Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Monday confirmed that he will on Thursday travel to Ankara for the first time since undertaking the role.

During that visit, he will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while it is also expected that he will meet other high-level officials including the country’s Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who Monday was in the United States.

Newly elected Turkish Cypriot leaders typically visit Ankara within days of being elected, with the time elapsed between Erhurman’s election and his first visit to Turkey abnormally long by historical standards.

For example, Erhurman’s predecessor Ersin Tatar was elected on October 18, 2020, sworn in on October 23, and visited Ankara on October 26 of that year. Erhurman was elected on October 19 and sworn in on October 24.

The meeting will come with Ankara remaining outwardly unconvinced by the prospect of a return to negotiations based on a federal solution to the Cyprus problem – the model publicly favoured by both Erhurman and President Nikos Christodoulides – with Erdogan having last week repeated his demand for a two-state solution instead.

However, prior to that, Erdogan appeared to be more willing to acquiesce to the idea of a return to negotiations, saying after Erhurman’s landslide victory in last month’s Turkish Cypriot leadership election that the Turkish Cypriots’ will is “highly respected by us”.

“Our relations with north Cyprus will continue as they have been until now under the AK Party government,” he told, referencing his party’s 23-year stint in power so far.

Throughout the election campaign, Erhurman insisted that Cyprus problem negotiations would be conducted “in tandem with the Republic of Turkey”.

As such, in the absence of a meeting having been held with Erdogan, he announced during his first meeting with United Nations special representative Khassim Diagne late last month that he had delayed his planned first meeting with UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin.

Instead of the originally planned first meeting during the first 11 days of November, Erhurman and Holguin will now most likely meet on December 5.

This delay came at Erhurman’s behest and will also likely see the next enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem, involving Cyprus’ two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, and the UN, also be delayed.

It had originally been set to take place at the end of this month but will now most likely take place in January, with Erhurman set to use the extra time to attempt to build closer relations with the Turkish government.