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Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said on Sunday there is no reason to restart United Nations-led talks on the strained issue of a federal unification of the island.
Tatar denied having received an invitation from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to hold a trilateral meeting in New York on Aug. 13 together with the Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides to explore ways to resume reunification negotiations.
“There is no common ground for such a meeting,” Tatar told Kibris newspaper, adding that “there is no invitation to us.”
“Our position on the conditions under which negotiations will resume is clear,” Tatar said. “Negotiations cannot begin until our sovereign equality and our equal international status are recognized.”
Tatar argued that “the Greek Cypriots’ intentions are to create impressions and try to put the Turkish Cypriot side under pressure. We will not participate in these games,” he said.
“Christodoulides should stop chasing illusory dreams and take into account the reality on the island,” Tatar said.
Christodoulides late Saturday said he had accepted the U.N. invitation for the Aug. 13 meeting, which he said had come about thanks to our “persistent efforts” toward both the U.N. and the EU.
Tatar’s rejection of the invitation “is a sign of disdain, first of all, for our Turkish Cypriot compatriots, but at the same time for the international community, the U.N. secretary-general himself, and the EU,” Christodoulides told reporters on Sunday.
“The one who seems to be weak with his positions, the positions he is putting forward, is Tatar, who seems to be afraid even to discuss,” he added.
This year marks half a century since Turkish forces invaded Cyprus in response to a Greece-backed coup. Five decades on, the island’s partition between the Greek Cypriot south and the Turkish north is more entrenched than ever.
Ankara does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state that is recognized internationally as the sole sovereign authority over the whole island.
Multiple attempts to find a compromise settlement over the years have failed, the last in 2017 in Crans-Montana, Switzerland; formal talks have not resumed since. This is the longest period that has passed without dialogue.
On the anniversary of the invasion on July 20, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dashed hopes for a resumption of the talks and reaffirmed his support for a two-state deal.
In an interview with POLITICO in late July, Christodoulides said momentum exists to restart talks and offered to take “bold steps” in the coming months.
