ANKARA

Türkiye on Friday urged the UN Security Council and the international community to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the equal international status of Turkish Cypriots.

Speaking at a ceremony in the Turkish capital Ankara, Vice President Fuat Oktay said: “We call on the UN Security Council and the international community to register officially the equal international status of the Turkish Cypriots and to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”

He criticized the UN Security Council’s Monday decision to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus, saying it “added a new one to the mistakes it has been making about Cyprus for years.”

Seeking the unilateral consent of the Greek Cypriot side in extending the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force has “no humanitarian, diplomatic or legal value,” he added.

“With this decision, the UN Security Council shows that it has not abandoned its insistence on solution models that proved unsuccessful,” Oktay asserted.

Cyprus has been mired in a decades-long dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts by the UN to achieve a comprehensive settlement.

Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety.

In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was founded in 1983.

It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries – Türkiye, Greece and the UK.

The Greek Cypriot administration was admitted to the EU in 2004, the same year when Greek Cypriots thwarted a UN plan to end the longstanding dispute.