Cyprus Talks: Season Finale and “The Movie”

by Rasıh Reşat

 

In the first case, that's it. The series is over. The cameras stop rolling, the sets are dismantled and everyone goes home.

A season finale is different. It is designed to leave viewers excited, curious and desperate to know what happens next. The final scene usually ends with a cliffhanger, leaving the audience counting the days until the next season begins.

Meanwhile, actors come and go. New faces join the cast, familiar characters disappear, and the entertainment pages are filled with stories about who is leaving, who is joining and when filming will resume.

Sometimes even the director changes. The person who directed the first few seasons may not be around for the next one. A replacement is brought in.

And let's not forget the scriptwriters. Their team changes constantly. Some leave, others arrive, and new storylines are developed.

Now, let us turn to our own long-running television series: The Cyprus Negotiations.

Ahead of Monday's meeting, María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar, the UN Secretary-General's Personal Envoy for Cyprus, gave a series of carefully calculated interviews suggesting that the show might finally be coming to an end.

I am sure she had already delivered the same message to both sides of Nicosia, as well as Ankara, Athens, Brussels, Washington and New York.

Her message was fairly clear: I will leave, say my goodbyes and write my report.

It sounded like the end of the road.

The Cyprus Negotiations were about to be cancelled. At least until someone came up with another series built around the same old story.

But apparently, during Monday's meeting, everyone decided that cancellation was not the best option.

Instead, they agreed on a season finale.

And quite a clever one, too.

The agreement to open two new crossing points and move forward on other confidence-building measures gave the audience just enough encouragement to keep watching. The aim, it seems, was to leave viewers with a pleasant taste in their mouths and a renewed appetite for the next season.

After all, while the television industry makes money from long-running series, the Cyprus problem industry has been producing political capital for decades. And quite successfully, I might add.

At the end of this year, the director will change.

The producers have yet to announce who will take over. There are several candidates. We shall see.

But television has another interesting tradition.

Sometimes, when a successful series ends or takes a break, it produces a film. Usually, the title is followed by the words “The Movie”.

Mission: Impossible started life as a television series. So did Star Trek. Sex and the City also made the journey from television screens to cinemas.

All became films after establishing themselves on television.

And it seems our own Cyprus Negotiations series is following the same formula.

Monday's meeting may have been the season finale, but before the next season begins, there could be a special production for the dedicated audience and, naturally, for the Cyprus problem industry.

Cyprus Negotiations: The Movie.

And where better to film it than the United Nations headquarters in New York?

Perhaps some of the cast will change. Perhaps new scenes will be added to the script. Perhaps characters who have been repeating the same lines for decades will finally have something different to say.

We shall watch and see.

Now, I must make something clear.

As someone who has always taken the Cyprus problem seriously and tried to look at developments with a degree of optimism, please do not read this column as an expression of lost hope.

That is not my intention.

I am simply suggesting that it will be a very long time before this particular television series is taken off the air.

Remember Coronation Street?

The British television soap opera first aired in December 1960 and is still running.

Generations have changed. Actors have come and gone. Directors and scriptwriters have been replaced. Yet the programme continues.

The Cyprus Negotiations are beginning to look rather similar.

And while one of the show's most influential directors, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has already offered clues about the next season's storyline by repeating his calls for a two-state solution and international recognition of the TRNC, he also made another interesting remark.

In the same statement, he said: “No solution is not a solution.”

Perhaps that tells us something about the future of the series.

Different scripts, different approaches, possibly a few new actors, but the search for a solution will continue.

So, the cameras are not being switched off just yet.

The season may be over, but the story certainly isn't.

And before the next season begins, we may even get to watch The Movie — filmed in New York.