Chrysanthemums and Chrysostomos

The Church of Cyprus has a definitely far limited clout on politics compared to the Makarios period when the Archbishop was the "national leader" and the president of the state at the same time.

While trying to salvage the collapsed Greek economy, to what extent did the Archbishop and his company of merry men's gross mismanagement of the Church's funds play a role? Or, was it because of the Information Age that the Greek Cypriots finally reached the Age of Enlightenment and decided to leave the Church and its nationalistic obsessions? Perhaps Archbishop Chrysostomos has been acting in his obsession of seeking revenge on the 1922 lynching of Metropolitan Chrysostomos Kalafatis of Smyrna (İzmir)?

Whatever, he has always been a die-hard opponent of any sort of deal with the Turkish Cypriots, who he has considered a "foreigner minority," except for giving that small "Turkish occupation residue" group minority rights in a Greek state. Chrysostomos has been an ardent opponent of the federation giving Turkish Cypriots any sort of "veto power."

Have you heard? Last week, Archbishop Chrysostomos has once again liberated himself from the bonds of reason, fired a set of salvoes on both Greek Cypriot politicians, the United Nations Secretary-General's special Cyprus envoy and of course, the Turkish Cypriots. As expected, his first target was the "federation goal" of the Cyprus peacemaking talks that have been ongoing since 1977 at least. At a high level agreement held in 1977, Makarios III—who was also the first president of Cyprus—and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktaş, set creation of a bi-zonal and bi-communal federation as the target of the process.

He must have forgotten that the 1963 Akritas Plan that aimed to cleanse Turkish Cypriots...