ΑΝΚΑRA – Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Greece and Greek-Cypriots have spoiled negotiations over how to solve an impasse on the island where Turkish-Cypriots have occupied the northern third since unlawful 1974 Turkish invasions.

At the same time that Turkish-Cypriot hardline leader Ersin Tatar has rejected any sense of reunification and demands the United Nations and world recognize the occupied territory, Cavusoglu said Turkey will protect Turkish-Cypriots at all costs.

Turkey’s pro-government The Daily Sabah newspaper, that’s essentially a propaganda mouthpiece for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reported that

Cavusogluy would meet Tatar to assess the next steps after the UN ignored a  the Turkish-Cypriot side’s demand for acceptance.

Cavusoglu noted 2017 negotiations at a Swiss resort that collapsed in July that year over Turkey’s insistence on keeping a 35,000-strong standing army on the occupied side and demanding the right to invade again when it wanted.

“Ahead of Crans Montana, we said, ‘We are negotiating for the federation for the last time. After that, there is sovereign equality, not political equality. So, the two-state solution,” Çavuşoğlu underlined of the current demand.

“Two states that will live side by side can cooperate with each other in any way. This is quite natural. We are working to make everyone accept the sovereignty of the Turkish-Cypriots,” he said. But no one does.

He said he told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was at the Swiss debacle and became the latest in a long of line of the body’s leaders to find a solution that Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriots will accept nothing but two states.

“It is about time that we restart negotiation talks between two sovereign and equal states,” Çavuşoğlu said, although the Turkish-Cypriot side is isolated and the Greek-Cypriot side is a member of the European Union.

That happened in 2004, the same year that the Greek-Cypriot side resoundingly defeated a referendum question to reunify the two sides, contending that the plan drawn up by former UN chief Kofi Annan was flawed.