The critical moments on the Cyprus problem
19 July 2021 “Kathimerini” weekly newspaper
Article by Stavri Kalopsidiotou (PhD in Public International Law), member of the C.C. of AKEL and the Cyprus problem Office
The Turkish provocative actions against the Republic of Cyprus have unfortunately not ceased. The recent Summit Meeting may have recorded that we are going through a period of de-escalation of the tension in the Eastern Mediterranean, but this conclusion does not at all apply to what is actually happening in Cyprus. The Turkish side’s illegal actions in the enclosed city of Famagusta, with the protagonists being the partitionist Tatar and the Turkish Prime Minister, are intensifying. However, it would be wrong and frivolous if this violation of international law, Resolutions 550 and 789 of the UN Security Council and the temporary status quo in the region were to be perceived as simply just another provocative action.
Through the effort to further alter the situation on the ground, an attempt is underway to deepen the de facto partition of the island, with the preparations for the illegal colonalisation of Varosha and/or with the call for the return of its lawful inhabitants under Turkish Cypriot administration and therefore under conditions of occupation. Undoubtedly, these plans overturn what has been agreed, challenge the settlement of the territorial issue as reflected in the maps previously submitted by the Turkish Cypriot side itself and contradict the UN Secretary General’s Framework of 30 June 2017. In other words, they damage important aspects of the content of the solution and consequently undermine the prospect of a positive outcome.
The dilemma that weighs on the shoulders of the Greek Cypriot leadership in the shadow of these unfavorable developments and their cumulatively dangerous consequences is whether or not it will settle for a campaign of condemnation and an attempt to halt what is happening in Varosha. If the historical experience of the Cyprus problem teaches us anything, it is that the worst fait accompli have taken place during periods of prolonged negotiating stalemate. It is that the unproductive passage of time facilitates Turkey to take actions that consolidate the de facto partition.
Four years after the collapse of the Crans Montana conference on Cyprus and Turkey’s exoneration by the international community for what had transpired, in the wake of the backtracking that occurred around convergences recorded, centred on questioning the political equality of the Turkish Cypriots, following the ensuing Turkish provocative actions in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Republic of Cyprus and Varosha and now Turkey’s official targeting of a two state “solution” in the as expected failed informal Geneva conference, the scope for taking substantive initiatives is getting slimmer. All the more so as attempts to find bridging proposals from various directions are fraught with serious dangers, if one were to consider that there is no compromise option between a united single state and two states.
However, as much as the scope for taking convincing initiatives has narrowed, it has not yet been exhausted. And if anything can put the Cyprus problem back on the rails of the prospect of a solution within the agreed framework or to reveal any of Turkey’s intentions, it is the practical and convincing support for the negotiating acquis – including that of political equality, as it was formulated up to the collapse of the substantive negotiations in 2017. Its questioning has been tested and has failed. While the cycle of bridging proposals that has opened up is again turning the Cyprus problem back to dead-end approaches of the past.
If we once believed that the horizon of the solution was long and there were many paths, today we must face reality and we are called upon to take convincing initiatives, in essence to choose between federation or the definitive partition of Cyprus.
