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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.
NICOSIA – Just ahead of the 50th anniversary of Turkish invasions – which they called a peace operation – that seized the still occupied third of the island, Turkish-Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar again demanded United Nations acceptance.
Tatar, elected in 2020 as a hardline nationalist following the bidding of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has rejected reunification of the divided island, wanting permanent partition and two separate states.
The UN and world – except for Turkey – don’t recognize the rogue, isolated territory of Turkish-Cypriots making up less than fifth of the population, the Greek-Cypriot side a member of the European Union.
Turkey has been trying to join the bloc for 19 years, since beginning the process in 2005, the prospects worsening under Erdogan’s autocratic rule that purged civil society, the judiciary, education system and military after a failed 2016 coup attempt and the jailings of journalists.
For all that – and the Greek-Cypriots and UN rejecting his call for acceptance – Tatar said he’s still pushing for it. “Every day, we are working for recognition,” Tatar told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “Turkish Cypriots have been (put) under a lot of disadvantages – embargoes, isolation,” Tatar said.
There’s no sign that will happen, the last round of reunification talks in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana falling apart when then Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and Erdogan saying a 40,000-strong army would never leaver and as they wanted the right of further invasion.
No international flights can go directly to the occupied side, first having to stop in Turkey for a connection, and Turkey barring Cypriot ships and planes and not recognizing the legitimate Greek-Cypriot government.
The rejection of a UN peace plan by Greek-Cypriot voters in a 2004 referendum has kept the island divided and all entreaties from the Turkish-Cypriot side and Tatar have fallen on deaf ears and prevented resumption of talks.
“I would very much hope to see a resolution from the United Nations Security Council saying that we do recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” Tatar said, calling the occupied territory by the name only Turkey recognizes.
“Greek-Cypriots are obviously having a bigger part of the cake. Tourism is prospering, their economy is prospering,” he added, his response being to partially open the abandoned resort of Varosha, once a playground for tourists and the rich.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was in Crans-Montana and has become the latest leader of the body to fail at finding an answer, has sent yet another envoy, Colombian diplomat María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar.
But so many before her have fallen by the wayside that Cyprus has become known as the “graveyard of diplomats,” along with envoys, representatives, politicians and others trying to bring the two sides together.
“All I want is concerted efforts to find a practical, fair, just and sustainable settlement. But on an equal basis, a sovereign equal basis,” said Tatar, who earlier said that meant accepting his demands, blaming the Greek-Cypriots for intransigence.
He said the invasion year of 1974, “was a turning point for Turkish-Cypriots, a new hope,” pointing out that he was a 13-year-old student at the English School in the capital Nicosia at the time and on holiday in London when he heard the news.
He said the Turkish invasions, which came after a Greece-pushed coup attempt, were justified to protect Turkish-Cypriots whom he said had suffered violence for a decade leading up to that.
A treaty between Britain, Greece and Turkey that accompanied the island’s independence in 1960 gave the three powers the right to intervene to guarantee the island’s Constitution.
The treaty also outlawed partition and the union of any part of the island with Turkey or with Greece which the ruling military junta wanted. “This is why we call it Turkish intervention as a result of the right given to Turkey,” he said.
He said the Turkish standing army on the occupied side is a “deterrent force” that has “ensured that we had peace on the island.”
While the occupied side relies on Turkey to prop up its economy, he said that, “What we have achieved is basically to develop our state from nothing to a consolidated state with all the functions and faculties that you would have in any modern state.”
