Cyprus president cuts short Turkey trip

‘Ankara still aims for EU membership’

ANKARA: Turkey is still aiming for full membership of the European Union but is frustrated by progress so far, and will support UN efforts towards a resolution in Cyprus, according to a new government programme announced on Tuesday.

The programme, read out by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in parliament after he earlier named his new cabinet, also said the government would work on boosting ties with Iran, and on mending relations with Russia through dialogue.

Meanwhile, Cyprus’s president cancelled scheduled peace talks and cut short a visit to Turkey on Tuesday, his spokesman said, after a United Nations summit treated the rival Turkish Cypriot leader as a head of state.

The protocol row underscored the sensitivity and complexity of the Cyprus conflict, a decades-old conundrum that generations of diplomats and an army of peacemakers have failed to crack.

It was also an unexpected hiccup in an otherwise positive progression of peace talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.  President Nicos Anastasiades was in Turkey attending a UN humanitarian summit but refused to attend a banquet for heads of state on Monday evening because Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, who represents breakaway north Cyprus, was also invited.

Turkey is the only country that recognises the breakaway North Cyprus statelet.

Implicitly blaming the UN for the controversy, Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides said there was ‘no fertile ground’ for Friday’s planned meeting in Nicosia.

Nonetheless, he added, Anastasiades was still committed to the peace process on the ethnically divided island.

In a series of Tweets, Akinci said the matter was blown out of proportion.  The island was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974, triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. 

The Greek Cypriots, who represent the whole island in the European Union, are sensitive to any perceived attempt to place them on an equal footing with north Cyprus, which is backed financially and militarily by Turkey.