After half a century and several global efforts, Greece and Turkey’s ‘Cyprus problem’ is no closer to being resolved
When Turkey invaded this island in 1974, it left a political and cultural rupture that has still not healed. Locals look back on all the solutions that have failed, and the ones that might some day succeed
In Nicosia, Europe’s only divided capital, drinking coffee can be a political statement.
Marina Christofides, the Greek-Cypriot author of The Traitor’s Club, her memoir of growing up in Cyprus, remembers how “Turkish” coffee vanished after Turkey invaded the island in 1974. “Practically overnight, it became Greek coffee … as if they could not bear to imbibe the substance that bore the name of the mortal enemy,” she wrote.
Fifty years later, Turkish coffee in the Republic of Cyprus, the Greek-speaking southern two-thirds of the island, is still called “Greek” coffee. In spite of decades of efforts to reassemble the broken island, it remains divided by the UN-patrolled buffer zone that stretches 180 kilometres from east to west, separating the Turkish and Greek sides.
Recent UN-sponsored meetings between Cyprus’s Greek and Turkish leaders, aimed at reviving the unification talks, failed to work their magic, though the mere fact they happened at all was seen as encouraging by some observers.
They also believe that the newfound affinity between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis could open the door for talks, though nothing has been set.
“We are seeing a rare moment of opportunity for the Cyprus Issue, and I hope that both leaders will seize it as if it were the last, because it may well be,” said Colin Stewart, the Canadian who is the current Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the island and head of peacekeeping force.
But the Turkish-Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar, says the talks to make Cyprus becoming a federation – a single country governed by a central government with guarantees for the Turkish Cypriots – have been exhausted. “The federation idea is dead forever,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Tatar, who is 64 and was born in Nicosia, has been the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 2020. He is a Cambridge-educated economist who later became an accountant in London, then a television executive in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and in Nicosia.
He said he finds his job frustrating because he has no official international standing. No country other than Turkey recognizes northern Cyprus as a proper state. Unlike the Republic of Cyprus in the south, it is not a member of the European Union and is under trade embargo from the EU, southern Cyprus and many other countries. “I cannot meet anyone in the EU in any official capacity,” he said. “They are very much against Turkish Cypriots.”
