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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
NICOSIA – Known as the “Graveyard of Diplomats” over failures to reunify the island since 1974 Turkish invasions seized the northern third, Cyprus shows no signs of coming together again, marking the 50th anniversary.
The last round of talks collapsed in July, 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana when then Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci said a 35,000-strong Turkish army on the occupied side would never leave and Turkish President Recep Tayyip also wanted the right of further military intervention.
When Akinci lost 2020 elections to hardline nationalist Ersin Tatar, it marked a turning point to an apparent dead end. Tatar said he’s not interested in reunification but wants a permanent partition of two states.
That, he said, would require the United Nations and world recognizing the isolated self-declared republic that no other country in the world apart from Turkey accepts but the call has fallen on deaf ears.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres – who was at the Swiss talks – has sent yet another Special Envoy, Colombian diplomat Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar, who had experience negotiating agreements to end her country’s civil war.
But she, although only a short time in the position, hasn’t been able to gain any momentum, with Tatar digging in his heels and the Greek-Cypriot side that’s a member of the European Union now with Nikos Christodoulides as President.
Christodoulides was also Foreign Minister and knows the dilemma well but Holguin hasn’t been able to get the two sides to sit down and talk and Tatar shows no sign of wanting to do so.
The Economist said the stalemate seems doomed to continue and said that, “a resolution to the division of Cyprus remains far away. Unless, that is, you consider the status quo to be a resolution of sorts.”
Cyprus won independence from the Colonial rule of Britain in 1960 but almost immediately saw disputes between Greek-Cypriots in the south and Turkish-Cypriots in the north although both sides had both ethnicities.
After violence broke out in Nicosia, the capital, in 1963, the UN sent in peacekeepers. In 1974 the military junta that ruled Greece tried to unite Cyprus with Greece, ousting the President, Archbishop Makarios.
THE STANDOFF GOES ON
That led Turkey to invade, calling it a peace operation, landing on July 20 and seizing about 3 percent of the north and encroaching further a month later until occupying about 36 percent, which today has mostly Turkish-Cypriots.
A UN peacekeeping force patrols the dividing line, known as the Green Line, but the standoff has seen both sides drawing red lines they won’t cross politically nor make concessions to bring reunification – which Tatar no longer wants.
So far in 2024, there’s been a 70 percent increase in breaches on the UN buffer zone compared to 2023, mainly over construction from both sides inside the neutral territory, said Euronews. In 2023, there was a 60% rise in such violations.
There haven’t even been any real talks about having talks apart from separate statements put out on both sides, the UN long-standing proposal being for a federated bi-zonal republic with Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot zones.
“Our goal at this stage is to get to some tangible next steps as soon as possible. It is a fact that we are facing difficulties. The position from the Turkish side at the moment puts forward the issues of sovereign equality and equal international status as conditions for accepting to re-engage in a process,” Greek-Cypriot negotiator Menelaos Menelaou told the news site.
“Essentially it is an insurmountable obstacle because it escapes the framework determined by the UN resolutions, it is outside the historical compromise of the bi-communal federation, it is beyond the limits of a single state that must be ensured through the solution of the Cyprus problem and there is no room for deviation whatsoever,” he added.
Reuters noted that every week for the past 20 years, a group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots have gathered in a cobbled courtyard in Nicosia to reminisce about the past and dream of a reunited homeland, now getting bleaker.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/decades-after-division-cypriots-still-hope-unity-2024-07-18/
Andreas Paralikis and friends jokingly refer to themselves as the Traitors Club, among a growing civil society seeking to forge links across the divide where politicians have failed, and forget the past despite missing victims on both sides.
The members want a lasting peace. “We have become such good friends,” said Paralikis, a Greek-Cypriot. Hasan Chirakli, a Turkish-Cypriot said that, “This place has given us the opportunity of having some hope for the Cyprus problem. To show people that Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots can be friends, and live together.”
