The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) strongly condemns and deplores the speech made by Nikos Christodoulides, the leader of the Greek Cypriot administration of Southern Cyprus, at the 81st session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, in which he continued to distort the facts concerning the Cyprus issue, as has become his signature, and made baseless accusations against the Republic of Türkiye.
In his speech, Christodoulides once again ignored the oppression, forced displacement and grave human rights violations suffered by the Turkish Cypriot People between the years 1963 and 1974 and maintained the tradition of manipulation through lies to mislead the international community and global public opinion. The purge of the Turkish Cypriot People by force of arms from the 1960 partnership republic of which it was an equal partner constitutes the core of the Cyprus issue. The fact that this mentality, which disregards the will of the Turkish Cypriot People and the historical realities of the island, has the audacity to refer to international law and the UN Charter is proof of the profound irrationality that has overtaken the Greek Cypriot leadership.
The true addressee of the brazen and impertinent remarks made by the Greek Cypriot leader targeting His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of the Republic of Türkiye, is the Greek Cypriot leader himself. The tactless tone of Christodoulides betrays how the ambitions of the Greek Cypriot administration continue to cloud its judgment.
Whatever the Greek Cypriot leader may say, the fact that there are two separate Peoples and two separate States on the island of Cyprus will remain unchanged.
The Greek Cypriot leader has called for a return to a model that was negotiated for more than half a century yet produced no results, owing to the intransigent and maximalist stance of the Greek Cypriot side and its unwillingness to accept the equal status of the TRNC. This call lays bare the intention of the so-called "Republic of Cyprus" to continue benefiting from the unjust position it holds thanks to the status quo on the island, and to intensify its pressure and restrictions on the Turkish Cypriot People. Therefore, the real hypocrisy is to insist on a "federal" model that produced zero outcomes in the past and was rejected several times by the GCA itself.
The most fundamental truth concerning the Cyprus issue is the existence of two separate Peoples and two separate independent and sovereign States on the island. The only way to reach a lasting agreement on the island is through the acknowledgement of the sovereign equality and equal international status of the TRNC by the international community, as stressed by His Excellency President Erdoğan on every occasion including in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2026. As was in the past, policies which ignore Turkish Cypriot People will continue to be doomed to failure.