Our View: Government ignoring reality over the future of negotiations

The government was not happy with the view of the British High Commissioner, Irfan Siddiq, who said the Turkish Cypriots needed to be given incentives to return to the negotiating table. His comments were ‘unacceptable’ said deputy government spokesman, Yiannis Antoniou, speaking on Trito on Monday, and advised him to “avoid remarks touching on sensitive issues”.

In an interview with Kathimerini on Sunday, Siddiq said the Turkish Cyprios, “want to have the right to talk about a separate state, which provides them with sovereign equality, even if they will not go to the end with this position”. They feel this would strengthen them going into the negotiations, said Siddiq, angering the government which will raise the issue with the British, that according to Antoniou needed to be particularly careful with their positions.

As usual, the government is taking theoretical positions, while completely ignoring reality. The reality is that for the Turkish side the current situation is perfectly acceptable – it will hold onto almost 40 per cent of Cyprus territory, it can keep its army here indefinitely and it can carry on with big developments of Greek Cypriot-owned land. The arrivals of Turkish nationals will continue and eventually the north will become a province of Turkey.

In short, the Turkish side has nothing to lose if the talks do not resume, as this will seal partition. The UN Secretary-General will not be sending another envoy if Maria Angela Holguin fails to revive the peace process in the next few months. It is President Christodoulides who desperately wants a resumption of the talks and has been urging the UNSG for months to appoint a personal envoy, because as he said on countless occasions, the status quo was not sustainable.

Now the envoy is here, the onus is on Christodoulides to ensure talks resume, even if it means accepting a time frame, the Guterres framework without changes and some acknowledgment of the regime. What Siddiq had said about giving incentives to the Turkish Cypriots to return to the negotiating table was nothing more than common sense. It is up to Christodoulides to go the extra mile, to offer incentives, to persuade the Turkish Cypriots to agree to a resumption of talks, on which they are not very keen.

What the Cyprus government fails to see is that the two sides are not in the same position. The Turkish Cypriots have everything they want as things stand and have nothing to lose if there are no talks. The Greek Cypriots refuse to accept this as the comments of the negotiator Menelaos Menelaou indicated. For the talks to resume there had to be tangible indications of political will by the Turkish Cypriot side, he said.

The government has not realised it is not in a position to set conditions, if it wants to secure a resumption of the talks. Unless all this is theatre, and all the government wants is to blame partition on Turkish Cypriot intransigence because it does not want to be debited with it. It can carry on claiming it is in the right, while the Turkey will be left to annex the north.