Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides has confirmed that he will travel to Turkey next month for the UN climate summit in the southern province of Antalya in what would be the first visit by a Cypriot president in a decade despite Ankara’s refusal to recognize his government, the Cyprus Mail, an English-language newspaper based in Cyprus, reported.
Christodoulides said on Tuesday that he would attend COP31 following diplomatic efforts to secure his participation.
“Of course I will attend. The Republic of Cyprus always attends these summits,” he said.
He credited Cyprus’s partners and diplomatic contacts conducted away from public view with securing the invitation, saying the development also carried significance for the Cyprus dispute.
The conference will take place November 9-20, with a leaders’ summit scheduled for November 11 and 12.
Christodoulides’s planned attendance follows months of controversy over whether Turkey would include Cyprus in the summit and its preparatory meetings.
In June Cyprus expressed concern that Ankara intended to invite only 26 of the EU’s 27 member states. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said excluding Cyprus would be unacceptable and insisted that all member states receive equal treatment.
Turkish diplomatic sources subsequently said Cypriot delegations had been invited to all COP31 events coordinated by the UN. They distinguished those events from a disputed briefing in New York, which they said Turkey had organized independently of the UN climate conference process.
The Cyprus News Agency also reported on Sunday, citing a government source, that the Republic of Cyprus had received an invitation to the Antalya conference.
If the visit goes ahead, Christodoulides would become the first Cypriot president to travel to Turkey since Nicos Anastasiades attended the UN World Humanitarian Summit in İstanbul in 2016. Earlier visits included those of Makarios III in 1962 and Glafcos Clerides for an international summit in İstanbul in 1999.
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman also confirmed on Wednesday that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had invited him to the conference and that he would attend.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded following a coup backed by Greece’s military junta. The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, controls the island’s south. Turkey does not recognize that government and is the only country to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), declared in 1983.
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