President Ersin Tatar received the Sakarya Branch of the Turkish Economy and Trade Association President Şamil Dedeoğlu and the accompanying delegation.   President Tatar said that Sakarya is one of the most valuable regions of Motherland Turkey – due to its rich history and heroic struggles. The President expressed his wish that commercial, economic, cultural and political relations would be beneficial. “The work to be done together is important,” the President said. “The Turkish Cypriot people have the same ancestry in the same geography who also waged an important struggle to coexist on this island against the Greek Cypriot side which aspired to unite the island of Cyprus with Greece. President Tatar continued: “In the context of our national stance and interests in the eastern Mediterranean, we are putting forward a position on the need to have a united front of maintaining a common relations and political understanding between the Republic of Turkey and the TRNC. There has been a struggle in Cyprus for centuries and we have memories, martyrs and history in these lands. The Republic of Turkey is a guarantor country here. The Greek-Greek Cypriot duo acted with the idea of annexing the island of Cyprus to Greece, but was not successful. With the Cyprus Peace Operation on 20 July 1974, the Republic of Turkey, using her guarantor right, dispatched troops to the island and saved the Turkish Cypriots from a possible genocide. Since then, the TRNC has been living independently and freely. Our ties with the Republic of Turkey will continue. I believe that the contacts will continue to increase so that the younger generations also believe in this cause and adopt it as a national issue. Currently, a new policy has developed in the TRNC with the support of Republic of Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We are saying that an agreement cannot be reached on the basis of a federation because this has been exhausted. The only way to reaching a settlement in Cyprus is to take lessons from the past and adopt an approach outside the box.  The only way an agreement can be reached is to hold formal negotiations that is based on two separate equal sovereign States which coexist side-by-side. The sacred ties between us and the Republic of Turkey cannot be severed. We are advising the whole world of this new policy and we will continue to do so. We may have problems with recognition, but the TRNC reality is being accepted day-by-day. Nobody can impose a solution on us.  We will not allow this. We will continue to do our best for the honourable continuation of our  national cause in Cyprus.”