Çavuşoğlu: “Sensitivities of Turkish Cypriots and Turkish citizens on security, guarantee, territory and other issues are our sensitivities”
16 January, 2017Erdoğan: “You should not expect a solution without Turkey as a guarantor – we are going to be there forever”
16 January, 2017Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım responded to questions from the media about discussions the previous day in the TBMM General Assembly regarding the first four items of the Constitution and criticism about the Cyprus negotiations.
When asked why he did not go to Geneva for the multilateral conference on Thursday, Yıldırım said there was no need to go and asked if he should have gone there to “barter away” Turkey’s rights in Cyprus.
“There is no need to go; the negotiations in Cyprus have been going on for years” he added.
Yıldırım also talked about Turkey’s conditions and red lines in the negotiations, which he described as clear. Yıldırım said that the conditions are as follows:
Article 1: Regarding Security and Guarantees in Cyprus, Turkey’s effective guarantee and security cannot be abandoned or removed.
Article 2: If a federal state based on two communities in different states is to be established, the administration and the power-sharing mechanisms must be fair and equal.
Article 3: Any victimization or the abolition of the vested rights of the Turkish Cypriot side on the issue of territory and property is out of the question. In short, a federal Cyprus state should satisfy the needs of the two sides.