Tufan Erhurman has made his views crystal clear on what he seems to believe has been the greatest obstacle to a solution of the Cyprus problem over the years.
'Throughout my political life, I have always believed that it was the Greek-Cypriot 'denial' of political equality,' the Turkish-Cypriot leader claimed in a social media post, detailing that this was exactly why the most significant of his four point proposed methodology, was acceptance of political equality.
The Turkish-Cypriot press has been running with a number of clarifications that Erhurman made in his post, as well as how this impacts his approach to resuming negotiations.
'I said that without agreement on metholodogy I will not be sitting at the table,' Erhurman added, explaning that after so many disappointments, if a table is to be set, he doesn't want it to be another disappointment.
'I want negotiations for the sake of a solutions not for the sake of negotiations. And without political equality there can be no settlement.'
Why he has revisited
Erhurman said he needed to write all this down, despite clearly pointing them out in a television interview, because sometimes 'when you change the order of words, it gives out the impression that many things have been said, while they haven't.'
He further stressed that a major part of his 'people' will not agree to a settlement without political equality and nothing has changed in his position on that either, nor will it.
How the TC press commented
In its commentary entitled 'The Turkish side will not sit at the table', Sener Levent's 'Avrupa' writes that Tatar cited two states as the reason to stay out of negotiations and now Erhurman is using political equality. The paper claims that following strong reactions to the comment that he won't be returning to negotiations, the Turkish-Cypriot leader was forced into clarifications.
'Vatan' refers to the Erhurman statement 'no negotiations just for the sake of it', while 'Kibris', in an article entitled 'It does not accept political equality', notes that Erhurman points the finger at the Greek-Cypriot side as the obstacle to a solution.
SOURCE-CNA