Voice Across
As 2026 begins, Cyprus finds itself once again in one of those moments diplomats instinctively welcome and history often tests harshly. A change in leadership on the Turkish Cypriot side has reopened political channels that, until recently, had narrowed to near symbolism. Meetings are under way, technical committees have been reactivated, international actors are once again visibly engaged and the public tone has softened compared with the confrontational atmosphere that dominated recent years.
The question, as always in Cyprus, is whether this renewed momentum will be translated into substance or whether familiar structural limits will once again assert themselves.
If one needs a word for this phase, “momentum” is not misplaced. If one needs a sentence, it is this: there is an opportunity, but it comes with conditions.
Realism requires acknowledging that Cyprus has seen such moments before. The island’s modern political history is marked not by a shortage of initiatives, but by repeated collisions between hopeful atmospheres and unresolved fundamentals. Optimism without discipline has never been enough here. What is required is an optimism that understands power, memory and limits.
Modality of the exercise
The election of Tufan Erhürman as Turkish Cypriot leader created genuine expectations. International actors, including the United Nations, read the transition as an opening to test whether a more methodical approach could widen political space. The implicit calculation was straightforward: if the sides remain divided on the final destination, perhaps they can at least agree on the rules of the journey.
Erhürman approached this moment with a framework that is modest in tone but demanding in substance. He set out four conditions for a meaningful process. Negotiations must be time-bound. Previous convergences must be preserved rather than erased. Political equality must be operational, not rhetorical. And if talks collapse again, Turkish Cypriots should not be pushed back into a pre-negotiation status quo they increasingly experience as punitive.
These conditions are not tactical maneuvers. They are institutional safeguards drawn from experience. Cypriots on both sides have learned that endless negotiations exhaust societies while leaving structural asymmetries intact. The fear is not talks themselves, but talks that go nowhere and quietly normalize imbalance.
Political equality and the risk of strategic evasion
The most difficult element remains political equality in practice. The Greek Cypriot leadership continues to resist mechanisms such as rotating presidency, arguing that they conflict with its understanding of democratic governance. In recent months, this resistance has taken more elaborate and strategic forms. At times, rotating presidency is portrayed as an institutional anomaly incompatible with majority rule. At other times, it is deliberately entangled with unrelated dossiers, such as the presence of Turkish troops or the system of guarantees, despite the fact that governance and security are conceptually and legally distinct negotiation tracks.
Another recurring tactic has been to invite the Turkish Cypriot side to engage simultaneously on all six parameters outlined by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the Crans-Montana conference in 2017. Those parameters were meant to structure negotiations once sufficient common ground existed. They were never designed as a procedural shield to avoid confronting political equality at the outset. Folding rotating presidency into a broader package before its principle is accepted does not resolve the core issue; it postpones it.
From the Turkish Cypriot perspective, this is precisely the crux of the problem. Political equality cannot be treated as one bargaining chip among many, nor can it be made conditional on progress in unrelated areas. For Turkish Cypriots, political equality is not a concession to be traded. It is the foundation upon which any legitimate governance model must rest. Without concrete mechanisms that guarantee effective participation at the highest level of decision-making, equality risks being reduced to elegant declarations rather than lived political reality.
This concern is rooted in experience, not theory. Past negotiation rounds have shown that abstract commitments to equality, absent enforceable institutional safeguards, leave ample room for marginalization in practice. Rotating presidency is therefore not about symbolism or prestige. It is about structurally protecting the partnership character of any future state rather than leaving it dependent on goodwill.
Confidence-building measures: Necessary but not sufficient
In the absence of convergence on fundamentals, confidence-building measures have become the main arena of engagement. Crossing points, staffing levels, administrative procedures, halloumi certification, environmental cooperation and the work of bi-communal bodies dominate the agenda. There has been tangible progress: queues shortened, communication channels reopened, technical cooperation resumed.
These steps matter. For ordinary people, confidence-building measures are not abstractions. They shape daily life. They reduce friction and humanize contact. In a conflict sustained as much by psychology as by law, such measures have genuine value.
Yet realism demands clarity. Confidence-building measures manage conflict; they do not resolve it. They stabilize the present without defining the future. The danger arises when they quietly become a comfort zone, substituting political convergence rather than preparing the ground for it.
