GREEK Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot students in New York gathered near the United Nations on Monday to press their demand for the reunification of Cyprus and the peaceful coexistence of the island’s two communities.
“We want to express our support for the UN initiative to solve the problem and submit our demands to improve the UN peace plan,” Turgut Durduran, a Turkish Cypriot teaching at a university in the Philadelphia area and member of the newly-formed grassroots organisation ‘Cyprus Action Network’ (CAN) said.
Greek Cypriot Christos Georgiou, a student at Columbia University, said Monday’s rally was a protest against Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash and his assertion that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots cannot live together.
Georgiou said CAN wanted to see a federal solution that would satisfy the common and competing interests of all Cypriots, with the demands of Turkish Cypriot NGOs represented in the negotiations. The group also calls for a comprehensive population census in northern Cyprus to establish the citizenship of those living in these areas.
CAN wishes Cyprus to be fully demilitarized as part of the solution plan, including the withdrawal of all Turkish and Greek armies and the dissolution of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot military forces.
Durduran called on Denktash to resign and said it would be difficult to find a political settlement as long as he remained the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community.
CAN is a group of activists outside Cyprus working together to encourage a settlement and to improve human rights conditions on the island.
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.
