President Ersin Tatar said on Monday that any settlement that was to be reached in Cyprus needed to be based on a two-state solution.

He also said that the island’s electricity must be interconnected with Turkiye and Europe.

Speaking in an interview with the TAK news agency, President Tatar said that the two sides had very different understandings of what a federal settlement entailed.

He said that the Greek Cypriot side’s desire was to transform Cyprus into a unitary state, scrap the system of guarantees and remove all Turkish troops from the island.

Tatar added that the recognition of the Greek Cypriot side by Turkiye would mean accepting the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo’s goal for Greater Greece and its domination over the seas.

“The recognition of the so-called Republic of Cyprus by Turkiye is out of the question,” Tatar said, adding that the Turkish side’s policies were based on international law.

Drawing examples from the war in Ukraine, President Tatar said that any settlement to be reached in Cyprus needed to be a two-state solution where the two states on the island would co-exist side-by-side.

He also said that it was out of the question for the Turkish Cypriot side to abandon its position tabled at the informal five-plus-one conference in 2021.

Commenting on rising energy costs and prices, Tatar said that the solution was to interconnect the island’s electricity with Turkiye and Europe as soon as possible and to switch to alternative energy resources.