ANKARA (Reuters) -President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey believes the most realistic way to resolve political deadlock over Cyprus is to have two states on the ethnically-split island.
Erdogan was speaking alongside Tufan Erhurman, the newly-elected Turkish Cypriot president who has pledged to explore a federal solution – long supported by the United Nations – to end the island’s nearly 50-year-old division.
Turkey, the only country which recognises the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and former Turkish Cypriot president Ersin Tatar have backed a two-state policy, which was ruled out by Greek Cypriots.
“The Greek Cypriot side sees the solution for Cyprus as reducing Turkish Cypriots to a minority status in a partnership state that is now defunct,” Erdogan said, adding he maintained his belief that there was a formula in which the two sides could live in peace on the island.
Erhurman, holding his first foreign visit to Turkey as per tradition, said all parties must “learn a lesson” from past methods that yielded no results or ended unsuccessfully.
“The Turkish Cypriot people are one of the two founding partners of the island, and this status for my people is neither open to debate, negotiation, nor bargaining. The Turkish Cypriot people, under this status, have sovereign rights across all of the island of Cyprus,” he said, referring also to energy and hydrocarbon resources.
“Nobody should expect us to walk on a path that has been tried numerous times in the past and led nowhere,” he said, adding there was no point in holding talks if the Greek Cypriot side was not willing to sincerely explore a solution.
Cyprus was split in 1974 in a Turkish invasion triggered by a brief Greek-backed coup, which followed sporadic fighting after the breakdown of a power-sharing administration in 1963. Peace talks have been in deadlock since 2017.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu, Editing by William Maclean, Alexandra Hudson)
