By Murat Yıldız
Tufan Erhürman and Nikos Christodoulides meet again on August 26 with confidence-building measures and the next stage of the United Nations process on the table, but the conditions surrounding this round are hardly easier than those that defeated previous attempts. None of the core disputes has disappeared, while the number of states, institutions and interests connected to the Cyprus file has grown.
Before territory, property, guarantees, security or constitutional arrangements are discussed, the two sides still face a more elementary difficulty: they do not share the same understanding of what must be settled before substantive negotiations can properly begin.
Erhürman has spent months defining a four-point methodology under which political equality would be confirmed in advance, including the principle of a rotating presidency; convergences reached before and through Crans-Montana would not be reopened from zero; a renewed process would be results-oriented and subject to a time frame; and another failure would not simply return Turkish Cypriots to precisely the same position they occupied before negotiations began.
He presents these points not as the terms of a final settlement but as the rules for entering another negotiation after decades of negotiations that failed. Confidence-building measures can proceed, methodology must then be agreed and substantive bargaining follows once the sides know the basis on which they are negotiating.
Christodoulides has approached part of the same discussion from another starting point, arguing during earlier exchanges that questions raised in Erhürman's methodology, including political equality, had already been addressed through previous understandings. The sides are therefore not yet arguing over how to solve the same problem; they are still arguing over which problems remain open.
That problem is familiar from Greek-Turkish relations. In Greece and Türkiye Must First Name the Problem, I argued that Athens and Ankara repeatedly enter dialogue without first agreeing on the dispute they are supposed to discuss, with Greece recognizing a comparatively narrow maritime agenda while Türkiye sees a broader group of connected issues. Parallel Monologues examined what follows when governments continue meeting and communicating while attaching different purposes to the same process.
Cyprus is the harder version because the years between failed negotiations did not reduce the number of issues waiting for the next round. They added to them.
The old disputes remained while the map around them changed
Political equality remains contested in its application, along with power-sharing, property, territory, security and guarantees, the future constitutional structure and the international position of the Turkish Cypriot side. The role Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom would play after a settlement also remains part of the argument.
Those disputes were already sufficient to defeat earlier settlement efforts, which makes the first useful comparison with previous rounds a simple one: what, among the obstacles that stopped them, has become easier?
Very little is visible.
The political environment surrounding Cyprus, however, changed substantially while the peace process stalled. Energy discoveries altered the Eastern Mediterranean, regional defense relationships deepened and the European Union acquired a larger role in security. Russia's war against Ukraine accelerated a new European defense architecture, while the war involving Iran, Israel and the United States eventually reached Akrotiri itself when a drone struck the British sovereign base in March.
In 2004, negotiators were trying to settle Cyprus before many of today's defense and regional relationships had acquired their present weight. In 2026, they are trying again after those relationships have developed institutions, budgets, military programs and domestic constituencies of their own.
Israel offers the clearest example of the change.
Türkiye and Israel once maintained one of the region's closest military and security relationships, including extensive defense cooperation during the 1990s. As that relationship deteriorated over the following years, Israel's ties with Greece and the Republic of Cyprus expanded through defense, energy, military training and technology until what initially appeared opportunistic had become institutional.
By 2026, Greece, Israel and the Republic of Cyprus were increasing joint air and naval activities, while Athens was moving ahead with the Achilles Shield air and missile defense program built heavily around Israeli technology. Israeli systems now occupy an increasingly important place in Greece's military modernization at a time when Israeli-Turkish relations have again entered deep confrontation.
Israel has its own security interests, Greece has its own procurement requirements and offshore energy created interests that did not exist during the height of Israeli-Turkish military cooperation, so this cannot be reduced to a simple sequence in which one relationship collapsed and another replaced it. What can be said is that diplomatic space created by confrontation rarely remains empty, and Greece and the Republic of Cyprus have repeatedly used openings created during periods when Türkiye's relations with other regional states deteriorated.
Egypt followed a comparable path after Ankara's relationship with Cairo collapsed following the removal of Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Greek and Republic of Cyprus relations with Egypt subsequently developed through political coordination, energy and military cooperation, eventually reaching a strategic partnership between Cairo and the Republic of Cyprus that now includes structured defense contacts and exercises.
India represents a newer version of the same widening map. Türkiye's exceptionally close political relationship with Pakistan cannot by itself explain India's expanding connections with Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, since New Delhi has independent interests in the Mediterranean, Europe, shipping and defense. Türkiye-Pakistan relations have nevertheless entered the strategic discussion surrounding India's engagement with Athens and the Republic of Cyprus, which in May elevated its relationship with New Delhi to a strategic partnership including a defense cooperation roadmap.
