Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci was ranked 17 in Politico Europe magazine’s ‘Politico 28’ list of annual influential people rankings, it was announced on Wednesday.
The list’s second instalment, deemed the ‘class of 2017’, features the magazine’s predictions on which individuals, one from each European Union member state, are likely to have the most impact in the coming year.
Ranked by the significance of their expected influence on international politics, business, or culture, London mayor Sadiq Khan topped the list.
Named ‘the bridge builder’, Akinci was ranked 17th, with a brief explanatory note citing his contribution to the integration of divided Nicosia’s sewage systems in the late 1970s.
It was, Politico said, “one of the few successful attempts to bridge the ‘Green Line’ splitting the Turkish and Greek sides of the island”.
“Today, as president of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state, Akinci is trying to cross the divide once again – this time by reunifying the entire island,” it added.
The magazine noted that Akinci’s eagerness to search for a solution was luckily matched by the willingness of his “partner on the other side of the line: Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades”.
Both, it noted, supported the 2004 Annan plan for a solution, which was rejected by the Greek Cypriot side.
“This time, unlike in previous negotiations, the two leaders have taken full control of the process, meeting nearly every week for the last few months of 2016,” Politico said.
“The talks stalled in November.”
Akinci himself is quoted in the brief, acknowledging that “it is, of course, not easy to solve a problem that has been ongoing for 50 years”.
“However, together with Mr Anastasiades, we are aware that we are engaged in the final trial of our generation,” Akinci said.
The Greek entry in the list was Andreas Georgiou – ‘the bean counter’, at number 9 – a controversial figure who left the International Monetary Fund in 2010 to take over the Greek statistical service.
There, he soon found that the country had understated the figures it submitted when negotiating its first bailout, and he set about correcting them.
Predictably, this led to more severe bailout terms set by creditors, and by 2013 Georgiou was blamed for intentionally inflating the country’s fiscal deficit and taken to court for “undermining the national interest” and “complicity against the state”.
He stepped down in 2015 and now lives in Maryland, but earlier this year the Greek Supreme Court overturned the ruling of a lower court, which had dropped the charges.
If Georgiou is found guilty, Greece’s entire bailout package – and the country – could go down in flames.