Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar told member of the European Parliament Fidias Panayiotou that he is not Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “puppet” during an interview spanning over an hour and a half published on Panayiotou’s social media.

Panayiotou introduced the subject, pointing out that he has been accused of being a puppet both of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of South African billionaire Elon Musk, before asking Tatar about his relationship with Erdogan.

Tatar insisted that he operates independently of Erdogan and that their jointly held position on the Cyprus problem was initially his.

“I keep telling this to people and they don’t understand me. Turkish Cypriots should know, this two-state solution is my idea. Erdogan supported the Annan Plan … and then at Crans Montana they were there for a federal republic,” he explained.

He then pointed out that two years after the failed Crans Montana negotiations in 2019, when Tatar became the north’s ‘prime minister’, it was at this point that a two-state solution was first written down as a goal in the coalition agreement between Tatar’s UBP and then ‘deputy prime minister’ Kudret Ozersay’s HP.

“And then, with that two-state solution, a new policy, I won the presidential election [in 2020], and I put it on the table, and Turkey, they said, they discussed, and they said ‘okay, we will support this new policy’. So, how am I a puppet?”

He also stressed his cultural independence from Erdogan’s conservative-leaning and more religious Turkey.

“My way of life, secularism, everything, I am what I am. I am what I was when I was a young man. If you look at my family, my way of life, whatever I do. I drink, I enjoy life, everything. It might be quite different to their way of life, and nobody interferes with my life … I respect him, he respects me, but on national issues, we think together,” he said.

Pressed by Panayiotou over whether he can go against Turkey should he wished, he said, “why should I go against?”

“I mean, they are not doing anything to challenge me, they are just helping me. Why should I be in a discussion point? … There is no reason to do that … People here, the opposition, maybe for other interests, God knows what, they always want to show us as if we are being told from Turkey what to do, and we only do that,” he added.

Christodoulides ‘a good chap’

Panayiotou then asked Tatar whether he likes President Nikos Christodoulides, with Tatar saying that “as a person, of course, I like him”.

“I sit, I talk, I drink, whatever we do. I mean, he’s a very nice chap, a very modern man. Of course I like him, but when it comes to the Cyprus problem, I’ve not had much chance of success,” he said.

He lamented that in the two and a half years since Christodoulides was elected president, the pair had been unable to open any new crossing point between the island’s two sides, with the most recent crossing point opening having taken place in 2019 when Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci were interlocutors.

Later in the interview, Panayiotou suggested that Greek Cypriots do not like Tatar as much as Akinci, with Tatar insisting that this is because “they don’t know me”.

“If your community got to know me, they would like me even more than Akinci, I can assure you of that … If they got to know me, if they had the chance to meet me and discuss with me and have a few drinks and somewhere to talk and get to know me, I am sure that they would like me, because I am sincere,” he said.

Earlier in the interview, Panayiotou had invited him to explain who he is, with Tatar using the phrase “I am Ersin Tatar of this land”, an expression he has used in the early stages of this year’s ongoing election campaign as part of his efforts to present himself to the Turkish Cypriot electorate as an ordinary Cypriot.

He told Panayiotou of how he remembers the Bloody Christmas of 1963, with Panayiotou responding, “come on, you were three years old!”, and Tatar insisting.

“Yeah, I remember. I remember the planes flying and the shooting, the shouting, the terror, and I still feel grief when I remember those days, so I don’t want anybody to live like that again,” he said.

‘A federal family’

He also spoke of how he had gone to live in the United Kingdom aged 14 in 1974 as Cyprus descended into conflict, and touched on the death of his mother Canev in 1968, when he was just seven years old.

After his mother’s death, his father, the Republic of Cyprus’ first auditor-general Rustem Tatar, remarried, with Ersin Tatar then growing up with his brother Erhan, his stepmother’s two children, and his half-sister Havva.

This, he quipped, was a “federal family”.

The conversation then moved on to the matter of this October’s Turkish Cypriot leadership elections, with Tatar set to be challenged by opposition political party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman.

Asked if he is worried and stressed by the spectre of October’s election, he said, “if you are not worried, if you are not stressed, you might lose it”.

“So, I feel that, you know, it’s kind of a challenge. So, we have to work hard. That’s what I tell my colleagues,” he said.

Later, during a conversation about the history of Cyprus, he told Panayiotou that “July 20 is a victory for Turkish Cypriots because on July 20, 1974, Turkish Cypriots won their independence”.

At this point, Panayiotou interrupted, saying that “my uncle died that day, so I have a bit of a different interpretation of history”.

To this, Tatar stressed that “we also lost a lot of people”.

“We also lost a lot of people and I’m sorry for them. I’m sorry for you, and I share your condolences,” he said.

Annan Plan ‘effectively enosis’

He then spoke at greater length about the Annan Plan, explaining that he had voted “no” in 2004 despite two thirds of the Turkish Cypriot electorate having voted in favour.

“I was in the 35 per cent, with [former Turkish Cypriot leaders Rauf] Denktash and [Dervish] Eroglu,” he said, adding that he had “feared that the Turkish Cypriots, at the end of the day, would lose out”.

However, he said, “65 per cent of the Turkish Cypriots said ‘yes’ because Turkish Cypriots by and large were frustrated with the situation, and they wanted at any cost to find a solution to the Cyprus problem”.

He said that had the Annan Plan been approved by the Greek Cypriots and implemented, it would have been “good for the Greek Cypriots, because the island would have been in Europe united”.

“Okay, the Turkish Cypriots would have had some rights to stay in the north, but the state in the north would not have been as sovereign as I would have liked to have seen it,” he said, adding that the Turkish Cypriot constituent state would not have had rights “to the that would have satisfied me”.

He then went further, saying that given that Greece and Cyprus are in the EU, such a solution would have been “effectively enosis”.