UK Foreign Office Minister of State, Stephen Doughty MP, is set to visit the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) today (Friday, 7th March) for discussions with President Ersin Tatar in Lefkoşa, TRNC.
The meeting comes in advance of critical United Nations negotiations concerning the future of Cyprus, scheduled to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 17th and 18th March. As the designated UN Security Council ‘penholder’ on Cyprus, the UK is expected to play a key role in facilitating talks between representatives from the TRNC, the Republic of Cyprus, Türkiye, Greece, and the United Kingdom.
This will mark the TRNC’s first direct engagement with the newly elected Labour government and follows Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s pre-Christmas meeting with the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides. The Labour government’s initial reluctance to meet President Tatar was met with criticism from Northern Cyprus and Türkiye.
Political analysts view this meeting as an indication of the Starmer administration’s intent to mend relations with Ankara, particularly as it seeks to form a ‘coalition of the willing’.
Doughty’s visit will be the first official UK governmental trip to Northern Cyprus since former Conservative Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s visit in February 2021.
In the lead-up to the UK minister’s visit, TRNC Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu has spent the past week in London, engaging with senior politicians from across different political parties. Minister Tahsin has also given interviews to several British media outlets, including a live appearance on Iain Dale’s LBC show.
The UK-based Freedom and Fairness for Northern Cyprus campaign is hopeful that this high-level meeting between the UK minister and the TRNC President could mark a shift in the British government’s position as a UN guarantor power in Cyprus—one that acknowledges the reality of two separate states on the island.
