Erdogan, Kazakh president discuss ‘equal and inherent rights of Turkish Cypriots’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he and his Kazakh counterpart Kassym Jomart-Tokayev had “discussed respecting the equal and inherent rights of the Turkish Cypriots”.

Speaking following a bilateral meeting in Ankara, he spoke of how Turkey, Kazakhstan, and other Turkic states are “acting in unity with the motto of unity in language, thought, and work” in “a region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the most remote corners of Turkestan”.

“We are working together to to strengthen the Turkic world, both in bilateral relations and within the Organisation of Turkic States [OTS], our family council,” he said.

He pointed out that Kazakhstan is set to host an informal summit of the OTS next year, and hinted at a potential invite for the Turkish Cypriot leader of the day.

“We continue to strengthen our solidarity with the Turkish Cypriots, a fundamental and integral element of the Turkic world. In the joint declaration we recently adopted with Tokayev, we specifically discussed respecting the equal and inherent rights of hte Turkish Cypriots,” he said.

The joint declaration in question is the “decision of the fifth meeting of the Turkey-Kazakhstan high-level strategic cooperation council”, of which the exact text has not been made public.

Last month, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), of which Turkey and Kazakhstan are both member states, published a joint declaration signed by its members’ foreign ministers which made reference to Cyprus.

It stated that the summit’s attendees “support the aspirations of the Muslim Turkish Cypriots to secure their inherent rights and stress the importance of finding a negotiated, mutually acceptable, just, lasting, and sustainable settlement” to the Cyprus problem.

It added that attendees “emphasise the importance of developing contacts with the Muslim Turkish Cypriots in order to overcome the just isolation imposed upon them”.

Earlier in the year, OTS members Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, as well as observer Turkmenistan and non-Turkic Tajikistan, signed a joint declaration with the European Union which effectively ruled out any of them ever recognising the north as an independent country.

That declaration had declared that all five countries “reaffirmed our strong commitment” to United Nations security council resolutions 541 and 550.

Resolution 541 said the security council “deplores the declaration of the Turkish Cypriot authorities of the purported secession of part of the Republic of Cyprus” while calling on UN member states not to recognise the north.

Resolution 550 said it “reiterates the call upon all states not to recognise the purported state of the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, set up by secessionist acts, and calls upon them not to facilitate or in any way assist the aforesaid secessionist entity”.

Turkish Parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmus had said shortly after the signing of the joint declaration that the four Turkic states were expected to “make up for it” in the near future.