Turkey’s attempts to introduce religious elements in the question of Cyprus is worrying, Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos said here today, pointing out that Ankara has always aimed at establishing two separate states on the island.
”Now Turkey spells out this policy publicly and officially. What is worse and worrying is that Turkish President Abdullah Gul in statements and (Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan later on, are for the first time trying to insert the religious element into the solution of the Cyprus problem, an issue never raised in the past,” Papadopoulos stressed.
The Cyprus problem, he said, was never deemed as having religious connotations.
The Cypriot President noted that when the Turkish and the Turkish Cypriot side speak of reunification ”they solely mean the reunification under the Annan plan, which provided for anything but reunification, it provided for the perpetuation of secessionist tendencies.”
The plan for a Cyprus settlement, named after the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was rejected by the Greek Cypriots and approved by the Turkish Cypriots in April 2004 at simultaneous referenda.
Replying to a questions, Papadopoulos said that ”we have no other choice than to seek a solution as soon as possible.”
”The solution can be found through the Gambari agreement, which is backed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the EU, and widely by the Cypriot people,” the President added.
President Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed on 8 July 2006, during a meeting in Nicosia in the presence of the then UN Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari, to begin a process of bicommunal discussions on issues that affect the day-to-day life of the people and concurrently those that concern substantive issues, both contributing to a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem.
On a proposed visit to Cyprus by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Papadopoulos said he would talk about the visit with Russian FM’s special envoy Leonid Abramov.
Papadopouolos was speaking after attending a seminar of the European Consortium for Church and State Research on the right of thought, conscience and religion (article 9) of the European Convention of Human Rights, hosted in Cyprus.
Addressing the seminar, Papadopoulos said that the long-standing Cyprus problem was never taken or associated of having religious connotations.
”For the fist time ever that the newly-elected president of Turkey Abdullah Gul in a formal speech tried to inject a religious aspect in the problem of Cyprus”, he added.
In a speech during an illegal visit to the Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus on September 18, Gul said that there are ”two democracies, two states, two languages and two religions” in Cyprus.
In his address to the meeting, Cyprus Supreme Court President Christos Artemidis said that ”we feel that since the Turkish invasion in our country in 1974 religion is used as a tool for segregating people both socially and geographically.”
”Different religions, language and ethnicity, instead of forming the basis of coexistence, are politically used to partition Cyprus geographically thus separating the two communities socially, culturally and economically,” he added.
Cyprus Attorney General Petros Clerides said that the European Convention of Human Rights is important for Cyprus in that Turkey continues to violate human rights in the areas it occupies since 1974 when its troops invaded.
He recalled a Court judgment in the fourth interstate application of Cyprus Vs Turkey, which found Turkey responsible ”for grave and continuous violations in Cyprus of a series of human rights,” including the violation of freedom of religion associated to ethnic origins of Greek Cypriots living in occupied Cyprus.
