Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman has confirmed for the first time that he rejected a proposal from President Nikos Christodoulides to place the fenced-off area of Varosha under UN administration and open the port of occupied Famagusta to direct trade under EU supervision, in an interview broadcast by Kibris Genc TV on Tuesday evening. He said he turned it down because the EU’s Direct Trade Regulation would not be implemented.
Erhurman told the channel he had asked Christodoulides whether the regulation would come into force and was told no. The port of Famagusta was already open, he argued, and the real problem was that the Turkish Cypriot side could not trade directly with the EU.
He said the proposal was not balanced, questioning why handing over Varosha to UN administration should be the trade-off.
The formula was not new, Erhurman added. The same proposal had been put forward in 2006, during Mehmet Ali Talat’s term, and Talat had rejected it. It was now being presented as a new formula 20 years later, he said, adding: “This is not something I can accept.”
Christodoulides’s proposals
Erhurman said he had not received any written document setting out Christodoulides’s 19-point proposal, only verbal references. He had taken notes, he said, but they never added up to 19 proposals.
It would not be in keeping with diplomatic protocol for him to reveal them, he said, but Christodoulides could do so if he wished, and he would then discuss them. He noted that he had already accepted some of the suggestions, including a joint visit to Pyla and meetings of the technical committees on youth, cultural heritage and civil society.
Negotiations
Erhurman said he did not attend the trilateral meeting that did not take place in New York because it had been requested by Christodoulides, not by the UN Secretary-General.
He had set as a condition either the prospect of agreement on the UN Secretary-General’s seven confidence-building measures, or the Greek Cypriot side’s acceptance of a rotating presidency without linking it to security and guarantees. Neither was met. He asked whether the purpose of such a meeting would be for Christodoulides to say he accepted a rotating presidency in exchange for security and guarantees, or whether it was simply a photo opportunity.
He would not return to the negotiating table without agreement on methodology and real progress on the confidence-building measures, he said. He stressed the importance of continuing dialogue with Christodoulides, the EU, the UN and the diplomatic community, saying the aim was to reach a result on the Cyprus problem.
Responding to criticism that he was avoiding the negotiating table, Erhurman argued that meetings mattered not for him but for producing results, and that he was not walking away from talks at all.
Property and identity cards
On the arrests over the usurpation of Greek Cypriot properties in the occupied north, Erhurman described the Republic of Cyprus’s legal proceedings against private individuals as using the law as a tool for political purposes. He noted that the “Immovable Property Commission” operates in the occupied north.
He also addressed the difficulties faced by children of mixed marriages in obtaining Republic of Cyprus identity cards. He said the issue had been included in UN and EU human rights reports and in the seven confidence-building measures submitted by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He added that the European Court of Human Rights had begun examining a related application.
On relations with Turkey, Erhurman repeated that he was fully coordinated with the Turkish government and Tayyip Erdogan on the four-point methodology he favours for a settlement.
(Information from Cyprus News Agency)
