Eroglu: The negotiations started from the scratch; The USA is interested more with the natural gas than the solution in Cyprus
Turkish daily Yeni Safak newspaper (03.06.14, online) reports that the Turkish Cypriot leader, Dervis Eroglu has described as “extremely wrong” the conviction of Turkey by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to pay 90 million euro compensation to the Greek Cypriots due to the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island.
In statements to Yeni Safak, Eroglu said that this is actually a result of the “1974 peace operation”, as he called the Turkish invasion and alleged that the Court ignored the so-called unjust treatments towards the Turkish Cypriots until 1974. “Our people were buried in mass graves in periods during which there was no war, while the dead Greek Cypriots died during war”, he alleged.
Referring to US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Cyprus, Eroglu noted that this visit was in their favor and added: “In spite of the fact that we are not a recognized state, he visited us at our office. It is important from this point of view.The Greek Cypriots had a big expectation at the negotiating table. They thought that with Biden’s visit, Varosha would be given to them or at least observations would have been made in Varosha. We did not accept this as well.This issue was closed after we put our justifications in front of Biden”.
Referring to the US Vice President’s statement that “Cyprus is our strategic ally”, Eroglu argued that the natural gas that has been found in Cyprus’ territorial waters could be carried to Europe through Turkey and become an alternative to what he called as Russia’s domination over the natural gas. “This was one of the reasons of Biden’s visit”, he said and alleged:
“We are partners in this natural gas. Therefore, this interests us. The natural gas is one of the facts that will encourage America to behave neutrally. Israel’s natural gas will definitely have to pass from our territorial waters to go over Turkey… If the issue is for the natural gas to be carried to Europe in the cheapest way with pipelines through Turkey, this is an important event. That is why I can say that the USA is interested more with the issue of the natural gas than the solution in Cyprus…”
Eroglu said that the USA has no intention to mediate between the two sides for a solution in Cyprus and recalled Biden’s statement that “the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots are the ones that will find solution of the problem” and that the US has no formula as regards the solution.
Eroglu went on and referred to the water which will be carried from Turkey to the occupied area of Cyprus with undersea pipelines and admitted that there have been some delays in the project which was not completed on 7 March, as it had been earlier announced. He noted that building undersea pipelines was not as easy as they thought it would be and added: “This is not an easy project. They could not work in the winter because the sea was very wavy. However, the water will hopefully flow in September”.
Referring to the negotiations process, Eroglu said that the leaders agreed to meet once every two weeks and that the previous Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders discussed all chapters in the negotiations except for the issue of the guarantees. He went on and alleged: “Therefore convergences have been achieved on other chapters as well. Anastasiades has stated that he does not accept the negotiations we had held with the president before him and we started negotiations again on some issues. For example, on the property issuethere were some proposals we had submitted, proposals submitted by the previous leaders and convergences we had achieved with bridging proposals. These started again from the scratch. We had agreements on the foreign relations, we had by 90% agreed on the internal security, judiciary with the previous leaders. We had agreed on the chapter of the economy. Some minor details had remained on the chapter of the European Union. We started negotiating from the beginning on these. It is a waste of time”.
Eroglu reiterated the accusation against the Greek Cypriot side that it uses delaying tactics and argued that it will be difficult to have a positive result in case of open-ended negotiations.