Our View: Mammari incident shows how dangerous the blame game has become

The UN had not, as of Friday at least, weighed on the December 30 buffer-zone incident near Mammari where a Greek Cypriot father and son were cultivating their land.

This has allowed both sides to fuel their competing narratives.

The Greek Cypriot farmer, Gavriel Yerolemou, said that more than 20 Turkish soldiers and police had attempted to arrest him and his father as they worked in their field, also damaging their tractor. The Turkish Cypriot side says the pair entered the north “illegally”.

The videos out there do not provide any real clarity as to the limits of the ceasefire lines. Hence the need for the UN to weigh in on what actually happened. Without the result of their investigation, all we’re getting is the usual blame game.

President Nikos Christodoulides on the day of the incident described the actions of the Turkish soldiers as “an act of piracy”. He made representations to the UN.

On Friday, Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman called for dialogue and said he also contacted the UN in the aftermath. He criticised Christodoulides for “immediately issuing accusatory statements with unacceptable wording”.

Although Erhurman did not state directly that the farmers were at fault, the north’s ‘foreign ministry’ had earlier said they “illegally entered the north”.

So in the nightmare scenario of the Turkish forces, a father and son were going to what? Try and take back the occupied areas with a tractor and a few farm implements? They were clearly not a threat against an entire army but were lucky to have made it back alive. 

Maybe they did encroach. Maybe it was accidental. Maybe it was deliberately provocative but given the well-documented previous incidents, would they really be so stupid to endanger their own lives knowing the knee-jerk reactions of the Turkish army?

Deliberately provoking Turkish soldiers, as history has shown us many times, most notably in Dherynia 30 years ago this year, can all-too-easily result in getting killed. And there would be no justice ultimately. It’s a game of Russian roulette anyone would be foolish to play and the Greek Cypriot side has the corpses to prove it.

What could have shut down the blame game one way or the other would be having the results of the Unficyp investigation in a timely manner and made public without necessarily pointing the finger. The facts would speak for themselves.

However, the UN sometimes tends to tip-toe around with its “equal distance doctrine”, thinking this will keep both sides, and more especially Turkey, sweet and cooperative.

It doesn’t always work and can serve to further fuel tensions as it allows both sides to insist ad infinitum on their competing narratives.

Whatever the UN records as having happened in Mammari, it was the kind of tension-inducing situation one might expect to occur in the immediate aftermath of a ceasefire, not half a century later, which shows how far there is to go in Cyprus.

At a basic level however, the overreaction by the almighty Turkish army to two men and a tractor was a completely unnecessary show of force, the kind dished out by schoolyard bullies.