Improved relations between Greece and Turkey have “created positive conditions for the Cyprus problem”, Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said on Thursday.
Speaking to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, he said both Greece and Turkey have “shown remarkable will to take our bilateral relations on a different path” in recent months and that “thanks to the level of trust we have achieved step by step with [Turkish] Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, we are able to meet and prevent crises.”
With this in mind, he said the world is “living in a period of geopolitical instability and uncertainty” which has not been seen “since the second world war” and said that Greece and Turkey are located “in between two wars, in Ukraine and in the Middle East”.
Turning his attention to Cyprus, he said the informal dinner attended by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month was “the first step towards the resumption of talks” to solve the Cyprus problem.
“I think we both share the view that no problem can be solved without a consultative attitude and productive thinking. We continue to support [Guterres] in contributing towards finding a just, sustainable and functional solution to the Cyprus problem, within the framework of UN resolutions,” he said.
In speaking of UN resolutions, he reaffirmed his and Greece’s stated commitment to the reunification of Cyprus as a bicommunal, bizonal, federal state and he doubled down on this by saying, “in a world full of divisions, a united Cyprus would constitute a powerful universal symbol, in addition to the prosperity it would create for its citizens.”
Recent convergences between Greece and Turkey have not yet spread to the Cyprus problem, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis saying in May that he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “obviously disagree” over Cyprus, but that “only dialogue can be the antidote to any deadlock”.
Erdogan had on Wednesday said the Turkic world is “responsible for a fair solution in Cyprus” when addressing the day’s summit of the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) and told the UN General Assembly in September that the federal model for a solution to the Cyprus problem has “completely lost its validity”.
In his speech at the same podium three days later, Mitsotakis said a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem “cannot happen and cannot be accepted” and said any solution must entail “one sovereignty, one citizenship and one international personality, in accordance with the UN Security Council’s resolutions.”
