The Greek Cypriot side wants Cyprus to be an EU federal unitary state and the bonds [of this state] with Turkey to be gradually dissolved, Prime Minister Ersin Tatar has said.
Speaking at a meeting with an association of war veterans from Turkey, Tatar said that a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Cypriot community leaders Mustafa Akinci and Nicos Anastasiades would take place in Berlin on 25 November, the day on which the Berlin Wall had finally collapsed. He argued that an effort was made to convey the message that “Nicosia is the last wall in the EU” and added that this message should be read and evaluated correctly.
The prime minister said that those, who believed that the ties between Turkey and the TRNC should be strengthened, knew that the Greek Cypriots had not abandoned their dream of turning Cyprus into a Greek island and giving minority status to the Turkish Cypriots. He asserted that from this point of view, the Guterres Framework included “tricks” and referred to “zero troops, zero guarantees”. Tatar went on to say the following:
“With some tricks, with free movement within the EU, free settlement, territorial concessions and watering down the guarantees, we will see that, in due course, Turkey’s withdrawal from here will come onto the agenda. They say that a third country can not be a guarantor of an EU member state. This is the point to which they brought this issue. Therefore, we strongly oppose this”.
Reiterating the view that after 50 years of negotiations an agreement based on “sovereign equality” was needed and not an agreement based on political equality, Tatar said that an agreement based on sovereign equality consisted of two separate states. He added the following:
“They told us that this was not realistic. The UN would not accept it. However, they are the ones who are not realists. Because the real truth is that, currently, two separate states exist in Cyprus. There is a state on the Greek Cypriot side. There is a state in the north. There is no power that can eliminate this state”.
Referring to the hydrocarbon resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, Tatar underlined the importance of the drilling operations carried out by Turkey with her ships together with the TRNC and said that “the TRNC’s existence is important now for Turkey’s security”. “The TRNC should exist in this region”, he declared, arguing that the existence of the TRNC gave power to the Turkish nation.
Gunes
