Ankara’s ‘new rules’ for a solution

THE TURKISH Foreign Ministry has laid out the “new rules” it says apply for a settlement on the island since the recent EU decision to start accession talks with Cyprus, Turkish press reports said yesterday.

Turkey’s own membership bid was placed on indefinite hold amid concern over its human rights record, tense relations with Greece and the Cyprus problem.

The Turkish Daily News reported that during a press conference on Monday, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Necati Utkan said “there is a drastic new change in the situation due to the EU’s actions which are based on the Greek position”.

Utkan said a solution was only to be found on the basis that there were two states on the island.

He stressed Ankara and the ‘TRNC’ would co-ordinate their positions to see whether the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides could resolve “three major issues”, in order to ensure they could “peacefully exist”.

These issues included settlement of reciprocal property claims, agreement on matters of satisfactory security and a territorial agreement and adjustment of boundaries.

Ankara’s position came under attack yesterday from Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides, who said Turkey was trying to hinder the start of Cyprus’ EU membership talks.

Cassoulides said the EU accession process was the only “substantial lever of pressure which can realistically be applied on the Turkish side to end its attitude”.

Once membership talks began, he added, Turkey would either have to accept a federal solution to the Cyprus problem or leave the problem unresolved whilst Cyprus joined the EU.

“Such a development would be clearly against Turkey,” the foreign minister said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.