Turkish Foreign Minister | Full acceptance of “political equality” or talks about the creation of two states in Cyprus 

A key condition for the creation of a new cooperative structure in Cyprus is the full acceptance of political equality by the Greek-Cypriot side, says the Turkish Foreign Minister. Otherwise, he added, Turkey will not enter a new controversial negotiation process. The Turkish Foreign Ministry says that the announcement of the UN Secretary General on a five-party agreement does not mean, for the Turkish side, that a new process will start automatically, nor that the negotiations will continue from where they left off in Crans Montana.

In his statement, the Turkish Foreign Minister states that “the five-party, and the United Nations, on the Cyprus issue will take place after the ‘presidential elections’ in the ‘TRNC’. This, as the UN Secretary General said, does not mean for us that a new negotiation process will automatically start on the island or that they will continue from where they left off in Crans Montana in July 2017.”

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According to the Turkish Foreign Minister, “there is no common ground and vision for a solution between the two sides of the island. In the past, all negotiation procedures failed due to the refusal of the Greek-Cypriot side to accept the political equality required for cooperation on the island and the lack of specific content of the concept of political equality.”

The main reason is that the Greek-Cypriot side does not want to equally share power or natural wealth with the Turkish-Cypriot side. Despite this fact, if a cooperative relationship is to be established on the island, the basic precondition for this is for political equality to be fully accepted by the Greek-Cypriot side and for a new negotiation process as its basis. If this cannot be done, then the two sides will have to start a new negotiation process for a two-state solution based on sovereign equality.

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The idea of organizing an informal five-party summit with the United Nations proposed by our country last year aims to clarify these issues. “Otherwise, Turkey, as we have repeatedly explained before, will not enter into a new process of controversial basis which has failed in the past,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Source: CNA