The Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman met this week with the European Union’s special representative for Cyprus, Johannes Hahn, in a move criticised by senior Turkish Cypriot officials as a breach of protocol.
The meeting, announced by Erhurman on social media on Wednesday evening, covered EU-related issues affecting the island’s divided communities.
Erhurman said the discussion included the Schengen process, EU citizenship rights forchildren of mixed marriages, direct contact with EU institutions, the ad hoc EU committee on alignment, rules on direct trade, the EU-supported GSI project, halloumi registration, and solar energy initiatives in the buffer zone. He shared a photograph of the meeting with Hahn.
The meeting followed a joint visit by Erhurman and the Greek Cypriot leader to the CMP anthropological laboratory, where they were briefed on the organisation’s work on missing persons.
Erhurman described it as a duty to support the laboratory and prevent the politicisation of its research, expressing sympathy for families of missing persons from both communities.
However, Turkish Cypriot Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertugruloglu publicly called the meeting a mistake. He said Hahn’s appointment by the European Commission had been made unilaterally and exclusively in consultation with the Greek Cypriot leadership.
He argued that EU institutions have historically favoured the Greek Cypriot side since the Republic of Cyprus joined the bloc in 2004.
Ertugruloglu stressed that all Cyprus-related processes are conducted under the United Nations secretary-general’s oversight, and that personal envoys and UN peacekeeping officials require consent from both sides.
He said the Turkish Cypriot authorities consider Hahn’s appointment an internal EU matter and cannot recognise it in official negotiations.
He also warned that unilateral EU actions risk undermining diplomatic efforts under the UN framework.
Ertugruloglu said a sustainable settlement on the island depends on cooperation based on sovereign equality and equal international status for both communities.
He urged the EU to lift political, economic, and cultural restrictions on Turkish Cypriots to show commitment to the peace process.
