A bicommunal football match was held in Nicosia on Saturday morning, involving amateur players from Turkish Cypriot club Yenikent Percinci and Greek Cypriot club Apollon Yeri, both of which are based in the capital.

According to the European Union’s infopoint, the game was “supported by the EU … as a confidence-building initiative aimed at fostering trust, teamwork, mutual respect, and reconciliation between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities”.

It added that “rather than competing as separate clubs, the players formed two mixed teams comprising members of both sides”.

“Following the match, the members of the two clubs, fans, players, and their families came together at a networking event, providing an opportunity to continue building connections and new friendships off the pitch,” it said.

The match comes with football having been the source of tension between the island’s two sides over the summer, with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman having offered criticism for the Greek Cypriot side for undertaking political and diplomatic initiatives to bring about the cancellation of a children’s football camp organised by FC Barcelona.

He warned that this matter, and other, similar initiatives undertaken by the Greek Cypriot side serve only to “undermine trust” between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities.

Efforts have been made to unite Cypriot football in the past

Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis reacted to this criticism by saying that “we are doing exactly what an internationally recognised state should do”.

“It is with diplomacy that we are operating, and what we are doing is to clearly present the real state of affairs,” he said in response to a question on the matter from the Cyprus Mail.

He also referred to an agreement reached in 2013 which foresaw that the Cyprus Turkish Football Association (CTFA), which was formed in 1955 after Turkish Cypriot teams were forbidden from playing matches at football grounds owned by the church, would join the Cyprus Football Association (CFA), thus allowing international recognition of Turkish Cypriot football.

That agreement was signed in Zurich in 2013 by the chairmen of both Cypriot associations, Costas Koutsokoumnis and Hasan Sertoglu, in the presence of then Fifa chairman Sepp Blatter and then Uefa chairman Michel Platini, with Turkish Cypriot football clubs unanimously approving it in 2015.

However, reports in 2016 stated that it was never implemented as negotiations to bring about the plan’s realisation stalled over a procedural disagreement.

The CFA had wished that the CTFA register in the Republic of Cyprus, but the CTFA insisted that given that its existence predates the republic, its existence should have automatically been recognised.

However, when documentation was requested to prove this, the CTFA did not produce any such documentation, and Koutsokoumnis said that “without it, the procedure cannot continue”.