Statement of the TRNC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Regarding the Exploitation of the Missing Persons Issue by the Greek Cypriot Side for Its Own Political Goals

The Greek Cypriot side which does not refrain from exploiting even a highly humanitarian issue like the missing persons for its own political agenda, has now taken yet another spiteful step by having an amendment ratified with the view of securing funding from the European Union’s 2026 budget for a monument to be placed on the premises of the European Parliament building.

This belligerent initiative of the Greek Cypriot side, which seeks to manipulate the issue of missing persons in a manner that disregards the sufferings of the Turkish Cypriot people, constitutes an outright disrespect not only to the families of the Turkish Cypriot missing persons but also to the Turkish Cypriot people as a whole.

Given the fact that members of the European Parliament should be the first to know that the issue of missing persons concerns both peoples on the island –  as clearly evidenced by the fact that the European Union, within the framework of its aforementioned budget, allocates direct funds to the activities of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) through the EU Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot people – the act of extending support to this unilateral initiative constitutes yet another striking example of the EU institutions’ biased stance on the Cyprus issue.

The decision to host a monument in the premises of the European Parliament that commemorates solely the so-called ‘victims’ of the 1974 Peace Operation serves nothing more than the Greek Cypriot side’s efforts to entrench its one-sided historical narrative, while deliberately erasing from collective remembrance the suffering and oppression endured by the Turkish Cypriot people between 1963 and 1974. Such an act also aims at unilaterally legitimizing the European Union’s misguided and uncritical solidarity with the Greek Cypriot side.

It is undisputable that actions of such sort are openly detrimental to the work of the Committee on Missing Persons. We, therefore, call firmly on the European Parliament, as well as other European Union institutions, to abstain from such actions that harm the work of the Committee on Missing Persons.

It is well known that the majority of Greek Cypriot missing persons lost their lives due to the internal conflicts during the 1974 coup by the Greek junta, while the Turkish Cypriot missing cases, who were mostly civilians, date back to 1963.

We categorically oppose any politically motivated or one-sided attempts to exploit such a humanitarian issue as the missing persons matter.