Bicommunal football match held in Nicosia as confidence-building initiative
Amateur players from Turkish Cypriot club Yenikent Percinci and Greek Cypriot club Apollon Yeri formed mixed teams in an EU-supported match.
Nicosia, Cyprus. A bicommunal football match involving amateur players from Turkish Cypriot club Yenikent Percinci and Greek Cypriot club Apollon Yeri was held in the capital on Saturday morning. The EU-supported initiative brought players from both clubs together in two mixed teams.
EU-supported initiative
According to the European Union’s infopoint, the match was supported by the EU as a confidence-building initiative aimed at fostering trust, teamwork, mutual respect and reconciliation between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities.
Rather than competing as separate clubs, players from both sides formed two mixed teams.
Following the match, club members, fans, players and their families attended a networking event, which provided an opportunity to build connections and new friendships off the pitch.
Football tensions
The match follows tensions over football between the island’s two sides during the summer.
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman criticised the Greek Cypriot side for undertaking political and diplomatic initiatives aimed at securing the cancellation of a children’s football camp organised by FC Barcelona.
He said the matter, along with similar initiatives by the Greek Cypriot side, served to undermine trust between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities.
Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis responded that “we are doing exactly what an internationally recognised state should do”.
“It is with diplomacy that we are operating, and what we are doing is to clearly present the real state of affairs,” he said in response to a question from the Cyprus Mail.
2013 football agreement
Letymbiotis also referred to a 2013 agreement envisaging the Cyprus Turkish Football Association joining the Cyprus Football Association, which would allow international recognition of Turkish Cypriot football.
The Cyprus Turkish Football Association was formed in 1955 after Turkish Cypriot teams were forbidden from playing matches at football grounds owned by the church.
The agreement was signed in Zurich in 2013 by the chairmen of the two associations, Costas Koutsokoumnis and Hasan Sertoglu, in the presence of then Fifa chairman Sepp Blatter and then Uefa chairman Michel Platini.
Turkish Cypriot football clubs unanimously approved the agreement in 2015.
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