Turkish official raps Turkish Cypriot media for being soft on Greek Cypriots

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Tugrul Turkes censured Turkish Cypriot media on Wednesday for not being tough enough on the Greek Cypriot side.

The Turkish official is in the north to campaign ahead of the April 16 presidential referendum on the constitutional powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  About 150,000 people living in the north are eligible to vote in the poll.

Turkes said that Turkey fully supports a settlement solution based on the equality of the two communities in Cyprus, and that Turkish Cypriots were a “top priority” for Turkey. Ankara, he said, did everything it could to help Turkish Cypriots stand on their feet under isolation, and to improve their economic life.

The Economic and Social Cooperation Office set up by Turkey in the north is aimed at supporting projects and balancing the budget, he said.

Addressing representatives of the Turkish Cypriot media, however, Turkes said that half the articles they wrote about the Turkish government on the Cyprus negotiations were false.

Turkes suggested that they should have given greater coverage to Archbishop Chrysostomos saying that there would not be any solution, the church’s opposition to accepting electricity from Turkey and President Anastasiades’ rejection of the Turkish Cypriot’s offer of help to fight the Solea forest fire last summer .

Turkish Cypriot reporters should also have focused, according to Turkes, on President Nicos Anastasiades “slamming the door” on the talks

“It was not us who slammed the door and walked out. But you presented things that we didn’t do as facts,” Turkes said.

He was referring to the abrupt end of a meeting between the two leaders last month over the parliament’s decision to introduce an annual commemoration of the 1950 referendum on the island’s union with Greece in public secondary schools. Following the incident, it was much discussed as to who walked out first, Anastasiades or Akinci.

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.