Turkish Cypriot side slams Cyprus-UK strategic partnership

The UK is encouraging ‘south Cyprus’ to continue is provocative actions and destabilise the island and the region, the north’s ‘foreign minister’ Tahsin Ertugruloglu said on Thursday, a day after a strategic partnership agreement was signed between London and Nicosia.

The ‘foreign minister’ said that the agreement signed “mean nothing for the TRNC.”

Ertugruloglu added that the agreement goes against the 1960 treaties of guarantee, which established the UK as a guarantor on the island, and established balance on the island.

“I would like to remind that southern Cyprus does not have the authority to sign a memorandum of understanding, conclude an agreement, or make a legal act on behalf of the Turkish Cypriot people for the entire island, that the Turkish Cypriot people are represented by the TRNC state and that the authority to conclude agreements on his behalf belongs to our state,” he said, according to the PIO.

Earlier in the week, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides had travelled to London, where he held a meeting with his counterpart James Cleverley, and signed an MoU for the strategic cooperation between Cyprus and the UK.

The agreement includes a wide scope of policy areas, including foreign policy, defence, and trade.