It wasn’t just a ship that sank in the waters off Kyrenia, nor were just a few people drowned. Cyprus itself was shipwrecked in the waters off Kyrenia
It wasn’t just a catamaran that sank in the waters off Kyrenia. Nor did just thirty or so people lose their lives. In the waters off Kyrenia, prospects, hope, and humanity were drowned. The latter, in particular—given the posts filled with callousness that appeared on a truly sickening scale—seems to have abandoned this society for good.
The rotten catamaran has dragged the essential ingredient of peace down to the bottom of the sea. That which begins first within the individual and then extends to societies and those in power. Here, after more than half a century, we have failed to bring our feelings and emotions into order. That is why, after all, we do not know exactly what we want. On both sides of the barbed wire.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
But on the political level, too, things are as murky as ever. Once again, one side is rejecting the help offered by the other. This time it’s the Turkish Cypriot side, but the privilege of refusal doesn’t rest solely with them. Our own side, in similar situations, has also refused the help offered to it. And so we entrench ourselves in what each side calls its own state, even as we are supposedly striving for reunification. Our leaders do not even desire the simple symbolism of cooperation, which would also change the mood among citizens. And then we wonder why so many people are spewing vitriol and acrimony on social media. And then we wonder why the international community has grown tired of us and is exasperated by the immaturity we display every time an attempt is made to do something.
It is now clear that everyone in Cyprus is going their own way. The frantic effort to cancel certain events in the occupied areas that preceded the tragic shipwreck does not create pressure on the Turkish Cypriots, as some believe. On the contrary, it fuels a surge in Turkish Cypriot nationalism that now extends even to people who fought for a solution to the problem. It creates a suffocating atmosphere in a society that will now collectively seek other ways to survive. And its only way out is not to grovel before the Greek Cypriot authorities, as some envision, but either to leave Cyprus, or to surrender completely into the hands of Turkey.
I sincerely wonder what the two leaders will go to tell the UN Secretary-General at the end of the month. Will Mr. Christodoulides go to announce that he succeeded in canceling a music festival and a soccer camp in the occupied territories? And will Mr. Erhurman go to announce that he refused the assistance offered to him by the Greek Cypriot side? And, really, will both of them expect a man who is in the final months of his term to take on new initiatives and take an interest in a problem that those directly affected have long since given up on?
No one can tear down a wall that some people have been working day and night to keep standing. The strange thing is that these very same people feign surprise when they realize that this wall is now deeply rooted in people’s minds as well.
It wasn’t just a ship that sank in the waters off Kyrenia, nor were just a few people drowned. In the waters off Kyrenia, Cyprus itself was shipwrecked. And it is not the sea’s fault, just as it was not the sea’s fault back then when “our beloved sea of Kyrenia brought them to us”…
