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Nikos Christodoulides can fill the South with as many foreign militaries as he likes, from American, French and Egyptian troops to Israeli missile systems, but all he is achieving is pushing Turkish Cypriots further away. For more than 52 years, peace on this island has been maintained by the Turkish Armed Forces, and he has chosen to answer it by militarising the Greek Cypriot side. At the same time, his side has worked to cancel children's football camps and music festivals in the North, targeting the very spaces where our young people meet the wider world. This is not a leader who seeks reunification or cooperation, and no parade of foreign soldiers will change that. Above it all, the TRNC flag on the Beşparmak mountains remains exactly where it has always been.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Archbishop Makarios III set out to remove Turkish Cypriots from political life, stripping away the rights guaranteed to them as co-founders of the 1960 Republic. Georgios Grivas pursued the same goal through violence, using EOKA to carry out ethnic cleansing and massacres against Turkish Cypriot villages. One worked through politics and the other through force, yet until at least 1967 the two men worked hand in hand. Today, Nikos Christodoulides presents himself to the world as pro-solution and pro-dialogue, while his ELAM allies, led by Christos Christou, lead the charge to isolate Turkish Cypriots in every way possible, from children's football camps in Barcelona to music festivals in the North. The division of labour is the same as it was sixty years ago, with one side speaking the language of dialogue abroad while the other works to shut Turkish Cypriots out of the world. The only difference between then and now is that Turkish Cypriots have Türkiye protecting them.

The boycott of Cyprus Forum 2026 is growing. After Mayor Mehmet Harmancı's title was changed under ELAM pressure, LDH leader Engin Deniz Görgüner and Youth Federation President Mustafa Özbilgehan have both withdrawn, and Greek Cypriot Mayor Prountzos has stepped back in solidarity. The Forum now admits the title was changed because it "is not accepted by the Greek Cypriot side", then points to its 220 speakers as if principle were a numbers game. Dialogue that depends on one side's permission is not dialogue.