Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday said his country supports “efforts to reunify” Cyprus.

“Our positions are clear. We support efforts to reunify the island as mandated by the United Nations resolutions,” he said, adding that “now, it is up to others to prove whether they really mean that they want a process of restarting the talks”.

Those talks, he said, must take place “within the framework of very clear guidelines determined by the UN security council’s decisions and the overall framework of relations between the European Union and Turkey”.

The “others” to whom Mitsotakis was referring may include Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, who was on Wednesday evening travelling to Turkey ahead of his first meeting with the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since being elected in an unprecedented landslide victory last month.

Related Articles

Erhurman has repeatedly stated that he favours a return to negotiations based on a federal solution to the Cyprus problem – the model also ostensibly favoured by President Nikos Christodoulides – but elected to delay his first meeting with UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin by a month.

It had initially been planned that Erhurman would meet Holguin for the first time during the first 11 days of November, but he said after his first meeting with UN special representative Khassim Diagne that their first meeting will now most likely take place on 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, with Ankara having remained outwardly unconvinced by the prospect of a return to talks based on a federal solution.

Erdogan had last week repeated his demand for a two-state solution instead – the solution for which Turkey had advocated prior to last month’s election – but Erdogan had previously appeared to be more willing to acquiesce to the idea of a return to negotiations.

He had said in the aftermath of the 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.

The delay to Erhurman’s first meeting with Holguin will have a knock-on effect on the next 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.

That meeting had initially been pencilled in to take place this month, but will now most likely take place in January.