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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
ANKARA – Marking the 50th anniversary of invasions of Cyprus – and rejecting any idea of reunification – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he’s considering ordering the building of a naval base on the occupied Turkish-Cypriot side.
“If necessary, we can construct a base and naval structures in the north” of Cyprus, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency quoted him as saying during his visit to celebrate the occupation of the northern third of the island, said Al Jazeera.
He said that would be in response to what he claimed was Greece wanting to put a base there, offering no evidence, with Greece and Turkey, as well as the former Colonial ruler the United Kingdom being guarantors of security for the island.
Greece and Turkey are in a rapprochement and are discussing differences in a bid to resolve disputes, including over the sovereignty of the seas, but agreed not to have the Cyprus dilemma on the agenda.
Erdogan and hardline Turkish-Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said they won’t even consider reunification talks, calling them decades of failures, and insisted that the United Nations and world accept the occupied side that only Turkey recognizes.
The last round of unity talks fell apart in 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana when Erdogan and then Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci said a 40,000-strong Turkish army would never leave and as they demanded the right of further military intervention.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was there, becoming the latest leader of the body to fail to broker an agreement and sent another Special Envoy, Colombian diplomat María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar to try to bring the sides together.
“Frankly, we do not think it is possible to start a new negotiation process without establishing an equation whereby both parties sit down as equals and leave the table as equals,” said Erdogan.
“We are constructing on the island the building of the Presidency of Northern Cyprus and the parliament building. They are constructing a military base, we are building a political base,” Erdogan said, using the name of the self-declared republic no other country accepts.
Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004 still divided after Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected a UN plan to end their differences with Turkish Cypriots. Officially the entire territory of Cyprus is part of the EU but only the Greek-Cypriot government is a member, the occupied side not.
Turkey has been trying to join the EU since 2005, some 19 years, the prospects worsening under the autocratic rule of Erdogan who purged civil society, the courts, education system and military after a failed 201 coup attempt.
Turkey also refuses to recognize Cyprus and bars its ships and planes but the occupied side has no direct international flights, with a stop in Turkey required before going there.
