The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) remains firm on its terms for negotiations with the Greek Cypriot administration to end the island’s decades-long ethnic divide ahead of informal talks with the U.N.
“Our terms for talks with Greek Cypriots are clear. The TRNC’s sovereignty and equal status must be registered,” President Ersin Tatar said Monday.
Tatar is scheduled to attend an informal dinner with his Greek Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides based on the proposal of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on Tuesday.
Tatar said he would tell his interlocutors the need to start direct flights and trade to TRNC, the end of embargoes on trade, sports, music and inter-state meetings, and other international obstructions.
“This dinner is an opportunity for us to explain our thesis,” Tatar said, insisting that the TRNC would not budge on its national sovereignty policy and equal international status.
“An agreement for Cyprus is impossible where the Turkish Cypriot state is not included, he added. “It has to be in the form of cooperation between the two states.”
“The Greek Cypriot administration wants talks that fell apart in Crans-Montana in 2017, but a formal negotiation process will never start without the acceptance of Turkish Cypriots; vested rights and open and clear conditions are fulfilled,” Tatar said.
The TRNC entirely broke away from the south and declared independence in 1983 after a coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the Island led to Türkiye’s military intervention, dubbed the Cyprus Peace Operation, as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence.
An international embargo against Turkish Cyprus is currently in place in several areas, allowing access to international communications, postal services and transport only through Türkiye.
Turkish Cyprus has been committed to demanding a two-state solution that would ensure international recognition and equal sovereignty and status, something the Greek Cypriots reject out of hand.
The island has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years. U.N.-backed reunification talks have been in limbo since the last round collapsed at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017 between guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece and the U.K.
The Greek Cypriot administration joined the EU in 2004, the same year Greek Cypriots thwarted a U.N. plan to end the longstanding dispute.
Today, the Turkish side 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.
Guterres assigned a special representative to the Island earlier this year. Maria Cuellar has met with Tatar and 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.
Many observers see this latest U.N. initiative as a last chance for the island. Guterres 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.
