Nikos Christodoulides, the newly elected president of the Greek Cypriot administration, is ready to meet with his Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) counterpart, his office said on Monday, a day after his election.
Christodoulides clinched victory in a closely fought election on Sunday. He will represent the Greek Cypriot community if there is a resumption of peace talks on the ethnically split island.
Turkish Cypriot President Ersin Tatar called Christodoulides to congratulate him, a spokesperson for Christodoulides's office said.
"He (Christodoulides) said he would be ready to meet, even before March 1, and would reiterate this through the U.N.," the spokesperson said, referring to the date Christodoulides formally takes over his presidency.
The president-elect also conveyed to Tatar his deepest condolences over the deaths of Turkish Cypriots in the massive earthquake that struck Türkiye and Syria on Feb. 6.
Christodoulides, a former foreign minister, said a resumption of now-stalled peace talks is his priority.
Parties supporting him have typically followed a hard line in reunification talks, and two of his backers reject the United Nations basis for the talks, which is uniting Cyprus under a loose federal umbrella.
The island has been mired in a decadeslong dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots despite a series of diplomatic efforts by the U.N. to achieve a comprehensive settlement.
Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety.
In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece's annexation led to Türkiye's military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the TRNC was founded in 1983.
It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Greek Cypriot administration entered the European Union in 2004, the same year Greek Cypriots thwarted the U.N. Annan Plan to end the longstanding dispute.
Today, Turkish Cyprus supports a solution based on the equal sovereignty of the two states on the island. On the other hand, the Greek side wants a federal solution based on the hegemony of the Greeks.
