It was rather amusing to hear the director of the president’s press office Victoras Papadopoulos responding to the scathing remark made by the former prime minister of Greece, Antonis Samaras, in an interview in a Greek newspaper, To Vima, that also touched President Nikos Christodoulides, who was clearly not the target.

Samaras had said that Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Christodoulides were having a ‘fun exchange’ with Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the EU summit at Budapest, to emphasise his disapproval of the efforts of Greece and Turkey to improve relations. Papadopoulos felt obliged to put the record straight, telling the state broadcaster that Christodoulides did not engage in a ‘fun exchange’ but had a discussion with Erdogan.

Erdogan and Christodoulides speak over a coffee

“If we want to achieve our objectives, we must speak directly with Turkey and this was what the president of the Republic had done,” said Papadopoulos, pointing out that this was the first time since 1963 that a Turkish president had sat to talk to a president of the Cyprus Republic, even if this was over coffee on the sidelines of a conference. Appearances and reading significance into occurrences of no consequences are what matter to the government.

But it appears that the former prime minister hit a raw nerve. The hardline nationalist Samaras had been in Cyprus last month, invited by the hardline Sigma media group and spoke out against any unfair and catastrophic settlements that were being cooked. “Settlements of disguised partition” would be “the next step to full Turkification,” he told his audience, which included the wife of president Christodoulides. This was criticism of the president’s handling of the Cyprus problem although Samaras mentioned no names.

There is a much bigger issue than Cyprus. Samaras’ main target was the New Democracy government and in particular, foreign minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, whose ousting he demanded. He objected to the way Gerapetritis was conducting negotiations with Turkey, while he likened the government’s approach to appeasement. Samaras was expelled by New Democracy at the weekend, in the hope that he would not cause any more damage. In 1993, he had caused the fall of Constantine Mitsotakis’ (father of the current PM) government, with his hardline approach to the Macedonia naming dispute.

How much support he commands now is unknown. What is known is that he belongs to the hardline nationalist grouping that thrives on confrontation and regards any improvement in relations with Turkey as treasonous. Many of the anti-settlement camp in Cyprus look up to Samaras and endorse his firebrand rhetoric and nationalist grandstanding. And they fear that if Greece-Turkey talks progress a Cyprus settlement could eventually be in the works. In fact, Samaras alluded to this in the speech he made in Cyprus. A settlement would be tantamount to “total submission,” partition of Cyprus would lead to the partition of the Aegean he said before asserting that “in saving Cyprus we would be saving Greece.”

There are people in Cyprus that subscribe to this view, which may explain why Papadopoulos was instructed to make it clear that the president was not doing what Samaras, inadvertently accused him of doing in Budapest – “having fun with Erdogan.” Christodoulides had to reassure the local support of Samaras, that unlike Mitsotakis, he was having a serious discussion with Erdogan.