President Ersin Tatar issued a written statement responding to the Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades who claimed that ‘Turkey never wanted to lift the guarantees’ and accused Turkey with intransigence.
President Tatar said Anastasiades was trying to hide the Greek Cypriots side’s intransigence by twisting the realities that had been experienced.
“The Greek-Greek Cypriot duo who described the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus as a stepping stone for Enosis had held initiatives from the very first day of the republic to change the Guarantee Agreement and lift Turkey’s guarantee which they saw as a threat for Enosis. Motherland Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot people objected to this and said that Turkey’s guarantee could not be lifted” Tatar noted.
“Since then the Greek Cypriot side have been demanding the lifting of Turkey’s guarantee and removal of the Turkish army from the island. This is a dream which will never become a reality. Motherland Turkey and all of the Turkish Cypriot people are against this. We saw the last example of this in Crans Montana. The necessary response had been given to Anastasiades who said ‘zero troops, zero guarantees” the President added.
He also stressed that since 1960 Turkey had many times repeated that it will never give up its guarantor rights which stems from international agreements.
“It is useless to try to show this as a new fact. It is out of question for the Turkish Cypriot people to give up on Turkey’s guarantorship. Our people know and remember well what was experienced in the past. If Turkey did not intervene the Turkish Cypriot people would be massacred and eliminated” Tatar said.
“If Turkey did not realize the peace operation on the 20th of July 1974 against the coup realized by the Greek Junta and EOKA members on the 15th of July 1974 there wouldn’t be any Turkish people left in Cyprus and Cyprus would have become a Hellenic island. If we can live in our country and under the roof of our own state freely and in sovereignty we owe this to motherland Turkey’s guarantee” the President stressed.
He also said that Anastasiades’ claim that ‘Turkey has been brewing up intransigence in Cyprus since 1956’ was unrealistic.
“It will be good to remind Anastasiades who established the EOKA terrorist organization in 1955 with the aim of realising Enosis and who prepared the Akritas Plan which aimed to eliminate the Turkish Cypriots, the Bloody Christmas attacks and who turned the Republic of Cyprus into a Greek state by force of arms” Tatar noted.
“Anastasiades, by saying that ‘no one should blame the Greek Cypriot side, we need to look at the historical process in order to see who is to blame’ is trying to twist what had been experienced in Cyprus. When we look at the historical process we see that the Turkish Cypriot People who was the equal co-founder of the Republic of Cyprus were excluded from it by force of arms and was exposed to massacres” he added.
“When we look at the history, alongside Erenköy and the Geçitkale-Boğaziçi attacks we see massacres at Atlılar, Muratağa, Sandallar and Taşkent” Tatar noted and added that these are just some of the reasons why Turkish Cypriots are against the removal of Turkey’s guarantee and the removal of the Turkish army from Cyprus and returning to pre 1974 conditions.
“My advice to the Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiades is to respond positively to our call for dialogue and to our solution proposal which is based on the existence of two equal states and involves the continuation of peace obtained in 1974. If he wants to see who is guilty he should look in the mirror” the President concluded.