THE GOVERNMENT yesterday welcomed concrete signs from Ankara that Turkey was willing to revise its 30-year hardline stance on Cyprus.
Government Spokesman Michalis Papapetrou told the Cyprus Mail that it was good news, but advised a ‘wait and see attitude’.
“If it means the abandonment of the traditional policy of Ankara and of Denktash it is welcome,” he said.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Yusuf Buluc yesterday told a news conference that Ankara was modifying its policy on Cyprus in line with the United Nations plan to reunify the island. The plan was drawn up by UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan and given to the two sides in November. A second modified version of the plan will be the basis for negotiating a possible settlement by February 28 with the aim of a united Cyprus signing the EU accession treaty in April. A technical committee comprising legal and other experts from each side began work on Tuesday.
“With the emergence of the Annan plan, a new and important element has been added to efforts to resolve the Cyprus question peacefully,” Buluc told reporters in Ankara.
“Therefore there is a need for a policy adjustment. These adjustments are under way,” he said, adding that a team of Turkish officials was already in the north of the island to work on aligning their views. Buluc declined to say which aspects of policy were to be modified.
Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash has been in the line of fire since his failure to sign a preliminary agreement on the Annan plan during the EU summit in Copenhagen last month. Ordinary Turkish Cypriots and political parties have called for his resignation in a show of solidarity unprecedented in the north since 1974.
Denktash has said he is willing to negotiate on the plan, but is sticking to his demand for recognition, opposes any notion of Greek Cypriot settlement in the proposed Turkish Cypriot component state, and does not want to return the territory outlined in the plan to the Greek Cypriots.
Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey’s new ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), warned the Turkish Cypriot leader last week that the Cyprus issue was not his personal business and called on him to stop living in the past, prompting speculation of a deep rift between Ankara and the north.
However, Buluc said yesterday: “there is not even the slightest difference” between Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots on efforts to resolve the Cyprus problem. Buluc said Ankara agreed with Denktash’s objections to certain aspects of the UN blueprint.
Greece, which took over the six-monthly EU rotating presidency on January 1, yesterday urged both Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots to display a more constructive attitude in order to meet the February deadline.
“To reach an agreement by February 28th, we believe that the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot side have to engage in the negotiating process more constructively and in good faith,” Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis said in a letter addressed to Kofi Annan.
In the letter, officially accepting the UN Secretary General’s invitation to a new round of talks, Simitis reiterated his hope that a solution to the 28-year old division of the island be found “as soon as possible”.
Face to face negotiations between the two leaders are set to resume when UN special Cyprus envoy Alvaro de Soto returns to the island at the weekend following contacts in Athens and Ankara.
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.
