The foreign minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) criticized a United States senator for his hostile remarks about the Turkish military presence and the two-state solution.
"We strongly condemn U.S. Senator Bob Menendez's statement about his goal to ‘see the last Turkish soldier leave the island,'" Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu said in a statement.
Ertuğruloğlu was referring to remarks made by the U.S. official at a ceremony on Monday where he was presented the Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios III by the Greek Cypriot administration.
He said Menendez is "known for his hostility to Turkey" and has "led the preparation of many draft resolutions against motherland Turkey and the TRNC."
The foreign minister said Menendez's support for Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration for personal and political gains has damaged Turkey-U.S. relations.
The U.S. senator has also undermined efforts to restore trust and stability on the island and in the region, Ertuğruloğlu added.
"We would like to remind Menendez that the Turkish military intervened on the island to prevent the decimation of the Turkish Cypriot people, who were subjected to all kinds of inhumane practices, including mass murder, by the Greek side, especially between 1963 and 1974," he asserted.
"Neither he nor his words make sense," he added.
It is an undeniable fact that Turkey intervened to fulfill its obligations under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) are on the island at the request of the Turkish Cypriot people to prevent a repeat of their past suffering, Ertuğruloğlu said.
"Demanding that the TSK, who have ensured a peaceful and secure environment on the island since 1974, cease their presence means surrendering the island to war and Greek brutality again," the TRNC foreign minister said.
Such calls can only come from people like Menendez, who have little knowledge of Cyprus and its history, and try to disguise their ignorance with hostility toward Turkey, he added.
"Neither he (Menendez) nor his words make sense," Ertuğruloğlu said.
Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, also said a peace accord for Cyprus based on two separate states "flies in the face" of United Nations Security Council resolutions as well a decades-old arrangement between Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators to reunify Cyprus as a federation.
Greek Cypriots strongly reject any deal that they view as legitimizing the island’s ethnic partition but Turkish Cypriots say previous attempts have shown that a federation is not viable. The Greek Cypriot administration instead is proposing a "decentralized federation" under which the Greek and Turkish speaking zones would be granted more authority to run their own affairs.
Cyprus has been mired in a decadeslong dispute between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts by the U.N. to achieve a comprehensive settlement.
In the early 1960s, ethnic attacks forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety. In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aiming at Greece's annexation of the island led to Turkey's military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was founded in 1983.
The island has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Greek Cypriot administration entered the European Union in 2004, the same year that Greek Cypriots thwarted the U.N.'s Annan plan to end the decadeslong dispute.