‘Turkish side to go to Cyprus talks with stronger hand’

Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) will be going to Geneva with a stronger hand, President Ersin Tatar said Sunday as he discussed the country’s political, economic, social and cultural transformation in an online meeting titled “The Strategic Vision of the TRNC” organized by Eurasia Economic Relations Association.

Northern Cyprus will go to Geneva with a new vision, including cooperation based on the sovereign equality of the two states, and this is a significant step, said Tatar regarding the informal, Cyprus-themed conference. The conference is held under the leadership of the U.N. with the participation of the guarantor countries on April 17-19 in Geneva,

Switzerland. “With Turkey’s growing power in the region and its support for the TRNC, we are going stronger to Geneva at a point of further moving our state forward,” noted Tatar, saying that at the heart of the new vision lies the struggle of the Turkish Cypriot people, martyrs, labor, sacrifice, and the right to self-determination.

He said it is no longer possible to return to a negotiation process on the basis of a federation, which ended with the Greek Cypriots leaving the table in Crans Montana, and that the efforts toward a federation have been exhausted. In a new vision based on the cooperation of two sovereign equal states, Tatar said the two states envisage working in cooperation in many areas, such as water, natural gas, criminal events, and electricity. The EU in the period of the Annan Plan made many promises to the Turkish Cypriots in return for voting in favor in the referendum, but none of them was fulfilled, recalled Tatar. But he also noted that the EU promised the Greek Cypriots to join the EU no matter what the results of the referendum, and soon unilaterally took the Greek Cypriot side to the EU, although they voted against a possible agreement in the referendum. Stressing that this move by the EU was not fair as it gave the Greek Cypriots with a small population the right of veto in the case of Turkey’s EU membership process, Tatar said it is not possible to talk about the neutrality of the EU because of this.