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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 – Days after the 50th anniversary of Turkish invasions of Cyprus that seized the northern third of the island, Turkey’s Parliament Speaker said a drive will start to gain world recognition of the isolated, self-declared Turkish-Cypriot republic.
Numan Kurtulmuş joined Turkish-Cypriot hardline leader Ersin Tatar in Constantinople at a symposium marking what Turkey and the Turkish-Cypriot call a peace operation in 1974, not invasion.
The event stated that the Turkish army’s incursion saved Turkish-Cypriots from massacres by Greek-Cypriots, with Turkey – as it does in denying the Armenian genocide – rejecting that it invaded Cyprus.
Kurtulmuş called the self-declared republic a “Turkish-Cypriot state,” with Tatar and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejecting restarting reunification talks and instead demanding the United Nations recognize the occupied side.
“We are entering into a new era. A new era began for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. We will continue fighting for recognition of Cyprus in every platform,” he said, using the name for the occupied side only Turkey accepts.
Erdogan and Tatar want a two-state solution and permanent partition although the Greek-Cypriot side and legitimate government is a member of the European Union that Turkey has been fruitlessly trying to join since 2005.
“We are aware that the international system failed to find a solution. They could not resolve it and have no capability at all to solve it,” said Kurtulmuş, echoing Tatar – who follows the direction of Erdogan.
“Cyprus has one invader now, and it is the Greek-Cypriot side that eliminated a Cyprus state. Turkey will never abandon Cyprus and its presence will remain there. We will always stand with the people of Cyprus,” he said.
Tatar noted that Cyprus was conquered by the Ottomans in 1571 who ruled for 307 years before the island was annexed by Great Britain as a colony for 35 years before gaining independence in 1960.
He said that there have been “several plots to increase the Greek population that attempted to create the perception that Cyprus and Greece are a united entity,” and reiterated his insistence for the world to accept a Turkish-Cypriot state.
