FM Ertuğruloğlu: UN efforts to forge a solution are ‘dead’
THE latest efforts by the United Nations to forge a solution to the Cyprus problem are “dead” Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu has declared.
The minister made the assessment in an interview with Al Jazeera. The interview was conducted by John Psaropoulos, an “independent journalist” based in Athens.
“Informal” UN-hosted talks with the Greek Cypriot side in Geneva at the end of April failed to find “common ground” for the start of official settlement negotiations.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said following the gathering in Switzerland that another round of talks would be held in “probably two to three months” time, although a date has yet to be set.
“There will not be negotiations so long as the Greek Cypriots are treated as if they are the Republic of Cyprus and so long as the Turkish Cypriots are treated as if we are nothing other than a mere community of that Republic,” Mr Ertuğruloğlu was reported to have said. “Equal international status is a must.” He explained that Turkish Cypriots established the Turkish Cypriot Federated State of Cyprus in 1975 “with the expectation that the Greek Cypriots would establish their federated state,” which did not happen.
“Greek Cypriots have no reason to accept this kind of a settlement because they are accepted by the world as the Republic of Cyprus on their own, and as such, they are able to enjoy the benefits of recognition by themselves,” he said. “Why should they ever accept anything less than that?”
Mr Ertuğruloğlu rejected the notion that the TRNC is part of the EU after the bloc admitted the island as a member in 2004, while suspending its acquis communautaire, the body of EU laws, in the North pending a settlement.
“Individually, Turkish Cypriots may have secured for themselves passports and IDs from the Greek Cypriot side but that does not mean that [they] recognise the Greek Cypriots as their state,” he said.
Asked about Mr Guterres’s plans to hold another round of informal talks on the Cyprus issue, Mr Ertuğruloğlu, who said that he will attend, commented: “Depending on the result of that we are going to determine our way forward together with our motherland Turkey.”
Mr Psaropoulos also spoke to Özdil Nami, a former foreign minister and chief negotiator in the last round of formal talks in 2017, who said: “Turkey and our current president [Ersin Tatar] know very well that there is no country other than Turkey who is willing to
recognise the TRNC as an independent sovereign state on an island which, in its entirety, has been accepted as a member of the European Union.
“I think they just wanted to put forward this extreme position of recognition of the TRNC a priori, and then accept to negotiate and hope that someone, whether it is the Americans or the UN or UK, will try and find the middle ground.”
Mr Nami added that there should be “time limits” placed on any future talks and “consequences” for any side that votes against a future plan.
He also touched on the issue of the “guarantee” system in Cyprus, which Turkey invoked for its military intervention in 1974. The Greek Cypriot side wants the system abolished.
“Having no security link with Turkey whatsoever is seen as an extremely dangerous scenario for Turkish Cypriots,” Mr Nami said.
“If Turkey – and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan in particular – is offered the chance to be the champion of the peace process in the eastern Mediterranean, and Erdoğan is once again taken as a legitimate, serious counterpart who does not have to wait by the phone for a call from [US President Joe] Biden, but as a close ally in the great architecture of redesigning the eastern Mediterranean . . . I think he will play ball.”
Al Jazeera also quoted a “senior diplomat” with “deep knowledge” of the Cyprus talks as saying that Turkey is holding a Cyprus agreement “hostage” to economic “concessions from the European Council this month”.
“Turkey will get some concession on immigration and perhaps even a conditional statement that a full customs union will be examined when conditions allow, but they won’t get anything beyond that,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.