Roundtable Meeting with Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot Journalists

GPoT, in cooperation with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation - Turkey, organized the 6th Round of the Cyprus Talks, previously called the Heybeliada Talks, between 26 and 28 February in Istanbul bringing together a select number of politicians, journalists and opinion makers from the Turkish and Greek parts of Cyprus, as well as Greece and Turkey.

As part of the 2-day dialogue, for the first time since the beginning of the Cyprus problem, a Turkish Prime Minister spoke directly to Cypriots. Bringing the participants together with the Turkish Prime Minister Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Mr. Egemen Bağış provided the participants with the historic opportunity to talk to Turkish dignitaries face to face and later transmit their messages to their respective communities.

The round table talks covered the current situation in Cyprus, the stumbling blocks in the negotiation process, as well as the perspective of the media. Among the issues underlined were the approaching elections in TRNC, the reasons the Annan Plan could not be universally accepted, the importance of getting the message of unification across to public opinion, and the role of the media in this process