EU candidate Turkey would not accept Cyprus in the rotating European Union presidency, which it is due to assume in July 2012, without a deal to end the island's division, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.
Speaking before travelling to the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north of the island, Erdogan said the EU should weigh the impact of letting the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot state take the chair for the first time.
"We will not accept the EU presidency of South Cyprus, whom we do not recognise. The European Union should consider the consequences," he told a news conference in Ankara.
Erdogan's visit to northern Cyprus was his first trip abroad in his third term in office after his ruling AK Party won a comfortable victory in a parliamentary election last year. The trip marks the anniversary on Wednesday of Turkey's 1974 invasion of the East Mediterranean island.
On his arrival in Cyprus, Erdogan said no progress towards a solution of the island's division was possible unless the principle of two founding states was accepted.
"There is no such state as Cyprus. There is southern Cyprus and there is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," he told a crowd of around 2,000 people waving Turkish and Turkish Cypriot flags at the airport. During his visit, Erdogan was expected to deliver strong messages to both the Greek Cypriot government and the EU, while also reassuring Turkish Cypriots of Ankara's support for them as efforts to reunite the island get underway once again. Erdogan angered many Turkish Cypriots earlier this year with harsh words as he forced their government to adopt unpopular austerity measures.
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