19 January 2012 / TODAY’S ZAMAN, ANKARA
Greek Cypriots better pull themselves together or the Turkish Cypriots will move on as a separate state, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay warned ahead of a trilateral meeting in New York over the weekend, where the UN will determine if the Greek and Turkish Cypriots are ready to be reunited on the island.
Hoping for a positive outcome of the New York summit on Jan. 22-24, Atalay stressed that Turkey would like to see the summit become a “turning point” in negotiations and expressed the country’s desire for the summit to finally lead to an international conference on Cyprus, which would determine the island’s fate once and for all. “The Cyprus issue is probably the most important mediation project the UN secretary-general is leading in the world right now,” Atalay said to mark the significance of the Cyprus negotiations, which have dragged on for decades without much success. “I see that he [UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon] views the process ‘a last chance’ for the island, but I do not really see any excitement or a sense of expectation on either side regarding the meeting,” he said, adding that the Greek and Turkish communities are now disillusioned due to the failure of past negotiations.
