Cyprus-Forum.com

[brother]

Tassos victim of Turk hoax
By Jean Christou


THE GOVERNMENT was the victim of a hoax yesterday when Turkish newspaper Hurriyet published a photo and article saying President Tassos Papadopoulos had met an envoy of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Nicosia at the weekend.

Under the headline “They thought she was an envoy”, Hurriyet published a photo of a woman linking her arm in Papadopoulos’. She claimed the picture had been taken on Saturday outside the Municipal Theatre in Nicosia, although the President did not return from an official trip to Malta until Saturday afternoon.

According to Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides, the woman, who claimed to be a member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), is in fact a journalist. The photo, he said, was genuine but had been taken in June 2003 at the EU summit in Salonica in Greece.

In its article, Hurriyet said: “Nil Demirkazik did it again… The Greek Cypriots thought that Demirkazik, who had gone to the Ledra Palace border gate and wanted to have a meeting with Papadopoulos, was Prime Minister Erdogan’s envoy. She was taken by a car and had a coffee with Papadopoulos in a café for 20 minutes.

“The Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos, thinking that she was bringing a message from the Prime Minister Erdogan, secretly brought Nil Demirkazik, a former Justice and Development Party (AKP) parliamentary candidate, sat face to face, and had coffee with her and took a picture with her arm in arm.

“The Greek Cypriots had perceived Demirkazik’s initiative as a step taken within the framework of a possible meeting between Erdogan and Papadopoulos,” the paper claimed.

Demirkazik told the newspaper she had gone to the north for the elections at the weekend to lend support to Serdar Denktash’s Democratic Party, and had given a plaque to his father, veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash.
She said she saw her trip to the north as an opportunity to meet Papadopoulos.

“Five months ago I made an application to the Greek Cypriot Embassy in Greece that I am an AKP candidate of parliament and that I want to meet Papadopoulos,” she told Hurriyet.

However, she was told Papadopoulos would not be in Cyprus at the time but that there was a phone number where she could contact his party DIKO.

“I went to the Ledra Palace border gate. The Greek Cypriot police did not let me cross over. Then I called my contact in DIKO and told him/her that I am at the Ledra Palace border gate and wanted to meet Mr Papadopoulos.

Within five minutes a car came and took me to the Greek Cypriot side,” she added.

“We had a lunch with DIKO officials, then they took me next to a theatre, Mr Papadopoulos came out of a car I told him that I have come to extend support to the Democratic Party of Serdar Denktash. Mr Papadopoulos told me: ‘We want good relations with Turkey.’ Then I complained to him about the Greek Cypriot journalists who had treated me in an unbecoming manner in Brussels. He told me: ‘You have met a rude Greek Cypriot?’ Then we went to a café and had coffee and talked for 15-20 minutes. I had no camera, so I asked DIKO officials to take a picture; they did it and gave the picture to me.”

A written statement by the government later yesterday said the entire report was “a figment of her imagination, and was in bad taste”.

It said the woman has asked several times from the Cyprus embassy in Athens to set up a meeting with Papadopoulos as a reporter for another Turkish newspaper.

“This reporter met President Papadopoulos during the EU summit when Greece held the EU presidency,” the statement said.

It said that last weekend Demirkazik had indeed attempted to cross at the Ledra Palace checkpoint as part of her work in covering the elections in the north. She was allowed to cross and was accompanied by an official from the Press and Information Office, the statement said.