Turkish Cypriot leader warns Cyprus is facing permanent partition
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The president of Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus has warned the Mediterranean island faces permanent partition of its Greek and Turkish communities unless an agreement is swiftly reached involving an “equitable” federal solution.
In an interview with the Guardian, Mustafa Akıncı said the differences between the two sides were growing more entrenched every year, diminishing the prospect of reunification. “We need to hurry up. After all these years we have come to a crossroads, a decisive moment,” he said.
Akıncı – who on Wednesday evening launched his re-election campaign – said the only viable solution to Cyprus’s nearly half century of division was reunification under a federal “roof”. If this failed to happen, he said the north would grow increasingly dependent on Ankara and could end up being swallowed up, as a de facto Turkish province.
Akıncı met his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Nicos Anastasiades, on Monday in the UN-controlled buffer zone that straddles the divided Cypriot capital, Nicosia. The two leaders attended an exhibition of art that had been stored in a basement following Turkey’s 1974 invasion of the north of the island. “Art serves as a unifying force,” Akıncı said.
On-off negotiations over a solution to the Cyprus problem have taken place without an agreement. Since winning office in 2015, Akıncı – a left-wing former Nicosia mayor – has tried to push the process forward. He led UN-mediated talks with Anastasiades in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, which collapsed in 2017. The process is currently in limbo.
