Political parties of Turkish and Greek Cyprus called on their respective leaderships to open more crossings to improve communication between the island’s rival communities.
Ethnically divided Cyprus has nine crossings along the 180-kilometer (116-mile) cease-fire line that separates Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Thousands use them daily with long queues and traffic jams a regular occurrence.
The two sides are now engaged in discussions on opening up more crossing points.
Thirteen Greek and Turkish Cypriot political parties attending an event organized by the Slovak Embassy in Lefkoşa (Nicosia) endorsed a call to their communities’ political leaders to move forward.
“This is a must in order to preserve our common cultural heritage, and to make people’s life much easier,” said Mehmet Harmancı, mayor of the Turkish sector of Nicosia, Lefkoşa.
His Greek Cypriot counterpart Charalambos Prountzos concurred.
“The opening of crossings is not an objective by itself, but it’s a necessary move pending the resolution of the Cyprus issue, to ensure that the two communities meet, the two communities increase their understanding and their empathy toward each other,” he said.
The cease-fire line was completely sealed until April 2003, when Turkish Cypriot authorities opened one crossing, triggering a surge of tens of thousands of Cypriots to areas off-limits to them for decades.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared independence in 1983 after a coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye’s military intervention, dubbed the Cyprus Peace Operation, as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence.
An international embargo against Turkish Cyprus is currently in place in several areas that allow access to international communications, postal services and transport only through Türkiye, which does not recognize Greek Cyprus.
Turkish Cyprus has been committed to demanding a two-state solution that would ensure international recognition and equal sovereignty and status, something the Greek Cypriots reject out of hand.
U.N.-backed reunification talks have been in limbo since the last round collapsed at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017 between guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the U.K.
The U.N. is currently working to revive peace talks in what observers have called a last chance for the island of Cyprus.
A Cyprus peace deal would reduce a source of potential conflict next door to an unstable Middle East and allow for the easier harnessing of hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean’s natural gas-rich waters where Türkiye has a drillship probing the seabed.