.
It’s taken 15 months of limbo to get the lights flickering again on the Cyprus talks but there is going to be no magic rabbit pulled out of the hat when another UN envoy arrives on our shores next week.
Cypriot leaders Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci managed to get themselves into the same room on Friday for only the second time since the UN-backed peace talks went belly-up in Switzerland in July 2017.
As is the tradition in Cyprus politics, we are back at ground zero in having talks about talks after failing to get even close to hitting the jackpot. Unfortunately, the sad history of Cyprus settlement negotiations will verify that the players are more than capable of missing the board altogether if the numbers don’t add up.
In an ideal world, Greek and Turkish Cypriots would resolve their problems amicably without having to involve the entire world to find a ready-made template for them. But this being Cyprus, where the politics of division is a serial winner, there are massive trust issues to get over. There is mistrust, distrust and no trust at all.
Which is why there are various attempts to introduce confidence-building measures to help restore faith between two communities that basically live in isolation of each other. And I would guess that the large majority of Cypriots – even if they don’t say it publicly – would like to keep it that way even post-solution.
Arguably, there is nothing much going on in the Cyprus problem arena because there is no groundswell of opinion pressuring the leaders to get a deal over the line before Christmas. There is no popular movement for change, even though most pay lip service to the mantra that the status quo is “unacceptable”.
Take away that status quo, and what do you have left – an uncertain future where anything could happen, and Cyprus could be lost for good.
Cypriots want certainty, not upheaval – they want peace to come with extra toppings, not a slap in the face and an unstable landscape.
For the past 40 years or so, Cyprus talks have been directed toward finding a solution based on a bicommunal, bizonal federation. Nobody actually knows what this means or how it would work in practice, except that it involves some form of power sharing.
Despite most ordinary Cypriots not knowing what a federal solution looks like, to make matters more complicated President Anastasiades has had a masterstroke – he proposes a loose federation.
This maybe to ensure that the federal government will not implode under gridlock as Greek and Turkish Cypriots make a pig’s ear of sharing the spoils – like drawing lots on who should vote for what if there is a disagreement.
Although the President hasn’t explained his Big Idea to us, maybe it’s just a way of avoiding the inevitability of running government by the toss of the coin because that is a what a federal solution Cyprus style will boil down to.
We are a long way from discussing decentralised government as, at the moment, we aren’t even standing on the platform to wait for the peace express to arrive.
To be brutally honest, we are not even in the queue to buy a ticket for that train which has no time of arrival or platform number allocated to it. But nobody seems to be complaining to the ticket office about the train’s non-arrival or the length of the queue.
Not to worry, another UN envoy, Jane Holl Lute, will be arriving on our shores to gauge whether Anastasiades and Akinci are really sincere about wanting to resume mired Cyprus talks. Our politicians usually talk a good fight and eulogise about the wonders of a “just and viable solution” – as if anyone is advocating for the opposite – but lack the vision and courage to see it through.
Needless to say, all the right noises will be made when Lute gets her thermometer out to examine the patient, but will she hear words of true conviction and honesty – the first casualties of frontline Cyprus politics.
The decision to open two new crossing points also feels contrived, it’s taken four years to get to this point and they would be the first to operate since 2010. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of reconciliation and trust building.
Is there a real desire to put Cyprus back together again or is the problem too far gone to be fixed in any meaningful way – who knows.
For now, Cyprus will put Its best suit on for our UN guests in the hope we pass the inspection and avoid any negative remarks on the report card.
At this stage, the best we can hope for is a timetable for when that train might be coming.
