Topic: What we would have lost
We hear about what we lost. Did anybody think about what we would have lost if the Manifesta project went ahead as per the plan?
We would have lost our case against Turkey (please i am not talking about Turkish Cypriots here, so i do not want everybody to jump in).
Turkey for 32 years has been limiting access to the north. Even down right prohibiting it for the first 30. When Cyprus was accepted in the EU, suddenly (or just before then), the borders opened. Opened in what way though?
Whoever wishes to pass needs to show a passport.
pay a tariff.
if you pass with a car you even need to pay car insurance to the insurance company owned by Denktash.
I can understand the Turkish Cypriots frustrations regarding the cancellation of Manifesta but this feeling, i may assure you is in the Greek Cypriot community too.
I believe that the NFA made the right choice.
It is easy for non Cypriots not to understand the situation here.
It is easy for Turkish Cypriots to blame the Greek Cypriots.
But I do not think that it was easy for the NFA to reach to a decision like the one they did.
What the international community is yet to understand is that the problem is not between the Turkish and the Greek Cypriots (those problems we had faded into history). The problem is between Cyprus (and i include all communities in the island) and Turkey.
So what we would have lost is our case against turkey. As Helene Black rightly states in her post. The political situation here >>transcends the autonomy of curators and organisers<<. And no exhibition small or large has the right to ignore the resolutions by the united nations and the international court of human rights regarding the case for Cyprus.