Collapsed talks to reunify Cyprus nearly 44 years after an unlawful Turkish invasion won’t be resurrected nor succeed as long as Cypriots and Turks living on the island have different definitions of what a new state would look like, said Turkish-Cypriot self-declared Foreign Minister Kudret Ozersay.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades walked away from the negotiations in July, 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana after Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, echoing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said they would keep an army in the occupied northern third and wanted the right to militarily intervene.
The model for reunification has been a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation based on political equality even though Turkish-Cypriots have only 18 percent of the population but Ozersay said each side has a different idea of what that is and how it would work.
“Basically, there is no agreement on what was being negotiated,” he said. “The two sides need to agree on the matter of the parameters and engage in negotiations within them,” he added, according to The Cyprus Mail.
Ozersay said the two sides needed to discuss whether or not a common goal could be found and went along with Akinci’s claim that Cypriots are not ready to share power and wealth with the Turkish-Cypriots despite reports Anastasiades was willing to let a Turk be the island’s President every other term.
“A change of approach took time and for this reason without this change, or as long as the sides do not understand the same thing as regards the parameters of a solution, resumption of the talks cannot lead anywhere,” he said.
He had served as his side’s technical negotiator in talks and said he would find ways to strengthen the Turkish-Cypriot side.
The recent re-election of Anastasiades has led to speculation that perhaps the talks could resume even though there’s been little progress and nothing but failure for more than four decades.