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What is hopeful about Akıncı? The Cyprus paradigm problem

The Cyprus problem will never be solved without a paradigm shift away from leaders and referenda, and towards "bottom up" re-unification and tangible, small-scale progress.

By Mustafa Öngün
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8676936387_6de788f478_o[1][3].png

Flickr/United Nations Development Program in Europe and CIS. Some rights reserved.“The newly elected leftist leader Mustafa Akıncı brought about more hope for a solution to the Cyprus problem than ever”. This is the new motto of the international and local media interested in this problem. But where does the hope lie? Not many have a proper answer to this question. The relevant actors (Cyprus Government, Turkey, UK, Greece and UN) need to understand where the hope lies.

There is no need to deceive ourselves. For any rational person and actor familiar with the Cyprus problem, it is quite obvious that the problem will not be solved within the existing “paradigm”. We Cypriots know very well that it all starts with hope, turns into a blame-game, ends, and then starts again.

This is what happens in the existing paradigm. Whether the hopes will become reality or fall into the vicious circle of the paradigm depends on understanding and changing the paradigm. But what is this existing paradigm and why do we so desperately need to change it?

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0