Confidence-building measures, or normalising the occupation?

Opinion Cyprus problemoccupied northTufan Erhurman Confidence-building measures, or normalising the occupation? Paraskeyhs Moe Logikh Relevant News Confidence-building measures, or normalising the occupation? 28 August 2026 75-year-old woman’s car catches fire in Peristerona 28 August 2026 Lake formed by landslide on Nepal-Tibet border overflows, halting rescue work 28 August 2026 Aristos Michaelides 28 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber “The negative developments of recent days run counter to the logic of confidence-building measures. Instead of strengthening trust between the two sides, they’ve damaged it further,” Tufan Erhürman said after meeting President Christodoulides two days ago. Which is a masterclass in Turkish propaganda’s favourite trick: deflection. Erhürman clearly picked it up well. He spent years inside the Turkish government. He learned from the best. So what are these “negative developments”? Let’s see. The cancellation of Serbian participation in a festival inside Kyrenia’s historic castle, and the scrapping of Barcelona’s sports campus in the occupied areas. Both got pulled after the Republic of Cyprus’s diplomats, and plenty of others, did nothing more than point out that the area sits under an illegal regime. That has nothing to do with the push for talks. Nothing to do with CBMs either. It’s simply the Republic of Cyprus defending itself. Against a campaign to dismantle it that the Turkish side never once lets up. This time, thankfully, the message got through. Plenty of other times it doesn’t. But Cyprus can’t be expected to stand down every time talks or CBMs come round, while Turkey never pauses its own efforts to undermine the Republic and normalise the occupation. Suppose diplomats simply told the Serbs and the Catalans the truth: that the Cyprus they were talked into visiting, courtesy of Turkey and the occupation regime, is occupied, unrecognised territory, and that their very presence there is illegal. Suppose they explained that Kyrenia Castle is a historic symbol for Greek Cypriots, and that staging a music festival there is both a provocation and a breach of the law. If none of that counts as running counter to the logic of CBMs, or as damaging trust between the two sides, then what does? The abduction of an innocent 45-year-old woman, dragged before a military court as if she were Mata Hari? What about the abduction of a firefighter who, alongside UNFICYP personnel, was checking the buffer zone for wildfire risk on the government-controlled side? Then there’s the attacks on farmers in Avlona, Denia and elsewhere that never stop. And if none of that registers with Erhürman, what about the pipeline announcement linking Cyprus to Turkey, unveiled in the very days he was busy championing CBMs? What about Turkish and Turkish Cypriot officials openly declaring that the only thing on the table is a two-state solution, and nothing else, and Turkey never leaving? Does any of that fit the logic of confidence-building measures? Or does that logic belong to the Grey Wolves instead, who, just before Guterres arrived, planted Turkish flags in the Mediterranean carrying a message from their leader, Devlet Bahçeli, an Erdoğan ally: “Cyprus is Turkish, it is the homeland of the Turks, and it will remain Turkish forever.” The real logic of CBMs is exactly what Nikos Christodoulides set out after his own meeting with Erhürman two days ago. He’d told him, he said, that any confidence-building measures “must bring us closer to a solution, on the basis of the agreed framework, and must not normalise, in any way, the current unacceptable state of affairs.” Let’s hope he sticks to it, and doesn’t buckle under pressure from “our own people” who see normalising the “TRNC” and the occupation as some kind of solution. Because that is precisely what we’re watching Erhürman do. And anyone pretending not to notice is fooling themselves. And trying to fool the rest of us too. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News 75-year-old woman’s car catches fire in Peristerona Lake formed by landslide on Nepal-Tibet border overflows, halting rescue work Nepal declines foreign rescue help, South Korea says it is ‘negotiating’ Trump administration seeks to restrict internships for international students Climate change affects Zugspitze, Germany’s largest glacier On this day: Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech in 1963 Lane closed on Nicosia-Larnaca motorway for cleaning works Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.