Cyprus Mail 28 December 2025 - by Alper Ali Riza
But the European public will not support a war with Russia
A review of the year and predicting the shape of things to come in 2026 and beyond must begin with events at home. The Cyprus Mail is of course a Cypriot newspaper so events in Cyprus take pride of place.
Alas nothing much happened in Cyprus in 2025 except the result of the Turkish Cypriot elections in October 2025 could turn out to be momentous. The election of Tufan Erhurman as Turkish Cypriot leader with a clear mandate to negotiate a federal solution to the Cyprus problem could be a game changer.
Substantive negotiations can now begin in earnest from the point they left off in 2017 as President Nikos Christodoulides insists. Obviously, he knows how close they came to agreement back then as do the other participants and the UN secretary-general, but unless people are told details of what was agreed in 2017, it is meaningless to tell them that talks will resume from where they left off in 2017.
That said, there is nothing wrong with moving on from agreed positions. The principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed is not set in stone and should only be adhered to when it helps and could easily be ignored when it hinders.
Where appropriate, it can be refined to prevent many years of negotiations to be wasted and allow for meaningful confidence building measures to take place in expectation of a compromise on remaining outstanding issues in the end.
The EU has mastered the art of negotiating on the basis that some things can be agreed in expectation of compromise in the end, and fortunately the EU has a treaty role to play under protocol 10 of Cyprus’ treaty of accession beyond using its political clout with the parties.
At the time of Cyprus’ accession to the EU treaties in 2004 it was hoped the whole of Cyprus would be joining as one federal entity. The UN-EU federation on offer was, however, roundly rejected by the Greek Cypriot community and so the EU legal order had to be suspended in the areas of Cyprus not under the effective control of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC). Hence the need for Protocol 10, which was a temporary expedient until such time as there was a comprehensive settlement in Cyprus.
But Protocol 10 provides that in the event of a settlement the EU would have to decide on the adaptations to that treaty with regard to the Turkish Cypriot community and how to extend the European legal order to the whole island. So the EU needs to be directly and actively engaged from the outset and hopefully contribute to a settlement as a facilitator with a sufficient treaty interest in the outcome. And as RoC will hold the EU presidency the first six months of 2026 there could not be a more auspicious time for the EU to activate its responsibilities under Protocol 10.
In and around the region of Cyprus the war in Gaza came to an end although the full consequences of the scale of destruction there will play out for years to come. The hope for 2026 is that the ceasefire holds and that there are elections in Israel and that the Netanyahu government is voted out of power. And that a full and proper inquiry is held on the security failures that led to the atrocities on October 7, 2023 and Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza that led to the arrest warrant issued against him and his defence minister for war crimes. But war crimes or not, Israel is the RoC’s new best friend and only time will tell whether the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend is as true as it is made out to be.
The other momentous event in the region was the unexpected fall of the Assad regime in Syria. For the time being the new government of Ahmet Al Sharaa has gained respectability as a can-do leader. He is supported by Turkey as well as the US and is on good terms with Russia despite its previous support of the Assad regime. Whether he manages to hold Syria together in 2026 is difficult to gauge although the Americans are hopeful.
Events in UK in 2025 were mostly unremarkable. There is the rise in popularity of the nationalist Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage who is Britain’s answer to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France among other anti-immigrant parties in Europe and America. The Labour government has been very disappointing in 2025 and there is even talk of replacing Keir Starmer, but that is not going to happen and certainly not in 2026.
Both in UK and Europe the major preoccupation has been the war in Ukraine. The prospects of war in the whole of Europe increased exponentially in 2025 ever since the US made it clear that for Americans that the war in Ukraine is taking place in a faraway place of which they know little and care even less.
In any case the US has the same attitude to its backyards in the Western Hemisphere as Russia does in Eurasia including Ukraine, exemplified by America’s current blockade of Venezuela and the covetous eyes it set on Greenland – repeated last week by the newly appointed special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry, who said it was “an honour to serve… to make Greenland part of the US.”
The people of Europe not only do not want war against Russia they are not prepared to psych themselves as if it could happen despite the histrionics of the military intelligence communities.
My prediction for 2026 and years to come is that the people of Europe will vote in governments that like the present US government would patch things up with Russia as no one wants the madness of MAD — mutually assured destruction.
