Erhurman says Guterres called efforts to cancel Turkish Cypriot events discouraging

Kyrenia, Cyprus. Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said on Sunday that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had described Greek Cypriot efforts to have international Turkish Cypriot events cancelled during the summer as “discouraging”. According to Erhurman, Guterres said those developments ran counter to his repeated appeals for steps that would build trust between the two communities.

Response to August letter

Erhurman said the comments came in Guterres’ response to a letter he had written in August. He reported that the secretary-general had carefully considered concerns about developments affecting Turkish Cypriot activities in culture, sport, politics and diplomacy, and had said such initiatives undermined efforts to foster mutual trust.

According to Erhurman, Guterres stressed that implementing confidence-building measures should be a priority. He said Guterres had instructed his envoy, Maria Angela Holguin, to keep working with both sides towards putting those measures into practice.

Erhurman also said Guterres had asked all relevant actors to reaffirm that obstructing confidence-building measures, including through event cancellations, worked against their collective efforts.

Football camp and music festival

On August 28, Erhurman wrote to both the European Union and the United Nations concerning a football camp for children organised by FC Barcelona and a music festival in Kyrenia.

Speaking about the festival in August, he accused Greek Cypriot diplomacy of conducting a sustained campaign. He characterised the reasoning behind that approach as a belief that ending or reducing Turkish Cypriot isolation would remove their desire for a settlement, while additional confidence-building measures would make the status quo more comfortable.

Opportunities for young people

In later remarks, Erhurman said he did not want the Cyprus problem to deny any Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot the opportunities available to young people elsewhere.

He said a young Greek Cypriot’s sadness over losing such opportunities could not give him joy. Equally, he said he could not accept, as a human being, that a young Turkish Cypriot’s sadness for the same reason should bring joy to any Greek Cypriot.