goods of the world will one day fall from the sky, provided we scratch each other’s backs and kick the can yet again. Utopia is on everyone’s mind, underscored by a leviathan public sector that employs half the workforce, vying to take care of everyone because that’s what we do here: take care of everyone, or pretend to.

And so it goes. Cypriots are promised lies by those in charge, which we swallow hook, line and sinker, desperate to be taken care of.

But the utopias turn into onion skins and ashes. The grand narrative is a lie, the result of irrational thought and foul scheming mixed with good old magical (in this case religious) thinking.

It started in the 1960s, after independence, when the leader of the church, Archbishop Makarios, was elected president for three successive terms, an outcome with lasting implications. A culture of blind faith and dependence was born, hinging on promises of absolution. The church’s attitude rubbed off on the nascent administration’s mechanism, shaping the way the state (dys)functioned henceforth.

Ever since, Cyprus has been governed in a manner that promises salvation in the ‘afterlife’ i.e. later, something its subjects may attain if they make contributions and have blind faith and patience in this life.

That’s how Cyprus ended up living in make believe. Voters vote for those who promise them unicorns and favors, reprieves and absolution. Never mind efficiency, accountability, raw reality. ‘Take care of me, pull some strings, I want a piece of the pie, a slice of heaven. Let’s eat while the supplies last, and who’s asking!’

To be fair, not everyone’s like that. Many of us are standup individuals, or try to be, working our backsides off, acknowledging life’s complexity while pushing boundaries, but many more don’t. The majority believe in a system of favors and entitlements, rattling cans and blind faith, hoping the Cyprus problem will be solved in our favor because it’s the right thing to happen.

And then we wonder why Turkey wipes the floor with our diplomacy, the occupied area one step closer to annexation. Why our state keeps failing, our problems recycled at will.

And here we are, ladies and gents. The Cyprus farce in all its glory.

Not funny when you think about it.

 

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