Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said on Monday he had refused to discuss a rotating presidency as a confidence-building measure after the UN envoy linked a possible compromise on the issue to a trilateral meeting sought by President Nikos Christodoulides.
Erhurman said María Ángela Holguín, the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy, asked to see the Turkish Cypriot side in New York on the morning of September 25. She told them there was a chance of compromise on his demand for a rotating presidency, and asked whether in that case he would accept Christodoulides’ request for a trilateral meeting. Erhurman said he replied that the rotating presidency was directly part of political equality, and should not be discussed as a confidence-building measure or tied to security and guarantees.
“If the rotating presidency is to be considered a confidence-building measure, I cannot accept it. This is a matter of substance and political equality,” he said he told her.
Erhurman also rejected Christodoulides’ 19-point proposal, saying he would discuss nothing beyond the seven points set by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He described the Greek Cypriot side’s submission of the 19 points as an attempt “to water down food that is already cooked”.
“Christodoulides, however, rejected all seven proposals and submitted 19 new ones. So what Christodoulides intended to do in New York was to give Guterres 19 new points and cancel the Secretary-General’s seven,” he said.
At a lengthy press conference, Erhurman denied rejecting a UN proposal for a trilateral meeting. He said the proposal for a 2+1 meeting in New York had come from Christodoulides, not the UN, and that the President had not raised it at the leaders’ last meeting in Nicosia.
The New York exchanges
The day before the rotating-presidency exchange, on September 24, the Turkish Cypriot side was told nothing about a possible trilateral at a morning meeting with Holguín, Erhurman said. At 11.35am New York time, he said, Holguín sent a text message to his representative, Mehmet Dana, passing on Christodoulides’ request and asking for the Turkish Cypriot position.
A trilateral was not mentioned when Dana met United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo at 11.45am, according to Erhurman. Nor was it put on the agenda at 1pm, when the two negotiators met Holguín and the three then met DiCarlo. Erhurman described those talks as in effect a trilateral meeting, though not at leaders’ level, and said they established that no progress had been made on Guterres’ seven points.
At 5.30pm, Holguín sent Dana another message asking for the Turkish Cypriot response to Christodoulides’ proposal. Erhurman said the reply was: “We have seven points of homework. If there is a chance of agreement on any of them and if Guterres has the time, I will take part in such a meeting.” That message went unanswered, he said.
Erhurman pointed out that Guterres himself had said days earlier, when asked, that there would be neither a trilateral nor a 5+1 meeting and that much work remained. Christodoulides nevertheless went to New York and proposed a trilateral, he said. He also cited an interview Holguín gave to Turkish news agency ANKA, published on Monday, in which, according to Erhurman, she said a trilateral meeting had not been on the New York agenda.
The seven points
Erhurman said he had set his own proposals aside because he wanted progress on Guterres’ list. He repeated that he accepts six of the points as they stand and is discussing the seventh, on crossing points. The list could grow to eight or nine and he had no objection to that, he said, but dropping it for 19 new points was not feasible.
Asked whether the 19 points included Guterres’ seven, he said they were all new. It was up to Christodoulides to reveal their content if he wished, he added.
“I told Guterres himself that if we do not focus on these seven points and keep losing time, we will get nowhere,” Erhurman said. With two and a half months left and a Secretary-General who says he will work until the last day, the two sides should concentrate on the seven points Guterres gave them as homework, he told reporters.
Erhurman said he would not leave the negotiating table, but would not sit in 2+1 or 5+1 meetings just for the sake of meeting. If Christodoulides wanted to meet in Nicosia every week or every ten days, he was willing. “Even marathon meetings,” he said, as long as they focused on results.
Some might think that more meetings and more photographs were a good thing, but he did not, he said. “Work has to be done,” Erhurman said, adding that the talks had to produce results, not be held for their own sake.
Complaints listed
Erhurman claimed the Greek Cypriot side had taken 13 steps that undermined trust during his 11 months in office. He said that on the day he arrived in New York, it circulated a letter at the UN recommending that member states not meet the Turkish Cypriot side, so that “secessionist policies” would not spread. On the evening of September 24, he said, the title of Nicosia “mayor” Mehmet Harmanci was changed at the Cyprus Forum on the recommendation of the Republic of Cyprus government, which he raised with Holguín.
The other steps he listed included the recent cancellation of two festivals and a Barcelona academy camp, and two European Parliament resolutions on the rapes and missing persons of 1974. He also cited efforts to prevent the “Immovable Property Commission” being recognised as an effective domestic remedy, the blocking of a meeting between Dana and foreign diplomats in the buffer zone in Nicosia, and the removal of “universities” from international lists. He said he had raised these with Guterres, and with foreign diplomats he met at his office before travelling to New York.
Asked whether former DISY leader Averof Neofytou’s intended announcement on the 2028 presidential elections meant the Cyprus problem would draw him into the Republic of Cyprus campaign, Erhurman said he would not comment on or take any part in the presidential elections. He said he was likewise neutral on the upcoming “elections” on the Turkish Cypriot side.
(Information from Cyprus News Agency)
