TRNC minister defends Türkiye's guarantor role in Cyprus

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu on Sunday defended Ankara's role as the island's sole effective guarantor power, rejecting any political settlement that would reduce Turkish Cypriots to minority status while marking the 52nd anniversary of the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation.

Status and equality

Speaking to Anadolu Agency in Lefkoşa, Ertuğruloğlu traced the origins of the Cyprus dispute to the Greek Cypriot attacks of 1963 that denied political equality to the island's two founding communities, rendering six decades of UN-facilitated negotiations futile. "As our founding president, Rauf Raif Denktas said the Cyprus issue is a matter of status," he said, arguing that the Greek Cypriot side demands recognition as "the sole ruler and owner" while expecting Turkish Cypriots to accept minority status. "If you sit at the negotiating table without equality, you will leave without equality," he added, accusing the UN and EU of legitimizing Greek Cypriot claims by recognizing the administration in Nicosia as the sole government and admitting it to the bloc in 2004.

Guarantor powers

Addressing the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Ertuğruloğlu stated that while London and Athens failed to uphold their responsibilities during decades of intercommunal violence, "the only country that fulfilled its role as a guarantor is the Republic of Türkiye." He said Ankara's unilateral intervention right remains "indispensable" for Turkish Cypriot security, noting that "we will never give up Türkiye's right to intervene in Cyprus" and that the TRNC maintains a foreign policy built on "two sovereign equal states and equal international status." "We have our own state, our motherland, and our army. No one should come here believing they can deceive us," he said.

1974 intervention

Ertuğruloğlu rejected narratives portraying the July 20, 1974 military intervention as an unprovoked act, insisting instead that the Cyprus Peace Operation "was not the beginning of the problem; in a sense, it was part of the solution." He said the Turkish Armed Forces saved Turkish Cypriots from "genocide" and prevented Cyprus from becoming a purely Hellenic island, commemorating the 52nd anniversary alongside veterans who fought during the intervention and asserting that Turkish Cypriots will never again experience the violence of 1963-1974 as long as Türkiye maintains its strength.