Three in four Greek Cypriots accept federation, survey finds

Three in four Greek Cypriots will accept or tolerate a bizonal, bicommunal federation, according to University of Cyprus research, the first time on record that the figure has exceeded acceptance of a unitary state. The survey put acceptance or tolerance of federation at 75.3 per cent, against 70.3 per cent for a unitary state and 59.1 per cent for the status quo. Some 33.3 per cent would accept or tolerate a two-state solution. The pollsters said acceptance includes those who support an option and those who could live with it if necessary. A total of 92.4 per cent judged the present status quo as unfair, with some 84.9 per cent said they moderately informed in regard to a federation. On the way forward, 82.8 per cent favoured an active route to renewed negotiations, of these, 38.7 per cent preferred restarting from Crans-Montana, 22.2 per cent public assemblies and 21.9 per cent staged or interim implementation. 17.2 per cent of Greek Cypriots surveyed opposed restarting talks outright. Concerns centred mainly on property, with 52.1 per cent fearing refugees may not return to their homes, 41.8 per cent cited political deadlock and 28.1 per cent more daily tensions. Among hopes, 36.8 per cent named property return or compensation and 36.3 per cent freedom of movement or settlement, while 23.1 per cent pointed to employment opportunities for young people; 39 per cent selected none of the hopes offered. Contact between both communities remains limited, as 51.7 per cent reported no contact with Turkish Cypriots, 32.4 per cent had contact less than monthly and 15.9 per cent monthly or more. Acceptance of federation ranged from 70.3 per cent among those with no contact to 87.4 per cent among those in weekly contact, though the researchers stressed the link is correlational. The researchers also drew on bicommunal experiments with representative samples from both sides. Their models identified a plethora of variants of the Guterres Framework that could win a “yes” vote from at least 55 per cent of voters in each community. They demonstrated a public online tool that lets users build settlement packages and compared estimated support in each community.