Opposition Turkish Cypriot leadership election candidate Tufan Erhurman said that the policies being followed by incumbent Ersin Tatar are turning the north into an “open-air prison”.
“There have been no negotiations and no confidence-building measures in the last five years. We can consider them a lost five years. We are experiencing a period of flawed policies which are dragging the country towards becoming an open-air prison,” he told a panel of journalists.
He was questioned whether, given Turkey’s open support for a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem since Tatar was elected in 2020, whether he would be able to gain the country’s support to return to negotiations based on a federal solution should he be elected, or whether he planned to do so without Turkey’s support.
“To date, none of our four presidents have conducted a negotiation process without consulting Turkey,” he said, in reference to former Turkish Cypriot leaders Rauf Denktash, Mehmet Ali Talat, Dervish Eroglu, and Mustafa Akinci.
“Relations between the Republic of Turkey and the TRNC are unlike those with other states. The Republic of Turkey is also a guarantor state. Negotiation processes have always been run alongside the Republic of Turkey, and they will continue to do so.”
He then pointed out that “the only thing Turkish officials have said on the matter so far is that ‘I support Ersin Tatar’s policies’”, before questioning the validity of Tatar’s demand for “sovereign equality” as a prerequisite for a return to negotiations.
“Tatar talks about sovereignty, but I will be the one defending the sovereignty of the Turkish Cypriot people. Right now, [President Nikos] Christodoulides makes decisions on behalf of everyone living on the island. When it comes to security, Turkey, as a guarantor power, should also be involved, but it is not involved. The situation on the ground results in Christodoulides exercising sovereignty,” he said.
He added that were he to be elected, “I would seek to wrest our share of the sovereignty”.
“We are one of the two equal co-founders of this island. No decision can be made on matters requiring mutual decision-making without our consent,” he said, before pointing out that at United Nations-facilitated Cyprus problem negotiations, the island’s two sides are already considered equals.
“The leader of the Turkish Cypriot community and the leader of the Greek Cypriot community can already sit at the table. They have equal international status at that table. But once they leave that table, that equal status is broken. On the one side, there is the president of a recognised state, a member of the UN and of the European Union, and on the other is the president of an unrecognised state,” he said.
He then said that the last Turkish Cypriot leadership election, which took place in 2020, was “traumatic”, on account of the overt bitterness between Tatar and Akinci, the two lead candidates that year.
“We are heading into the first presidential election after that trauma. I am on the ground, from Rizokarpaso to Limnitis,” he said.
Tatar then replied on Tuesday afternoon, saying via the north’s Tak news agency that Erhurman has “made lying to our people a habit” and is now “rehashing the outdated and exhausted federal deadlock as if it were something new”.
“This return to federalist deadlock is nothing more than the Greek Cypriot side’s attempt to persuade our people to accept a political game which benefits them,” he said.
He then added that there is “no need to look behind closed doors to understand the Republic of Turkey’s position and its policies regarding the TRNC”.
“Turkish President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan openly declared at the UN general assembly, before all the world’s heads of state and government, that ‘the book of federation is now closed for us, never to be reopened’,” he said.
As such, he said, “reversing the two-state policy, which the esteemed candidate emphasises as a new plan, is tantamount to the elimination of our sovereign equality and equal international status”.
“This is not a change of vision, it is an attempt to put the train on a reckless track,” he said.
He added that he had “smiled at the esteemed candidate’s attempts to distort the policies put forth by the Republic of Turkey at the highest level”.
“The motherland encourages and calls on every platform for the recognition of the TRNC and the establishment of diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations with our state. With this situation so clear, attempts to portray this as an instrument of his own federalist deadlock is incompatible with seriousness,” he said.
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