Saturday, 2 September 2023
A bi-communal event was held in the buffer zone on Friday as part of September 1 World Peace Day, Yeniduzen reports.
The event organised by Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot unions was held at 7.30pm at the House of Solidarity in the buffer zone.
The unions on both sides are members of the World Trade Union Federation (DSF) and the Bi-Communal Peace Initiative – United Cyprus.
Turkish Cypriots marched from the north and Greek Cypriot marched from the south to gather at the Çetinkaya Stadium in the buffer zone. The slogan of the march was “Peace cannot be prevented in Cyprus”.
The Cyprus Air Association gave a concert at the event, where slogans such as “United Federal Cyprus”, “Solution-Reunification-Peace”, “Common Struggle for a United Federal Cyprus” were carried on banners written in Turkish, Greek and English.
Representatives of unions and non-governmental organisations supporting the event were invited to the stage.
In a Greek-Turkish joint statement, messages were given about ‘a joint struggle against the new fait accompli that had created an incendiary atmosphere between the two sides’.
Calls have been made to continue the Cyprus negotiations at the point where they were left after the last set of negotiations held at Crans-Montana in Switzerland which collapsed in July 2017.
The current UBP coalition government and Turkey have abandoned the bi-communal solution however and are calling for two separate states in Cyprus.