Turkey to push for TRNC recognition
TURKEY will “take steps” for international recognition of the TRNC after the latter’s general election on January 7, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said this week.
He told MPs in the Turkish Parliament: “The Greek Cypriot side did not want a solution [to the Cyprus problem] . . . because they did not want to share governance, power and economics with the Turks. We have therefore come to the conclusion that a solution based on previous parameters is not realistic.”
Mr Çavuşoğlu said it was pointless debating the issue ahead of the TRNC election and presidential polls in South Cyprus in February, but “particularly after the TRNC election, we will sit down . . . talk [and] together evaluate what we can do”.
He added: “There is no need for this Parliament to pass a new decree of recognition for the TRNC because we already recognise it, but there is a need for the TRNC’s isolation to be ended, for its passport to be valid in more countries, for more representative offices to be opened in more countries and cities.
“We, as government and opposition, should work together for this [because] the EU has not kept its promises on the matter.”
Meanwhile, there was strong reaction in the South to a surprising “two state” solution being mooted as a possibility by Orthodox Church head Archbishop Chrysostomos and, according to former TRNC president Mehmet Ali Talat, by Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades.
The idea of “two mini-states” under the EU umbrella as “the only sensible step” was also put forward by Turkish Cypriot academic Özay Mehmet. The Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Modern Turkish Studies at Ottawa’s Carleton University added in a Greek Cypriot press column that Mr Guterres “might agree to one last-ditch effort to conclude the negotiations, providing there is an end date and a mutually agreed agenda”.
In a hard hitting statement, Greek Foreign Minister Nicos Kotzias told a Greek state television programme the “Cyprus problem is one of invasion and occupation”, and hailed as a “great success for Greek diplomacy” the fact Turkey’s rights to intervene in Cyprus were “now on the table”.
Reacting this week to comments by TRNC President Mustafa Akıncı that Greek Cypriots needed to “change their mentality” which was preventing a settlement, Mr Anastasiades said he was “prepared to head back to the negotiating table”, but Greek Cypriots could not accept “Turkish intransigence”.