Christodoulides slams Turkey’s ‘expansionist, neo-Ottoman policy’

President Nikos Christodoulides on Saturday decried Turkey’s “expansionist, neo-Ottoman policy” on Cyprus.

Addressing a conference on Hellenic culture, he said Cyprus is “still suffering from the unhealed wounds caused by selfish approaches, foolish policies naïve fantasies, and the expansionist, neo-Ottoman policy of Turkey”, before going on to highlight “assertive realism” as his preferred antidote to those ills.

“Assertive realism is the cornerstone of the efforts we have been making for the past two and a half years for liberation and for the resolution of the Cyprus problem, in a difficult geopolitical environment,” he said.

That “assertive realism” will next be put to the test in December, when United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin is set to visit the island to meet both him and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman.

Those meetings will take place with a view to a planned enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem, which will be attended by Cyprus’ two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, and will most likely take place in New York in January.

It had initially been envisioned that that enlarged meeting would take place this month, but Erhurman elected to delay his first meeting with Holguinfrom the first 11 days of November, when it had initially been pencilled in, until December 5.

The Cyprus Mail understands that Erhurman had chosen to delay the meeting so as to be able to build closer relations with the Turkish government before talks on the Cyprus problem begin in earnest, and as such, Erhurman is set to travel to Ankara on Thursday to meet the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erhurman, elected in an unprecedented landslide victory last month favours a return to negotiations based on a federal solution to the Cyprus problem – the model also ostensibly favoured by Christodoulides.

However, Ankara has remained outwardly convinced by the prospect, with Erdogan having on Monday repeated his demand for a two-state solution instead.

However, prior to that, Erdogan appeared to be more willing to acquiesce to the idea of a return to negotiations, saying after Erhurman’s landslide victory in last month’s Turkish Cypriot leadership election that the Turkish Cypriots’ will is “highly respected by us”.

“Our relations with North Cyprus will continue as they have been until now under the AK Party government,” he told, referencing his party’s 23-year stint in power so far.