We once feared we would forget. Now we risk getting used to it…

Opinion 1974Cyprus problemwar We once feared we would forget. Now we risk getting used to it… Occupied North Cyprus Relevant News Greece won’t seek Turkey’s approval for interconnector cable, Gerapetritis says 31 August 2026 We once feared we would forget. Now we risk getting used to it… 31 August 2026 Christodoulides-Erhürman meeting postponed after Kyrenia boat disaster 31 August 2026 Panayiota Charalambous 31 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber We grew up with “I do not forget”: with our parents’ stories about the homes they left behind, with the photographs of the missing, with Kyrenia living in our collective memory as a place to which we would one day return. Only the decades passed. The refugees grew old; others died. The second and third generations grew up. The crossing points became part of daily life. And the occupation, from a living wound, gradually became an uncomfortable normality. That is perhaps the most dangerous point we have reached. Because the Cyprus problem does not end because we have grown tired of talking about it. It does not end because a new generation has other problems and other priorities. And it certainly does not end because we have become used to crossing the checkpoints for a day out, while just a few kilometres away there is still a divided homeland. The problem is that, for years now, we seem to have locked ourselves into a political contradiction of our own making: declaring that we want a solution, while fearing the political cost of an agreement more than the cost of no agreement at all. Every year that passes does not bring us closer to 1974. It pushes 1974 further into the distance. The people who lived through the war and displacement are fewer. Memories change. Properties acquire new users and new values. The facts on the ground harden. An entire generation of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots is growing up having experienced division more than a shared homeland. And we continue to behave as though we have unlimited time. We do not. This does not mean we should accept just any solution. A settlement is not an end in itself. It must be functional, viable, safeguard human rights and security, create real conditions for peaceful coexistence and be able to stand the test of time. But there is a vast difference between saying “we will not accept a bad solution” and saying “we will not accept any solution that requires difficult compromises”. Because there will be no settlement of the Cyprus problem without compromises. Not because some foreign power demands it, but because the history of this land has created realities that cannot be erased with slogans. Anyone who believes Cyprus can simply go back to the way it was before 1974 is refusing to look reality in the eye. And anyone who believes partition can be made painless is refusing reality too. Our choice, therefore, is not between a perfect solution and a bad one. It is between the effort to achieve a difficult, painful but possible reunification, and partition quietly setting like concrete. And I am no longer sure we understand how close we are to the second. For years, we learned to speak mainly about Turkish intransigence. And of course we cannot ignore Turkey’s decisive role, nor its responsibility for the occupation and the preservation of the current status quo. But a society that truly wants to change its history must also look at itself in the mirror. Because we cannot ask the other side to abandon its maximalist positions while we remain, over time, attached to our own. And we cannot expect a solution if every leader knows that it is far safer, politically, for a negotiation to fail than for it to succeed. The Cyprus problem does not need more heroes. It needs politicians who will tell the truth. The truth that reunification will come at a cost. The truth that some of the expectations cultivated for decades cannot be fulfilled. The truth that both communities will have to live with difficult compromises. But also the other truth: that partition has a cost too. And that cost is not theoretical. It is the permanent presence of a foreign army, the consolidation of two separate realities, the loss of our shared history and, ultimately, the danger that our children will come to see as normal what, for their parents and grandparents, was a national tragedy. Perhaps, then, it is time to change the way we talk about the Cyprus problem. Not with less memory, but with more honesty. To remember the invasion, but without raising our children in hatred. To defend the rights of refugees without trapping them in endless waiting. To insist on return and restitution where they are possible, without presenting as guaranteed a future that reality itself has made extraordinarily difficult. And above all, to remember that opposite us there is not some abstract “other side”, but people who also carry their own history, their own fears and their own losses. Peace does not require us to agree on the past. It requires us to decide whether we still want a shared future. Perhaps this is the last great opportunity for the Cyprus problem. Not because some magical moment will arrive when everything favours an agreement, but because at some point history stops waiting for us — and starts being written without us. 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