Turkish Cypriot President Tufan Erhürman met with three of his four surviving predecessor, Mehmet Ali Talat, Mustafa Akıncı and Ersin Tatar, over the weekend, as diplomatic efforts continue both on the island and internationally to restart substantive negotiations on the issue.
No details were released about the content of the meetings. Erhürman’s office said only that a scheduled meeting with former leader Derviş Eroğlu was postponed due to the 88-year-old’s health problems.
The meetings came as U.N. envoy Maria Angela Holguin is set to hold talks in Brussels with European Union officials in the coming
days.
Holguin has recently visited Ankara and Athens, where she met Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, following earlier meetings in Cyprus with Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Erhürman.
She is expected to return to the island later this month, as preparations continue for an expanded Cyprus summit involving both sides on the island, the three guarantor states, Greece, Türkiye and the United Kingdom, as well as the U.N.
The meeting is currently planned for late July or early August.
The U.N. is pursuing what it describes as a “new initiative” aimed at restarting formal negotiations.
Both leaders have emphasized their expectation that the upcoming expanded meeting will yield concrete outcomes. Christodoulides said after his talks with Holguín that the objective is to pave the way for
such a gathering, during which a formal resumption of negotiations could be announced.