Ankara's foreign policy choices in disputes far from Cyprus can therefore return to the Eastern Mediterranean in forms that were not part of the original calculation. The pattern is not automatic, but it has repeated often enough to deserve attention.
Europe inherited the conflict and institutionalized its consequences
The Cyprus problem was not created as a European Union problem. The constitutional system established in 1960 was built around the Greek and Turkish communities on the island, with Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom holding defined roles as guarantor powers. The European Union had no place in that settlement architecture.
The institutional transformation came on May 1, 2004, when the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union while the political dispute remained unresolved.
Protocol 10 suspended the application of EU law in the areas where the Republic of Cyprus government does not exercise effective control, leaving Turkish Cypriots who hold Republic of Cyprus citizenship as EU citizens while the acquis remains suspended in the territory where most of them live. The conflict did not become European in origin, but its unresolved consequences became embedded in European institutions.
That asymmetry was the subject of Invisible Europeans and later Cyprus Is Divided by Design, Not by Accident. One side entered the Union through the institutions of an internationally recognized member state, while the other remained outside those state-level decision mechanisms even though many Turkish Cypriots themselves became EU citizens.
The 2004 referendums remain politically relevant because Turkish Cypriots approved the United Nations settlement plan and Greek Cypriots rejected it, after which the Council of the European Union declared its determination to end the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot community and facilitate its economic development. Financial assistance followed, but the direct trade proposal that became one of the most visible symbols of the promised opening never produced the political change many Turkish Cypriots expected.
Erhürman's insistence that another unsuccessful negotiation cannot simply return Turkish Cypriots to where they started comes out of that experience. His election was interpreted in some circles as if the arrival of a politician associated with a federal settlement tradition would itself unlock the process, but his first months in office have shown why that expectation placed too much weight on personality. A leader can favor a negotiated federal settlement and still conclude, after the history of previous negotiations, that the rules of the next one must be agreed before another indefinite process begins.
The same applies to Erhürman's description of Turkish Cypriots as one of the two founding communities of the Republic, which rests on the constitutional structure created in 1960 rather than on a political formulation invented by the current Turkish Cypriot leadership.
The Constitution established distinct Greek and Turkish communal categories, divided the Republic's two highest offices between them and created separate communal representation together with substantial constitutional safeguards. The present disagreement concerns what that structure means for a future settlement and how political equality should operate inside it.
This is also where confidence-building measures encounter their political limit. Crossings can be improved, technical committees can work and cooperation in health, environment or daily administration can make life easier without waiting for a comprehensive settlement, but those measures do not resolve disagreement over the political basis on which the two sides are negotiating.
A crossing point may improve daily life while leaving untouched the dispute over the capacity in which the two people opening it sit opposite one another. Technical cooperation can advance without producing the political confidence that the larger process requires.
New security relationships now reach into the settlement environment
France adds a different complication because it was never part of the historical architecture of the Cyprus settlement, yet its military, political and economic presence around the island has become considerably more developed.
Paris and the Republic of Cyprus signed further defense arrangements in June, including a Status of Forces Agreement, while French military involvement around Cyprus became more visible during the regional war and after the attack on Akrotiri. French energy interests around the island add another dimension.
France has its own interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and every right to develop relations with an EU member state. The consequence for the Cyprus process is simply that another country which had no original role in the conflict now has concrete defense and economic interests around the island.
Britain offers an interesting contrast. It remains one of the three guarantor powers and retains sovereign control over Akrotiri and Dhekelia, but Brexit removed it from the EU structures that increasingly influence the island's security environment. The political map surrounding Cyprus has therefore moved further away from the architecture under which the original dispute was defined.
SAFE makes that change unusually visible.
Türkiye is one of NATO's largest military powers, carries substantial responsibilities from the Black Sea toward the alliance's northeastern flank and possesses a defense-industrial base that has become increasingly relevant as European governments rebuild military capacity. Its relationship with the European Union's Security Action for Europe framework nevertheless remains politically constrained.
Türkiye is not completely excluded from SAFE. Third-country suppliers can participate within defined limits, while deeper participation requires an additional arrangement with the European Union. Greece has linked that deeper access to its own security demands and retains the capacity to block an agreement.
The result is a mismatch between military reality and institutional access: a country central to the defense of Europe can encounter political barriers to deeper participation in an EU defense instrument because disputes involving Greece and Cyprus have entered the Union's own security mechanisms.
