A MEETING between the Archbishop and the Turkish Cypriot Mufti was cancelled yesterday, after the Turkish Cypriot spiritual leader, Ahmet Yonluer, expressed fears that the agenda would be largely political.
The Turkish Cypriot cleric said he cancelled the meeting after Sunday’s comments made by the Archbishop regarding churches under occupation.
“I wanted to open a dialogue, a religious dialogue with the Archbishop that would help bring our people together,” Yonluer told Reuters. “The Archbishop’s overtly political statement of the previous day was behind my decision to cancel the meeting.”
Archbishop Chrysostomos II was quoted as saying he wanted to address the destruction of Christian shrines in northern Cyprus, a deep rooted grievance among Greek Cypriots.
Yonluer said the Archbishop’s statements had insulted the Turkish Cypriot population. “The Archbishop brought up the matter in the days leading up to the meeting; we were set to discuss the future and not the past, but Chrysostomos’ statements were far from good will comment,” he said.
Reports said Yonluer had also come under severe criticism from the Turkish Cypriot press for agreeing to the meeting – especially from right-wing newspaper Volkan, who published a letter addressed to him saying that if he had ‘any love left for his country’ he should not meet Chrysostomos II.
The Mufti added that religious areas were not under his control and therefore the issue of occupied churches needed to be discussed with the Archaeological Department of the north. He did not dismiss the idea of a future meeting but claimed that the Archbishop should be ‘more careful and concise’ in his comments.
Despite the cancellation of the meeting, the Archbishop said he was willing to meet the Turkish Cypriot leader whenever he felt the ‘situation was favourable’.
“The Archbishop was prepared to meet the Mufti today, therefore for us there is no situation which we can describe as unfavourable,” Manager of the Archbishop’s Office Frixos Cleanthous said yesterday.
Given that yesterday’s meeting was cancelled, Cleanthous said that the scheduled corresponding meeting with Chrysostomos II travelling to the north on January 22 will not take place.
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