The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has ruled out negotiating a peace deal with the Greek Cypriot administration on “no common ground.”
"We are ready to talk, but it seems that there is no common ground required for the negotiation process to begin because the other side does not accept our sovereignty,” TRNC President Ersin Tatar said Monday.
“There is no point in negotiating with a party that does not accept our sovereignty," Tatar told reporters after attending a closed session of the TRNC Assembly to inform lawmakers about the latest developments regarding the Cyprus issue.
He added that there are two separate people, two separate states, and two separate democracies on the Island.
The president hailed Türkiye, saying, "With the support of Türkiye, the world learned the facts about Cyprus once again."
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Türkiye, as a guarantor power, prompted by a coup aimed at Greece's annexation of the Island, launched a military intervention dubbed the Cyprus Peace Operation to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the TRNC was founded on Nov. 15, 1983.
Since then, the violence has stopped, but tensions continue, including over who holds sway on the Island's exclusive offshore economic zone, over 40% of which was claimed by Türkiye following recent natural gas discoveries.
Türkiye doesn't recognize the Greek Cypriot administration as a state and still keeps some 35,000 troops in the TRNC.
The Island has recently seen an on-and-off peace process, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Greek Cypriot administration was admitted to the European Union in 2004, the same year they thwarted a U.N. plan to end the longstanding dispute, but only the Greek Cypriot south enjoys its full benefits.
U.N. chief Antonia Guterres assigned a special representative to the Island earlier this year. Maria Cuellar has met with Tatar and Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides several times to explore the possibility of common ground for transitioning to a new and official negotiation process to resolve decades of conflict on the ethnically divided Island.
Cuellar, whose term concludes on July 5, faces an arduous task as Turkish and Greek Cypriots have grown increasingly apart over the years since the last major push to reach a peace settlement in the summer of 2017.
Türkiye and the Turkish Cypriots say the only way to peace now is a two-state deal, as opposed to reunifying the Island as a federation composed of Greek and Turkish Cypriot zones.
Despite rejecting a deal on a federation previously, the majority of Greek Cypriots also reject anything that would formalize a partition, as well as demands for a Turkish Cypriot veto on all federal-level government decisions, permanent Turkish troop presence and Turkish military intervention rights.
Many observers see this latest U.N. initiative as a last chance for Cyprus. Guterres has warned in a recent report: "The prospects of a solution that everyone can accept are gradually fading."
A Cyprus peace deal would reduce a source of potential conflict next door to an unstable Middle East and allow for the easier harnessing of hydrocarbon reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean's natural gas-rich waters where Türkiye has a drillship probing the seabed.
