Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman’s first trip to Turkey since being elected to the office is expected to take place between Tuesday and Friday next week, the Cyprus Mail understands.
Newly elected Turkish Cypriot leaders typically visit Ankara within days of being elected, with the time elapsed between Erhurman’s election on October 19 and his first visit to Turkey abnormally long by historical standards.
However, sources in Ankara have informed the Cyprus Mail that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now expected to welcome Erhurman to Turkey next week.
Erdogan is expected to travel to Azerbaijan to attend the country’s Victory Day celebrations – the anniversary of Azeri forces seizing control of the Karabakh town of Shusha in 2020 – on Saturday, before returning to Turkey to commemorate the 87th anniversary of the death of the Republic of Turkey’s founding president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk next Monday.
After those engagements, Erdogan is expected to arrange to meet Erhurman in Ankara between Tuesday and Friday next week, with Erhurman likely required to be back in Cyprus for the 42nd anniversary of the north’s unilateral declaration of independence on Saturday, November 15.
The meeting will come with Ankara remaining outwardly unconvinced by the prospect of a return to negotiations based on a federal solution to the Cyprus problem – the model publicly favoured by both Erhurman and President Nikos Christodoulides – with Erdogan having on Monday repeated his demand for a two-state solution instead.
However, prior to that, Erdogan appeared to be more willing to acquiesce to the idea of a return to negotiations, saying after Erhurman’s landslide victory in last month’s Turkish Cypriot leadership election that the Turkish Cypriots’ will is “highly respected by us”.
“Our relations with North Cyprus will continue as they have been until now under the AK Party government,” he told, referencing his party’s 23-year stint in power so far.
Throughout the election campaign, Erhurman insisted that Cyprus problem negotiations would be conducted “in tandem with the Republic of Turkey”, and in the absence of a meeting having been held with Erdogan, he announced last Friday that he had delayed his planned first meeting with United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin.
Instead of the originally planned first meeting between Monday and November 11, they will now most likely meet on December 5.
This delay came at Erhurman’s behest and will also likely see the next enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem, involving Cyprus’ two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, also be delayed.
It had originally been set to take place at the end of this month but will now most likely take place in January, with Erhurman set to use the extra time to attempt to build closer relations with the Turkish government.
