Wounds and trauma are healed with sympathy, prudence, and consensus, practices that the country needs so much in an unstable and turbulent international geopolitical environment, in which democracy itself is threatened and nothing can be taken for granted, House Speaker Annita Demetriou said on Saturday in her speech to mark the anniversaries of the July 15 coup and the Turkish invasion during a special minute of silence held at the an extraordinary plenary session.
She stated: “We must face the mistakes of the past just to leave them behind and move forward… To build the future with hope and optimism… To not allow ourselves to slip into selfish, divisive, dangerous attitudes.”
July 15 marks the beginning of the country’s woes, she noted.
She added that the treacherous coup of the junta of the colonels and their collaborators gave Turkey excuse to implement its expansionist plans against Cyprus.
She also said that tribute is due to those who sacrificed themselves in an unequal and betrayed struggle for the defence of the independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus and to the veteran fighters of Cyprus.
She added that the refugees remain with their desire to return unfulfilled.
Commenting further, Demetriou said that forty-nine years later, Turkey is still flagrantly violating the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and international law.
She referred to the settlement, the occupying troops, the unilateral illegal actions, the destruction of the cultural heritage in the occupied territories, the attempted change of the status quo in the closed area of Famagusta.
“The pinnacle of Turkish intransigence is the insistence on the solution of two separate sovereign states, putting forward as a condition the sovereign equality of the Turkish Cypriots,” she said.
She added that Ankara and the Turkish Cypriot leader are blowing up any prospect of resuming meaningful negotiations, while defiantly showing zero will, to continue the effort, within the agreed framework to find a just and sustainable solution.
At the same time, she said, Ankara is planning new developments in the closed area of Famagusta.
She said that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s upcoming visit to the north for the July 20 invasion celebrations shows the Turkish Cypriot side’s intention to occupy the closed off city of Varosha, ignoring international law.
However, she expressed hope that as Euro-Turkish relations warm up and with the new positive climate in Greek-Turkish relations, Ankara’s position on Cyprus will also be recorded.
She called on the EU to help so that Cyprus will not be the only occupied state in the union.