Turkish President Erdogan urges international community to recognize Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday urged the international community to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

"The sovereign equality and equal international status of the Turkish Cypriots, which are their inherent rights, should be reaffirmed, and the isolation should now come to an end," Erdogan said in an address to the UN General Assembly in New York.

"Today, I once again call on the international community to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and establish with it diplomatic, political and economic relations.”

Erdogan said that for decades, it has always been the Turkish Cypriots and Türkiye that have shown a "sincere will to bring about a just, permanent, and sustainable" solution to the Cyprus issue.

"The federation model has now completely lost its validity. There are two separate states and two separate peoples on the island," he stressed.

- Decades-long dispute

The island of Cyprus has been mired in a decades-long dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts to achieve a comprehensive settlement.

Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety.

In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye's military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the TRNC was founded in 1983.

The Greek Cypriot administration was admitted to the European Union in 2004, the same year that Greek Cypriots thwarted a UN plan to end the longstanding dispute.

Rejecting the failed federation model for the island, Türkiye fully supports a two-state solution on Cyprus based on sovereign equality and equal international status.