From Mevlut to Tufan: yes at dinner, no by breakfast

Opinion Cyprus problempoliticsTufan Erhurman From Mevlut to Tufan: yes at dinner, no by breakfast κυπριακό Id 474165 Relevant News From Mevlut to Tufan: yes at dinner, no by breakfast 26 August 2026 Pamboridis’s megaton bomb on organised crime and politics, or just a flashbang? 26 August 2026 Overnight pharmacies on Wednesday, August 26 26 August 2026 Costas Venizelos 26 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber The meetings on the Cyprus problem come and go almost unnoticed these days. Mostly because nobody’s expecting much, and expectations are flying low. The one silver lining: when something genuinely happens, people still sit up and take notice. The public’s instincts haven’t dulled. President Christodoulides and Tufan Erhurman meet this afternoon at the old airport in the buffer zone, chasing the target UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres set: another informal five-party conference on the Cyprus problem, and, ideally, a restart of actual negotiations. Nothing has come out of the talks and contacts that followed the Secretary-General’s visit. Nothing concrete, anyway. But the effort’s clearly being kept on life support. Call it tactics if you like. At least it’s not a dead end. Not yet. Not for the first time in this problem’s long, weary history, confidence-building measures are back at the front of the queue. CBMs are always in demand. Would-be mediators and everyone else involved treat them as a convenient middle path, one they reach for precisely because a real agreement keeps slipping out of reach. But there’s a danger lurking in that middle path: these measures can just as easily cement the facts of the occupation, handing the “separate entities” model a kind of vested status. And that danger is real, because entrenching exactly that is the occupying side’s obvious goal. At this stage, months of talks haven’t managed to create the conditions for actually implementing anything. The occupying side rejected Guterres’s proposal to open two crossing points. Erhurman said yes to it over dinner. By the next day’s meeting, he called it a misunderstanding and rejected it outright. It’s Cavusoglu at Crans-Montana all over again, flip-flopping on the security issue: yes in the morning, no by evening. CBMs go nowhere because the occupying side ties them to its one permanent goal: upgrading the breakaway entity’s standing. It’ll dream up whatever excuse it needs to keep things stuck. What Ankara actually wants, underneath the talk of measures, is to engineer the conditions for “good neighbourly relations” between two states. Worth remembering: at one of those informal five-party meetings in Geneva, the then occupation leader, Ersin Tatar, floated the idea of a “Cyprus Cooperation Council”, modelled on the intergovernmental cooperation councils that sovereign states set up between themselves. It never even made it onto the table. President Christodoulides shut it down, and the UN Secretary-General let it drop. The Cyprus problem was never a trust deficit. It’s an invasion and an ongoing occupation. That distinction can wait for the negotiating table, but it needs to be on the record from day one, so we don’t lose ourselves entirely in the CBM weeds. It’s worth remembering that after more than five decades, almost everything has already been discussed and precious little has actually been delivered. CBMs should serve the search for a solution, not launder the occupation into something normal. Time and again, CBMs get wheeled out precisely when the real substance can’t move forward. At some point, we have to get to that substance. And it’s probably smarter to lead with the international dimension, since that’s what any solution ultimately hinges on. No end to the occupation, no solution. The thorny issues need to be on the table. What’s the point pouring time into demining talks while nobody’s discussing the withdrawal of occupying troops, or scrapping a guarantor system that’s already made itself obsolete? Leading with substance isn’t one option among several. It’s the only road there is, if what we actually want is a solution and not this problem stretched out indefinitely. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Pamboridis’s megaton bomb on organised crime and politics, or just a flashbang? Overnight pharmacies on Wednesday, August 26 Marking a new chapter: EY Cyprus moves to Landmark Office Tower Aradippou bakery fire: structural check first, cause probe to follow Nepal flash flood kills eight; damaging roads, power projects Girl, 12, remains critical after CTO beach drowning that killed her mother Iran and Oman discuss temporary Hormuz corridor as impasse with US drags on Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.