A conflict created outside the European Union can now affect who participates in the Union's emerging defense architecture.
Discussion of eventual NATO membership for the Republic of Cyprus adds another question to the same environment. Membership requires consensus among allies and therefore Türkiye's approval, making the prospect politically remote under present conditions, but its return to political discussion is itself evidence of how many security files now surround a future Cyprus settlement.
The Cyprus file can now narrow Athens's choices
The balance between Greece and the Republic of Cyprus has changed as well.
For decades Greece was the principal state carrying the Greek Cypriot position internationally. That relationship remains central, but the Republic of Cyprus now possesses tools of its own that earlier governments did not have to the same degree: EU membership, an expanded diplomatic network, defense partnerships and increasingly developed relationships with states outside the original Cyprus system.
How Nicosia Is Narrowing Greece's Room on Türkiye examined the extent to which the Republic's own priorities can now restrict the space available to Athens in managing relations with Türkiye. The issue is not whether Greece supports the Republic of Cyprus, which is historically unsurprising, but what happens when that support begins to intersect with Greek interests that are not identical to those of the Christodoulides government.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis has Greek reasons for keeping relations with Türkiye manageable. The two countries continue to have serious disputes, but they remain neighbors and NATO allies, trade with each other and share security problems that make permanent confrontation costly.
Christodoulides works with another political geography and has deliberately widened the Republic of Cyprus's relationships through the European Union, France, Israel, India, the United States and regional partners. Those ties give the Republic greater diplomatic weight, but they also create circumstances in which Greek solidarity with the Republic of Cyprus and Greece's own management of Türkiye do not necessarily produce the same policy choice.
My assessment is that parts of the Hellenic Republic's room on Türkiye have become constrained by priorities developed under Christodoulides. The old relationship in which Athens carried Cyprus internationally now works in reverse as well, allowing the Cyprus file to narrow the choices available to Athens in areas where the Greek government may have reasons to preserve greater flexibility.
That reversal matters because it adds another feedback mechanism to a negotiation already carrying considerably more external weight than earlier rounds.
The status quo has had decades to build a life of its own
States and institutions are only part of the difficulty. A conflict that survives for more than half a century becomes woven into political careers, professional specialization, administrative routines and economic interests, until operating within the dispute becomes normal for people who have never known the island without it.
Social media has made some of those incentives cheaper, faster and more profitable. A technical committee working quietly across the divide attracts little attention, while a claim that the other community is preparing betrayal, annexation, surrender or war can travel across the island within hours, particularly when it comes from someone whose political, media or professional audience has already been built around the conflict.
The mechanism exists on both sides and does not require a conspiracy. Nor does every journalist, academic, politician or commentator taking a hard position benefit personally from continued division. The problem is more ordinary than that: after decades without settlement, institutions and individuals inevitably adapt to the environment they inhabit, and some of those incentives weaken rather than strengthen when the conflict becomes less politically useful.
The unresolved disputes discussed in Greece and Türkiye Must First Name the Problem had already become usable instruments for governments, parties, bureaucracies, militaries and media environments. Cyprus has had decades to develop the same adaptation, while the attention economy has made confrontation itself easier to monetize and politically exploit.
Any serious settlement process must therefore contend with something that peace plans rarely place inside constitutional chapters: the ecosystem built during the years when there was no settlement.
What changed enough to justify optimism?
Previous rounds failed when fewer external actors were tied to the island through defense and energy, when European security mechanisms had less relevance to the Cyprus file and when the surrounding regional map was less crowded.
The old disagreements have not been cleared away in the meantime. Political equality, constitutional structure, property, territory, security, guarantees, sovereignty and international status remain capable of stopping a negotiation, while the record of earlier failures has made the conditions for entering another one more demanding.
Erhürman is not asking Christodoulides to settle all of those questions before the next process begins. His immediate demand is narrower: agree on the methodology, determine the political basis of the negotiation and avoid another process that can consume years before returning Turkish Cypriots to exactly where they started.
Even that has not produced a common reading.
Anyone expecting this round to achieve what earlier rounds could not should therefore be able to identify the structural condition that has improved enough to justify that expectation.
I cannot find one.
The old Cyprus problem is still at the table, but it no longer comes alone.
Sources: United Nations, TRNC Presidency, Republic of Cyprus Presidency, European Union institutions, Republic of Cyprus Defense Ministry, Reuters, Bosphorus News archive, Bosphorus News review and reporting.