Recent signals underline this risk. Reports in Greek Cypriot media suggesting preparations for new property-related cases are a reminder of how quickly atmospheres can sour. Property in Cyprus is never merely a legal issue. It is a political instrument with deep emotional and historical weight. Targeting individuals through prosecutions or legal pressure risks transforming a collective political dispute into personalized confrontation, hardening attitudes on both sides and poisoning the very climate required for peace.
The EU presidency trap: From opportunity to fiasco?
This fragility is likely to be tested further as the Greek Cypriot side assumes the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the first half of the year. For President Nikos Christodoulides and his supporters in Brussels, this six-month window is viewed as a strategic opportunity. The ambition is not limited to visibility. The presidency is expected to be used to position the Greek Cypriot administration as a regional “hub,” strengthening ties between the European Union and countries such as Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, while projecting diplomatic relevance.
None of this is inherently problematic. What raises concern is Christodoulides’ declared intention to turn the Cyprus problem itself into a “European issue,” seeking to reframe it as a matter to be resolved through European Union principles alongside United Nations resolutions. This approach is presented as a breakthrough strategy. In practice, it risks becoming a source of escalation.
The danger lies in treating the EU Presidency as leverage. Using it to pressure Türkiye, to instrumentalize Türkiye–EU relations or to invite Turkish leaders into a framework designed to extract concessions on Cyprus would be a strategic miscalculation. It is precisely here that the risk of a presidency fiasco emerges.
The underlying assumption appears to be that Türkiye can be isolated internationally, that Turkish Cypriots can be sidelined politically and that a “federal solution” can be imposed by gradually absorbing the north into the Greek Cypriot system. This assumption is not new. It has failed before.
More importantly, it directly collides with the opportunity created by Erhürman’s election and his methodological proposal. A leadership change on the Turkish Cypriot side opened space for a new process logic. Christodoulides’ fixation on using European leverage risks wasting that opening. A leader pursuing maximalist ambitions cannot credibly engage with a methodology built on political equality.
Nor is it likely that the EU Presidency will deliver meaningful gains against Türkiye. Hungary is expected to block any attempt to weaponize the presidency. Germany, acutely aware of its strategic relationship with Ankara, has no incentive to sacrifice long-term interests for short-term Greek Cypriot ambitions. Italy and Spain are similarly unlikely to endorse such a course. Reports that NATO circles are already uneasy with Christodoulides’ posture should be read as an early warning.
This does not mean the presidency will be cost-free. Attempts at pressure may still generate friction and provoke counter-reactions. But they are far more likely to deepen polarization than to produce results.
Beyond zero-sum thinking
There is also an unavoidable historical dimension that must be acknowledged. Turkish Cypriots have demonstrated their capacity for change, compromise and political courage more than once. The 2004 Annan Plan referendum remains the clearest example. Despite uncertainty and painful concessions, Turkish Cypriots voted overwhelmingly in favor of reunification. That was not a tactical move; it was a strategic choice for a shared future.
A similar readiness was visible during the Geneva and Crans-Montana processes. The Turkish Cypriot side engaged constructively on governance and power-sharing within a United Nations framework that assumed political equality. Change, in other words, has already happened on one side.
What remains missing is a comparable demonstration of change on the Greek Cypriot side regarding political equality in its full meaning. While diplomatic language has evolved, the underlying vision too often remains one of exclusive sovereignty, reducing Turkish Cypriots to a “privileged minority” rather than recognizing them as equal partners. This is not a technical disagreement. It is a clash of political imagination.
Peace processes do not advance through one-sided adaptation. They require reciprocal courage to abandon outdated obsessions. Accepting political equality in full, including rotating presidency, should not be seen as a destabilizing demand. It is the institutional expression of partnership.
This is why the initial acceptance of the first element of the methodological framework, without reference to substantive outcomes, matters. It confirms an incremental approach: build the rules first, then discuss the destination. In Cyprus, patience combined with clarity is not weakness. It is strategic resilience.
The realist–optimist posture, therefore, is not a rhetorical compromise. It is a conscious strategy rooted in experience. Optimism recognizes that the current tone is an asset and should be protected. Realism insists that tone alone will not deliver a settlement without reciprocal political will.
Cyprus does have an opportunity. But it is an opportunity that demands restraint, coherence and honesty. The island does not need another cycle of performative hope followed by predictable disappointment. It needs an optimism that understands limits, respects equality and recognizes that peace sometimes requires letting go of long-held illusions in order to walk toward a common future.