Outlook
The TRNC fully supports Turkey's bid to join the European Union. As part of this bid, Turkey recently signed a protocol extending its customs union to the new EU members, including the Republic of Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognise. Turkey made sure this was not tantamount to recognition with the inclusion of a declaration, stipulating their continued policy of non-recognition of what they describe as the "Greek Cypriot administration of Southern Cyprus" until a settlement is reached. This declaration is not accepted by the EU which did not accept this statement as forming part of the acquit and expects Turkey to fully abide to its obligations against the Republic of Cyprus. The TRNC views any move by the EU to force Turkish recognition of the Republic of Cyprus as an effort to cut them off from their base of support. Turkey has pledged not to abandon the TRNC, but the upcoming negotiations with the EU will put this pledge sorely to the test.
On 18 February 2008, the President of the TRNC congratulated the people of Kosovo on their new-found independence, in direct opposition to the Republic of Cyprus, which rejects Kosovo's declaration of independence, but not Turkey, which was the fifth country to recognise Kosovo. However, presidential spokesman Hasan Ercakica stated that the TRNC was not preparing to officially recognize Kosovo.
On 2 September 2008, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey announced that if Turkey recognized the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia would recognize TRNC as an independent country. Later, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected this variant.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Relations Of Northern Cyprus
Famous quotes containing the word outlook:
“My whole outlook on life changed with those three little words, “The rabbit died.””
—Anonymous Mother. Quoted in When Men Are Pregnant, ch. 5, Jerrold Lee Shapiro (1987)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)
“Even in ordinary speech we call a person unreasonable whose outlook is narrow, who is conscious of one thing only at a time, and who is consequently the prey of his own caprice, whilst we describe a person as reasonable whose outlook is comprehensive, who is capable of looking at more than one side of a question and of grasping a number of details as parts of a whole.”
—G. Dawes Hicks (1862–1941)