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| Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (credit: Wikipedia) |
UPDATE - Foreign Ministry spokesperson Konstantinos Koutras stated the following in response to journalists’ questions on Erdogan's statements (or as to the “non-existence” of the Republic of Cyprus):
“The Turkish Prime Minister’s disputing the very existence of the Republic of Cyprus should finally awaken the international community as to Turkey’s true intentions regarding the Cyprus issue. Any further comment on this is superfluous.”......................................
(ProtoThema) - Speaking at a conference in Poland the Turkish premier claimed that there is no country called Cyprus and the "Greek Cypriot administration" as he called the Republic of Cyprus was accepted into the EU for political reasons and not because it was harmonized with the European laws.
"Pay attention. It was not accepted as southern Cyprus but as Cyprus. There is no country called Cyprus but a local government of southern Cyprus. Because there is North Cyprus there is a green line between them with UN security teams. Absolutely no country within the EU should be facing security problems. This place has such an internal problem. The EU could not admit it but the decision was entirely political."These statements by the Turkish premier have caused reactions even inside Turkey.
A Turkish journalist wrote that “the prime minister knows very well that there is a country called Cyprus. What are 40,000 soldiers of yours doing in a country called Cyprus? Why is his flag waving in every corner? Who do you think you are that when the Varosha issue is on the daily agenda, and feeling that you own the land, you say that you would not give an inch of land in Cyprus even for a full accession?”
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