‘2025 will be much more difficult’ for Turkish Cypriots - ‘economy minister’

The year 2025 will be “much more difficult” economically than previous years for Turkish Cypriots, the TRNC’s ‘economy minister’ Olgun Amcaoglu said on Thursday.

Speaking to the north Cyprus’s public broadcaster BRT, he said that for this reason, “there are many things which need to be done completely and on time”.

Chief among those things, he said, are discussions over next year’s ‘state’ budget at the ‘parliamentary’ finance committee, which are due to begin next Tuesday, but look unlikely to do so given the ongoing political crisis and deadlock which has engulfed the TRNC’s ‘parliament’ for the last month.

On this, he said, “not starting budget discussions in the committee is the greatest evil which can be done to this country, a betrayal. I am saying this of all 50 MPs, myself included.”

He added that the crisis and deadlock is allowing for key issues in the north to go unsolved, particularly in the education and health sectors.

“We have no medicine in our hospitals and our children are going to school in portacabins. This is not only the responsibility of the relevant ministers. We are experiencing these problems due to other inadequacies and the lack of proper systems,” he said.

On the ongoing crisis, he became the second ruling coalition ‘MP’ to appear to waiver on the coalition’s stance regarding its root, the election or not of Ziya Ozturkler as ‘parliament speaker’.

While he did not go into specifics, he said, “the government and the opposition need to come together to consult on his issue again, but it should not be seen as a step back.”

“Let us take a step forward. We, as 50 MPs, should be able to take a step forward together … We should be providing consensus, or whatever it is called, to ensure that a step forward is taken,” he said.

The first ruling coalition ‘MP’ to break ranks was ‘parliamentary’ legal committee chairwoman Yasemin Ozturk, who declared that the three votes which the ‘government’ had claimed had swung the election in favour of Ozturkler were “against the law”.

The remaining 27 ruling coalition ‘MPs’ publicly insist that Ozturkler was elected and is ‘speaker’, while the opposition insists that he was not and is not.