Countdown
“The day will not be long, my exiled bird, once you were taken by the West, now the East brings you back…”
Lyrics to the song “I Méra Ekíni De Tha Argísei” (“That Day Will Not Be Long”) by Greek Manos Loizos came instantly to mind as soon as I read Politis' front-page headline on statements made by the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara that Cyprus must be included in any broader effort to stabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, saying “you cannot have an abscess in the middle of an otherwise healthy body.”
So, reportedly, according to Tom Barrack, it is possible that Trump might soon drop everything and focus on this side of the planet and Cyprus is a “key part” of any regional solution bridging the differences between Greece and Turkey.
The “Cypriot abscess,” to put it more clearly, will be spread across a giant map on the Oval Office desk, while a dozen advisers wait for the president to decide… after he is first briefed on the scenarios for the grand operation and treatment of the century. The cure for the century’s abscess. The Cyprus thorn.
But first, the world’s most powerful man must be briefed on what the differences between Greece and Turkey actually are, if any remain at all.
According to the official Greek position, there are no Greek-Turkish disputes other than the delimitation of the continental shelf between the two countries. The most “advanced” patriotic interpretation of the Greek state is that Cyprus is not a Greek-Turkish dispute. Okay…
The Turks, on the other hand, will claim that everything between Greece and Turkey is disputed, from the Aegean to Crete, and why not even some islands of the Ionian Sea located diagonally across from Libya…
When Donald Trump hears all this, he won’t waste time puzzling over it. With the brilliance overflowing from every neuron, he will, within minutes, unveil his grand ‘bridge’ between Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus.
After assuming his characteristic grandiose expression, he will launch a verbal tomahawk: “Split everything up!”
And what about the Cypriot "abscess"?
Oh, well Trump always has a magic solution:
“Return Famagusta to the Anorthosis fans, who will decide whether the Nea Salamina Varosha residents may also return to their homes…”
In exchange, the Greek Cypriots will hand over the entire buffer zone to the Turks, finalizing the borders of a confederation, and the Republic of Cyprus will be renamed the Greek-Turkish Federal Republic. Instead of a bizonal bicommunal federation (BBF), we’ll have a Greek-Turkish Federation (GTF).
This columnist's sources from Venezuela suggest that once he’s done with Maduro, Trump will fly to Nicosia Airport, controlled by the UN since 1974, where he will make statements announcing the start of the operation to remove the Cypriot "abscess".
The only serious point in all the above is that the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara is not properly informed. The so-called abscess is nothing but a cancer that has been left to the chemotherapy of time…
As all of this unfolds, the same song will be heard in the background:
“And when our hearts meet, everything will shine differently, and the old world will vanish into the shadows of our souls.”