Posted 3 years ago
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres will host an informal gathering of the rival Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders in Geneva as well as the foreign ministers of Cyprus ‘guarantors’ — Greece, Turkey and former colonial ruler Britain. The goal is to get the two sides back on the same page and embarking on a fresh round of formal talks. However normally ahead of these types of talks messages of hope are publicly released, but this time is different.
Over 47 years of talks, the ultimate goal endorsed by the U.N. Security Council had been to reunify a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south as a federation - two zones running their own affairs with a federal government overseeing the core elements of national governance like foreign policy and defense.
But now Turkey and the new Turkish Cypriot leadership that espouses even tighter bonds with Ankara have changed the rules, dismissing further talks about a federation-based accord as a “waste of time” because nearly five decades of talks on that model have gone nowhere. They’re proposing instead essentially a two-state model that Greek Cypriots say they’d never accept because it would legitimize the country’s partition forever.
Topic: World News
Tags: Turkey Cyprus Peace talks United Nations UN Greek Cypriot Turkish Cypriot Greece