I don't want to believe that they both deliberately dragged their feet right up until the very last minute of Guterres's term
And suddenly, Nikos Christodoulides and Tufan Erhurman are attending festivals together, participating in bicommunal committee meetings, and organizing their official meetings. It took a year after the election of the new Turkish Cypriot leader for these minimal steps to be taken—steps that, if nothing else, create a better atmosphere between them. After the warm embrace at their first meeting, both allowed plenty of water to flow under the bridge of doubt, suspicion, and mutual undermining. This was in spite of the persistent efforts by Guterres and Olguín to send messages of goodwill—and even human connection—to the two communities.
So a year has passed; they’ve held a total of 12 meetings without creating the slightest glimmer of hope, leading up to Tuesday (and 13), when they decided to step out of their closed-door meetings to get some fresh air and see what’s really going on in this place. So be it. If they mean it and if they want to usher in a new era in their relationship with one another, that’s a positive step. Perhaps our politicians will eventually realize that they need to step down from their thrones as grand “chess masters” and seek solutions in simpler matters. And instead of acting like major international players who influence global developments, they should devote a little more attention to this long-suffering island.
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VIDEO: Erhurman’s dance at the Bi-communal Peace Festival in Pyla
Nikolas on “25 Minutes”: “Anita’s withdrawal changes the situation”
I don’t want to believe that both of them deliberately dragged their feet until the very last minute of Guterres’s term. Nor do I believe they are doing so now because Mr. Erhurman wants to bolster the Turkish Republican Party in the upcoming elections in the occupied territories and Mr. Christodoulides wants to justify his systematic raising of expectations, which have been dashed time and again. I’d like to believe (naively?) that at some point they realized that, starting at the end of December, they’ll be left on their own and no one will pay any attention to them (or to us) for a long time. Not even this Olgin, whose appointment was made by the now-outgoing UN Secretary-General.
And then, what will they have to say to their audiences? There will always be elections, starting with our own presidential ones. And in those elections in particular, Mr. Christodoulides will face candidates who will accuse him of, despite his grand declarations, he has spent an entire five-year term without even managing to resume the talks. And he knows (or should know) that the argument that “Turkish intransigence is to blame” is no longer sufficient, nor does it justify the now-dangerous inaction.
The two leaders have a critical two-month period ahead of them. If they don’t wait for the next festival and if they seek out many other ways to demonstrate that they’ve turned a new page—on which they truly want to express their willingness to break through the deadlocksthat have piled up—perhaps they’ll give António Guterres one last chance to leave something tangible for his successor.
If not, let them take responsibility for yet another—this time definitively—wasted five-year period…
