



The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during a conference in Poland, claimed that there is no country called Cyprus and that the Greek Cypriot administration (as he described the Republic of Cyprus) was accepted in the E.U. for political reasons and not because the country was harmonized with the European laws.

Erdogan said: “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 cannot admit it, but the decision was entirely political.”

The response of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was immediate. Konstantinos Koutras, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that Erdogan’s statement must awaken the international community about the real intentions of Turkey on the Cyprus issue.

Rena Dourou, MP of SYRIZA, asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Evangelos Venizelos, to rise to the occasion and not to consider this statement as a matter of secondary importance.



