Aqaba- I have a new article out this week for Janes Intelligence Review (behind a paywall) about last month’s election of Nikos Christodoulides in Cyprus. The election marks a generational shift in [Greek] Cypriot politics as he will be the first president who has no recollection of the 1974 invasion by the Turkish military after the failed coup in Nicosia that was fomented by the junta in Athens. (He was less than a year old during the war). For his generation, the status quo of a frozen conflict on the island was already normalised. That makes the prospect of inter-communal reconciliation more distant, more abstract. The Greek and Turkish-majority sides have already ‘othered’ one another for decades now.
Sure there are well-intentioned NGOs that do genuine work on person-to-person contact (which you must admire) but I’m not sure what kind of traction such efforts can gain under the weight of nearly half a century of forced separation and the crushing geopolitics involved between Greece and Turkey proper. There have been ideas put forward that maybe the discovery of hydrocarbon deposits offshore in Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone might help bring the two sides together under the rubric of mutual interest-mutual net benefit. But I’m afraid the energy resource is more likely a cause for future conflict that paying sudden peace dividends across the Green Line separating the two sides.