UN Geneva Talks

After Crans-Montana collapsed in July 2017, almost four years passed without a meeting of all the parties. In the months before this meeting, UN Under Secretary General Jane Holl Lute held consultations on behalf of Secretary General António Guterres to see whether talks could restart. The election of Ersin Tatar as Turkish Cypriot leader in October 2020 had changed the starting positions.

Guterres invited the two Cypriot sides and the three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, to an informal meeting in Geneva, a format the UN called “five plus the United Nations”. Nicos Anastasiades led the Greek Cypriot delegation and Tatar the Turkish Cypriot one. Guterres also met the guarantor foreign ministers, among them Nikos Dendias of Greece and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu of Turkey.

The two sides set out positions that no longer overlapped. The Turkish Cypriot delegation said efforts to reach a bizonal, bicommunal federation had been exhausted, and Tatar presented a six point proposal for a settlement between two states, with sovereign equality and a UN Security Council resolution recognising the north as a state. Turkey said it fully supported this vision. Anastasiades said talks should resume from where they stopped at Crans-Montana, aiming for a federation, and offered confidence building measures that included UN administration of Varosha and of Tymbou (Ercan) airport, opening Famagusta port under EU rules and an escrow account for revenue from natural resources. Tatar dismissed the offer on Varosha and the airport as an insult.

On 29 April Guterres told journalists: “we have not yet found enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations.” He added, “I do not give up,” and said he would call another meeting in the same format in the near future.

That further meeting did not take place under Tatar and Anastasiades. Informal contacts continued, and Guterres held two more enlarged meetings, in Geneva in March 2025 and New York in July 2025, by which time Nikos Christodoulides led the Greek Cypriot side. Those produced agreement on some practical steps, but not on a basis for formal negotiations.