Military history of Cyprus

Will there finally be a Cyprus settlement? Can the two communal leaders of the divided eastern Mediterranean island manage to come forward before the end of the year with a deal mutually acceptable for the two people sharing Cyprus as their common homeland?

If there is no rotating presidency between the two founding states of a perspective Cypriot federal state, for which accelerated negotiations are being conducted, there will be no peace deal, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots on the eastern Mediterranean island has said. 

The Turkish Cypriot administration has opposed a proposal by the Greek Cypriots for the deployment of some 2,500 police officers from the European Union to operate in the divided eastern Mediterranean island instead of a guarantorship system, as part of the recently-accelerated peace negotiations. 

Social media is a great platform. Would it be possible just a few years ago to see a Greek Cypriot leader lamenting to opposition parties accusing him of rendering his people some sort of a minority by accepting the principle of political equality and agreeing to share key posts with Turkish Cypriots in some organs of the future Cypriot federation?

When they started at a Beirut hotel back in 1968, neither Greek Cypriot negotiator Glafkos Clerides nor Turkish Cypriot counterpart Rauf Denktaş probably thought the problem of power sharing between their two peoples would outlive them.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Aug. 31 that Turkey will continue to do its part for a just and lasting solution to the Cyprus issue. 

Çavuşoğlu's remarks came during a press conference in Nicosia alongside Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün. 

The problem in Cyprus is not finding a resolution to the over 50-year-old power sharing quagmire between the two peoples of the island but to pretend as if a solution is wanted by a certain date. Is this an overstatement? Probably.

When he triggered the current Cyprus problem in February 1962 by demanding the so-called 13-point amendment to the Cyprus Constitution, Archbishop Makarios was stressing something fundamental. He was stressing that those changes must be undertaken to ensure functional governance on the island.

Solving the dispute on the "little" divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus would also bring peace and prosperity to the crisis-riddled region, said Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Ak?nc?.

The left-right grand coalition government in northern Cyprus has collapsed due to its failure to deliver on exactly what it promised to do in the first place: undertake long-overdue reforms and achieve the restructuring of the Turkish Cypriot public administration. Was it a big surprise? Unfortunately, no.