Foreign relations of Cyprus

Proponents of the Annan Plan were using a very appealing slogan during the propaganda period for the April 24, 2004 referendum: "Yes be annem" (Say yes my mom).  It was the slogan of strong support for the Annan Plan mixed with the matriarchal spirit of the Turkish Cypriot culture.

The president of the European Parliament said on Oct. 11 that the European Union would welcome a reunited Cyprus. 

Martin Schulz's remarks came during the opening ceremony of a photography exhibition, "Beneath the Carob Trees: The lost lives of Cyprus," in Brussels. 

Cyprus settlement efforts have entered a new phase, with the negotiating parties announcing last week that after a month of intensified high-level talks among leaders and chief negotiators, the negotiations would move to somewhere out of Cyprus for talks on territory in November.

I felt a sense of pride last Wednesday as the Greek state finally carried out its duty towards a group of our compatriots who died for their country. It took 42 years for the truth to come out but eventually it did.

Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akıncı has pointed to mid-2017 for a referendum on the island for the citizens of both of the communities to decide whether or not to accept a peace deal aimed at being reached before the end of 2016. 

Greece is currently facing a number of direct challenges in matters regarding national security and foreign policy.

On the other side of the Aegean, Turkey is going through a period of intense instability and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is becoming increasingly unpredictable.

The Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders were to come together on Sept. 26 with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the U.N.

Will there finally be a Cyprus settlement? Can the two communal leaders of the divided eastern Mediterranean island manage to come forward before the end of the year with a deal mutually acceptable for the two people sharing Cyprus as their common homeland?

If there is no rotating presidency between the two founding states of a perspective Cypriot federal state, for which accelerated negotiations are being conducted, there will be no peace deal, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots on the eastern Mediterranean island has said. 

The Turkish Cypriot administration has opposed a proposal by the Greek Cypriots for the deployment of some 2,500 police officers from the European Union to operate in the divided eastern Mediterranean island instead of a guarantorship system, as part of the recently-accelerated peace negotiations.