Turkey Ghost Town Plan Would Wreck  Reunification Talks, Cyprus Warns

(Bloomberg) -- Cyprus has told European Union governments that a plan to resettle a ghost town in the island's Turkish-controlled North could derail reunification talks for good.

Varosha, near the port of Famagusta, was once Cyprus's premier tourist resort, before it was abandoned and sealed off following the Turkish takeover of the North of the island in 1974. The town has been fenced off ever since.

Ersin Tatar, prime minister of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot government, said at a news conference that the beach at Varosha will be reopened to the public on Thursday.

Tatar spoke during a joint appearance in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who expressed “full support” for reopening Varosha.

Cyprus's government said it would consider the move a breach of Ankara's international commitments, which would prevent talks on reunification. Greece also condemned the Turkish decision.

“If Turkey were to be allowed to proceed with her plans on Varosha that would create a ‘fait accompli,' which would render the aim of reaching a Cyprus settlement, as envisaged in the UN Security Council Resolutions, utterly unattainable,” the Cypriot government said in a document discussed by EU diplomats in Brussels on Monday and seen by Bloomberg.

“Cyprus and the prospects for a settlement of the problem will have suffered an irreparable damage,” the document said.

Read More: Northern Cyprus Ghost Town May Be Opened Soon for Settlement

Cyprus will protest to the UN Security Council, the EU and all international forums, government spokesman Kyriakos Koushos said after Tatar's announcement. The move violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions and contravenes the latest European Council conclusions, he said.

Successive efforts to reunify the island under a federal structure have failed, leaving Cyprus as the only European country with UN peacekeepers on its soil. Relations between Turkey and the EU have been strained in recent months in the wake of Turkish prospecting for hydrocarbon reserves in disputed parts of the eastern Mediterranean.

Still, officials are optimistic that a new international push to resolve the Cyprus dispute may gather momentum after an election in the northern part of the divided island later this month.

Turkey has said it wants Varosha to be resettled and opened to investment, in an apparent bid to win international recognition for the Turkish-Cypriot state.

“If the Greek Cypriots want to come, claim their property, pay for it, run businesses, etc., it will be possible,” a spokesman for Erdogan, Ibrahim Kalina, said in an interview in August.

Cyprus warned the EU in a policy paper that it would consider a reopening of Varosha a violation of Turkey's obligations to the EU and would demand sanctions from the bloc to defend its interests. Those conditions would almost certainly rule out any negotiations over reunification.

Turkey and Cyprus have been at loggerheads over offshore gas reserves in waters off the Cypriot coast, and the EU has already imposed asset freezes and travel bans on two employees of Turkish Petroleum Corp. in response to Turkey's gas hunt off Cyprus.

Read More: How Tensions Are Rising Over Mediterranean Gas Fields: QuickTake

The EU is eager to avoid further escalation in the spat with one of its biggest trading partners, a country on which it also relies for controlling Middle Eastern migration to Europe.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.