ADDS COMMENTS FROM TRNC SPOKESPERSON
By Murat Demirci
LEFKOSA, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (AA) – Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akinci canceled a meeting to discuss Cyprus’s future over the Greek Cypriot administration’s failure to annul a controversial Enosis law, sources from the presidency said on Wednesday.
The sources, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media, said Akinci decided not to take part in a leaders’ meeting scheduled for Thursday in the island’s buffer zone.
Later in the day, Baris Burcu, spokesperson for the Turkish Cypriot presidency, confirmed the cancellation of Thursday’s meeting.
“We hope that the necessary steps will be taken in a short time and a new date [for the meetings] will be set,” Burcu said.
“We expect that concrete steps will be taken both at the political and administrative levels to overrule the decision,” he added.
“I hope that the Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades will make the necessary contribution to overcoming the problem,” he said.
The reunification talks — brokered by UN Special Cyprus Envoy Espen Barth Eide — were launched in May 2015 to discuss a permanent settlement for the divided Mediterranean island.
However, the talks stalled over the Greek Cypriot parliament’s recent vote to introduce a yearly public school commemoration of a 1950 referendum in which Greek Cypriots voted overwhelmingly for Athens to take over the island, an idea known as Enosis (Union).
Akinci has described the idea of Enosis and the events it triggered as being tragic for Cyprus.
The eastern Mediterranean island was divided into a Turkish Cypriot state in the north and a Greek Cypriot administration in the south after an Enosis-inspired 1974 military coup was followed by violence against the island’s Turkish population, and the subsequent intervention of Turkey as a guarantor power.
The Cypriot issue remains unsolved despite a series of discussions which resumed in May 2015.
