By Murat Yıldız
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman and Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides meet again on Sept. 17, their last scheduled encounter on the island before the United Nations General Assembly general debate opens in New York five days later. Their negotiators, Menelaos Menelaou and Mehmet Dânâ, are due to meet Monday afternoon to prepare the ground.
They are approaching that deadline without agreement on the point that comes before substance: the terms under which a new round would begin.
The record may be ready before the rules are
Bosphorus News reported in August that the United Nations was compiling the convergences reached before the talks broke down at Crans-Montana in 2017. The exercise was intended to establish what had already been agreed, limit attempts to reopen old ground and give another enlarged meeting a clearer starting point.
Christodoulides said on Sept. 9 that the document was in its final stage and could be completed within days. What happens to it after that, he said, would be for the United Nations to decide.
Finishing the record would settle only part of the argument.
Christodoulides says negotiations can resume from where they stopped at Crans-Montana. After the Sept. 9 meeting, he said the leaders had discussed methodology, substance and confidence-building measures, finding common ground in some areas while remaining apart in others.
Erhürman wants more settled before formal talks begin. His four-point approach calls for political equality to be reaffirmed, previous convergences to remain closed, negotiations to be results-oriented and conducted within a time frame, and safeguards to prevent the Turkish Cypriot side from simply returning to the existing status quo if another process fails despite its cooperation.
The argument over the terms for returning to negotiations therefore goes beyond the UN inventory itself. The two sides still have to determine what weight earlier understandings carry, how unresolved chapters are handled and what safeguards accompany another attempt.
Those questions would normally sit around a negotiation. In the current Cyprus process, they are being negotiated first.
The crossings remain stuck
The Sept. 9 meeting produced no agreement on new confidence-building measures and ended without a joint statement.
The crossing points show how little has moved even on the practical file. Christodoulides said the leaders discussed four proposed crossings as a package, following the approach developed at the enlarged Geneva meeting in March 2025. Eighteen months later, the package remains unresolved.
Erhürman has also brought developments outside the negotiating room into the discussion. He has cited agreements involving Israel and Greece that he says disregard Turkish Cypriots, attempts to discourage diplomats from attending Dânâ's briefing, the cancellation of international events in the north, European Parliament resolutions and legal action over property.
He argues that such developments affect the conditions in which any new round would have to operate.
The property dispute has meanwhile developed along two separate legal tracks: claims pursued through the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) and criminal proceedings brought by the Republic of Cyprus. Neither is controlled by the leaders' dialogue, but both now feed into the dispute over the political environment surrounding it.
New York still has no joint format
Christodoulides has floated several possibilities for New York: a joint meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, talks involving his personal envoy María Angela Holguín, or contacts at negotiator level. He has acknowledged that none is assured.
Holguín has cancelled planned travel to Cyprus and New York for health reasons. The UN has confirmed that Erhürman and Christodoulides are expected to meet UN officials separately during the General Assembly high-level period. No joint meeting has been announced.
Without movement on Sept. 17, the two leaders could arrive at the UN with separate positions and no agreed basis for a joint meeting.
The 81st General Assembly session opened on Sept. 8 and its general debate begins Sept. 22. Guterres' second term ends on Dec. 31, leaving only a few months if he intends to turn the present preparations into another enlarged meeting before leaving office.
One meeting against a shrinking calendar
Christodoulides said on Sept. 7 that he hoped to meet Erhürman another two or three times before travelling to New York and was ready to meet every day if necessary.
So far, one further leaders' meeting is scheduled.
That gap between the number of meetings publicly offered and the meeting actually fixed says more about the state of the process than another declaration of willingness to negotiate. The sides are still trying to settle confidence-building measures, the treatment of earlier convergences and the methodology for a new round while the UN calendar continues to narrow.
Sept. 17 therefore carries a more limited but more concrete test than whether the Cyprus negotiations can be relaunched in a single meeting. It will show whether Menelaou and Dânâ can first narrow any of the procedural differences on Monday, and whether the leaders can then take enough common ground to New York to move beyond separate UN contacts.
If they cannot, Erhürman and Christodoulides will arrive in New York with the central paradox of the current Cyprus process intact: before they can negotiate a settlement, they still have to negotiate how to negotiate.
Sources: United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, Turkish Cypriot Presidency, Republic of Cyprus Presidency, Cyprus News Agency, Cyprus Mail, Sigmalive, Bosphorus News review and reporting.