NORTH NICOSIA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday reaffirmed his country’s support for a two-state solution in Cyprus, urging the international community to accept the Mediterranean island’s existing division.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara.
“We fully support the vision based on a two-state solution,” Erdogan said during a visit to northern Cyprus marking 51 years since Turkish troops invaded the island.
“It is time for the international community to make peace with the realities on the ground,” Erdogan said.
The Turkish leader’s visit comes few days after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that meetings between Cyprus’s rival leaders at the organization’s New York headquarters were “constructive,” even as questions remained about crossing points on the island.
Erdogan on Sunday called for an end to the isolation of the TRNC.
“Diplomatic, political, and economic relations should be established with the TRNC, and the injustice endured by Turkish Cypriots for decades must finally come to an end,” he said.
The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.
Turkiye’s Erdogan insists on Cyprus two-state solution
https://arab.news/yq2z9
Turkiye’s Erdogan insists on Cyprus two-state solution
- Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta
- Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognized only by Ankara
Jailed Tunisia opposition figure handed 12 years in third trial
- Dozens of opposition figures were recently sentenced to harsh prison terms in a mass trial on charges of conspiracy against state security
TUNIS: Jailed Tunisian opposition figure Abir Moussi was sentenced to an additional 12 years in prison on Thursday under a law criminalizing any “attack aimed at changing the form of government,” her lawyer told AFP.
A fierce critic of both President Kais Saied and the Islamist-inspired opposition Ennahdha party, Moussi has been in custody since her arrest in October 2023 outside the presidential palace where her party says she was seeking to lodge appeals against Saied’s decrees.
The latest sentence was in connection to that incident.
This is the third trial against Moussi, who was initially sentenced in August 2024 to two years in prison under Decree 54, a law Saied enacted in 2022 to combat “false news.” That sentence was later reduced on appeal.
Last June, just after completing her first jail term, she was sentenced again under the same law to two years in prison. The appeal process in that case is underway.
In a statement released before Friday’s verdict, the Free Destourian Party condemned “the injustice suffered by the party’s president, Abir Moussi, who has been arbitrarily detained since October 3, 2023.”
She is suspected by her detractors of wanting to return to the authoritarianism of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, overthrown in Tunisia’s 2011 revolt.
Meanwhile Saied, elected in 2019, has ruled by decree since a sweeping 2021 power grab and many of his opponents have been jailed.
Dozens of opposition figures were recently sentenced to harsh prison terms in a mass trial on charges of conspiracy against state security.
Others are being prosecuted under Decree 54, a law criticized by human rights advocates for its overly broad interpretation by the courts.
