Annan plan rejection ‘a serious loss for the entire island’, Erhurman says

The rejection of the Annan plan to reunify Cyprus by the Greek Cypriot electorate in a referendum in 2004 constituted “a serious loss for the entire island”, Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said on Wednesday.

“The referendum process on April 24, 2004 was a great opportunity for a solution. 2004 was poised to be a major turning point. Ultimately, it was poised to bring about a solution. If a solution had been reached that day, how much would the lives of people on this island have been changed, 22 years later?” he asked during an interview with the north’s Tak news agency.

He added that while “2004 did not become a turning point”, it was instead “a very important lesson”.

Earlier, he had also spoken about the first opening of crossing points between the two sides, with Thursday set to mark the 23rd anniversary of the crossing points’ first opening in 2003.

“The opening of the crossing points in 2003 was a very important turning point for the history of the island. For our generation, it was an unimaginable development. Crossings from north to south and south to north transformed daily life, and younger generations no longer experienced an impassable border,” he said.

He added that the opening of the crossing points afforded people “the opportunity to see villages and towns, about which previous generations had asked ‘will I die without seeing them?’”.

As such, he said, “when discussing the issue of new crossing points, it is necessary to remember how this transformation changed the lives of both communities”.

Friday will mark exactly 22 years since the Annan plan referendum. While an almost two-thirds majority of Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of the plan, over three quarters of Greek Cypriots voted against it, and as such, it was never implemented.

Cyprus remains divided and the Cyprus problem remains unsolved to this day, with subsequent efforts to solve the Cyprus problem also having borne no fruit.

A year and a day prior, the first crossing point opened, allowing members of the public to cross between the island’s two sides for the first time since 1974.

The first crossing point to open was the Ledra Palace crossing point in Nicosia, with the Ayios Dhometios crossing point, on the capital’s western edge, opening the following month.

Since then, a further seven crossing points have opened in various locations across the island, the most recent of which were the Dherynia and Apliki crossing points, near Famagusta and near Lefka respectively, which opened in 2019.