Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar, have joined forces in an attempt to appeal for missing persons information from the 1960 and 1974 Turkish invasions of Cyprus.
The pair met on Friday, July 28 at the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) anthropological laboratory.
Christodoulides and Tatar toured the anthropological laboratory and praised the CMP’s work, in which they both deemed humanitarian efforts should be unaffected by political processes, according to Ekathimerini.
Christodoulides said in a statement that all missing individuals need to be located, whether they are Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots.
Tatar told reporters: “This is a humanitarian issue, therefore this is something which is outside politics.”
Christodoulides added the appeal to find missing individuals would send a “clear political message” to build trust between the two sides, who have not had direct talks in six years.
This comes amid Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated call for a ‘two-state solution’ to the Cyprus problem, with Tatar’s claim the Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 ‘brought peace’ to the island.
Since 2006, the CMP, a UN facilitated body, has been tasked with locating, unearthing and identifying missing persons during the 1960 and 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
Source: Ekathimerini
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