The leaders of the ethnically divided island of Cyprus will hold their first face-to-face meeting Nov. 20, to share their opinions on the decades-long issue, the two sides announced in simultaneous statements on Nov. 17.
Newly elected Turkish Cypriot President Tufan Erhürman and his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Nikos Christodoulides, are set to hold their inaugural encounter at the U.N. special representatives’ residence in the buffer zone, the statements said.
Erhürman won a landslide victory in the Oct. 19 presidential election after pledging to work toward reviving stalled U.N.-backed reunification talks.
“We will become acquainted and share our views for the first time on many issues on our agenda,” Erhürman wrote on X, shortly after the sides announced the date.
Expecting the decades-old Cyprus problem to be clarified within an hour or encouraging such hopes would not be appropriate, Erhürman said, warning against unrealistic expectations.
Eight years have passed since the last round of negotiations in 2017, he reminded, adding that it is difficult to argue that those years have helped revive hopes for a settlement.
“I regret to say that, given the passage of time and the impact of regional developments, it would be overly optimistic to claim that we currently enjoy an atmosphere conducive to a solution on the island,” Erhürman said.
He stressed that creating such an atmosphere was a responsibility the leaders owed to their communities.
A spokesperson for Christodoulides said he was approaching the meeting with “constructive and sincere political will.”
The encounter comes after Erhürman’s trip to Türkiye last week as the new president, his first foreign visit.
Although Ankara supports a two-state model for the island — in contrast to Erhürman’s stated position — the new Turkish Cypriot leader signaled readiness for cooperation with Türkiye.
“We believe that the most realistic solution to the Cyprus issue is the coexistence of two states on the island,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during the visit.
During the joint press conference, Erhürman warned that his country will no longer tolerate being ignored or having its rights violated, while reaffirming readiness to resolve the decades-old dispute with the Greek Cypriot side.
The two leaders discussed the steps that can potentially be taken in the future over the Cyprus problem.
The Cyprus dispute has persisted for decades between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots despite multiple U.N.-led initiatives. Ethnic violence in the 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots into the enclave and a 1974 Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece prompted Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor to protect the Turkish Cypriot population.
The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Switzerland in 2017.
