Tatar calls on Truss to end isolation of Turkish Cypriots

PRESIDENT Ersin Tatar has called on the new British Prime Minister Liz Truss to help end the isolation of Turkish Cypriots in the TRNC.

Mr Tatar issued the call in a letter of congratulations to Ms Truss, who became the UK’s PM on Tuesday after winning the Conservative Party leadership contest and subsequently being invited to form a new government by the Queen.

“I wholeheartedly congratulate you on being appointed as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,” Mr Tatar said.

“I hope that positive contributions will be made towards fulfilling the promises in ending the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot People.”

Mr Tatar also said in the letter that he “looks forward to working with you in developing relations with the UK, to address issues relating to trade and travel between our two countries, and to help alleviate the hardships this is causing to the estimated 300,000 Turkish Cypriots who live in the UK and the estimated 15,000 British nationals who have made Northern Cyprus their home”.

Referring to the Cyprus issue, President Tatar stated in the letter that the Turkish Cypriot side’s position is that a settlement in Cyprus must be “based on the acknowledgment of the sovereign equality and equal international status” of the two sides of Cyprus.

He expressed his hope that the UK will “fulfil the promises in ending the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot People in the fields of trade, travel, sports and culture”.

Meanwhile the chairman of the British Turkish Cypriot Association, Ersu Ekrem, has also written a letter of congratulations to Ms Truss, in which he brought to her attention the “unlawful claim of the Greek Cypriot side to be the ‘government of the Republic of Cyprus’, the legitimacy of which ceased to exist when the Turkish Cypriots were forcibly ejected from all its organs in 1963”, pointing out that “there has not been a joint central administration capable of representing the entire island for over 58 years”.

“What has existed are two independent self-governing States on the island of Cyprus — a reality that needs to be accepted in the modern day,” he wrote.

Mr Ekrem said that the UK, under Liz Truss’s leadership and as a “neutral guarantor power”, should “recognise these facts and work towards ending the status quo on the island through embracing new solution proposals and supporting the equal rights of Turkish Cypriots”.