A day to mark in Cyprus: Türkiye and Greece on two parts of the Island

President Tayyip Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were in Cyprus on July 20, on the same occasion but for completely different reasons. For Erdoğan and Türkiye, July 20, 2024, marked the 50th anniversary of the “Peace Operation”, as Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit called it in 1974 to liberate the Island’s Turks from massacres. For Mitsotakis and Greece, it is the 50th anniversary of mourning for the “Turkish occupation” that led to the division of the island.
With its ruling and opposition wings, the Turkish state was in Cyprus; so was the Greek state. Not only Mitsotakis, but Syriza leader Stefanos Kasselakis took part in the ceremony hosted by the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicos Christodoulides, in the south of the divided capital Nicosia.
In the north of the city, Lefkoşa as the Turkish Cypriot capital, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus President Ersin Tatar hosted celebrations. Main opposition CHP leader Özgür Özel traveled to the island a day earlier with party leaders. President Erdoğan, on the other hand, took on board his executive plane Numan Kurtulmuş, the Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, and his People’s Alliance partners, including MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli.

Erdoğan and Mitsotakis

Political actors from Ankara and Athens were in the north and south of the same city with Greek and Turkish names on July 20; Ankara to celebrate, Athens to mourn.
Turkish navy was off of Cyprus with 50 warships, symbolizing the 50 years of protecting Turkish Cypriots, Turkish Stars jets had their air show and tanks paraded in the north.
But neither Erdoğan nor Mitsotakis attacked each other despite delivering different messages, thanks to the recent reconciliation atmosphere between Ankara and Athens; one of the principles being leaving the Cyprus issue out of bilateral talks.
Mitsotakis said “Hellenism will continue to work for the reunification of Cyprus” under a federal state. Underlining that a federalism option is off the table for Ankara, Erdoğan said he would like to see the leaders of the three guarantors of Cyprus, Türkiye, Greece, and the UK visit the two states living as neighbors on the island.

Crisis or stability in Cyprus?

Athens and Nicosia do not like to reminisce about the period before the July 20 operation.
For example, the July 15, 1974 coup that overthrew Makarios, President of Cyprus and also Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, led by the fascist Junta of Colonels that came to power in a coup in Greece in 1967. This coup not only effectively put an end to the Republic of Cyprus, which had been established in 1960 by the consensus of the Greek and Turkish communities on the island and under the guarantees of Türkiye, Britain, and Greece, but also left the Turkish community who had already been subjected to massacres before the coup, facing a crisis of security of life and property.
The last 50 years have seen major and bloody crises in the world. The invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, the bloodbath in the Balkans after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the US occupation of Iraq… As of today, hundreds of thousands have been killed in the Syrian civil war and it continues. Half a million people were killed in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed nearly 40,000 people, most of them civilians.
In Cyprus, apart from a few isolated incidents since 1974, no one has suffered a bloody nose due to inter-communal tensions.
Today, we can speak of stabilizing the separation in Cyprus, not a crisis.

Reunification opportunity missed

Greek Cypriots have property problems and sovereignty issues in the north, yet enjoying the benefits of EU membership, which they only received because of the “Turkish threat”. Turkish Cypriots also have property problems, are under an EU embargo, and have no country other than Türkiye that recognizes them, their priority being to live in security in their land as reliable studies show.
A great opportunity for Cyprus reunification arose in 2004. In Türkiye, the AKP led by Erdogan had formed a single-party government after many years, the internal and external winds were at its back, and it was in this conjuncture that Ankara supported the reunification plan prepared by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The plan also received the support of the US and the European Union. The EU even promised that if Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan Plan in the April 24, 2004 referendum, it would not approve their EU membership, which would take effect on May 1, 2004, and would lift the embargo on Turkish Cypriots.
The Turks approved the plan, but the Greeks rejected it. And the EU broke its promise. Greece’s blackmail of Germany over Poland’s membership was the ostensible reason.
The most important reason for Türkiye’s deep distrust of the EU is the broken promises on Cyprus.

Forced solution and achievable solution

The solution being pushed for in Cyprus, especially by the UK and the US, is a plan to unite two people with different languages, religions, loyalties, and priorities, whose habits and desires for living together are now two generations (50 years) behind, due to their national interests (UK) and domestic policy priorities (US).
The UK has two military bases in Cyprus, it has national interests in having more say on the island. London has a legal basis for pushing this solution as the 1960 Cyprus guarantor. For the US, the influence of the effective Greek lobby in Washington D.C. is important every election period.
With the influence of US President Joe Biden, and by the invitation of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew of İstanbul, Ecumenical to also Eastern Orthodox in North America was invited to the Ukraine Conference in Switzerland on June 15-16. The opening prayer of the Republican Party Congress, which Biden’s rival Donald Trump attended after the assassination attempt of June 14, was offered by the Archbishop of the Americas Elphidophoros born in Bakırköy, Istanbul. Elphidophoros Lambriadis also lead the Cyprus commemoration at St. Nicholas Church in New York on July 20.
The achievable solution is to find a way for Greek and Turkish Cypriots to live side by side rather than intertwined.