President Erdoğan says Ankara will never abandon Turkish Cypriots, announces new projects

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday said that Ankara will continue supporting Turkish Cypriots and announced infrastructure projects for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

“No initiative that ignores the sovereign equality, rights and legitimate interests of Turkish Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean can succeed,” Erdoğan said after chairing a Cabinet meeting in the capital, Ankara.

“We are closely monitoring every step by those seeking to make Cyprus part of new military alignments and geopolitical calculations,” he said.

Reiterating Ankara’s longstanding support for Turkish Cypriots, Erdoğan said: “Türkiye will never abandon Turkish Cypriot brothers and will never allow past suffering to be repeated, whatever the cost.”

He said Türkiye would continue major infrastructure investments on the island.

“As we solved Turkish Cypriots’ water needs in the past, we will continue implementing various projects, especially a subsea natural gas pipeline,” Erdoğan added.

Addressing broader regional issues, Erdoğan said Israel is “gradually occupying Palestinian territories” by disregarding fundamental human rights and international law.

He said that not only Palestinian and Lebanese people but the entire region and its diverse faith communities are “paying the price.”

On the economy, Erdoğan said Türkiye was “taking determined steps to make the country a regional hub for production, logistics, transit trade and technology,” while successfully managing “multiple shocks” despite an increasingly unstable global environment.

He added that Türkiye’s economy remained resilient despite regional conflicts and that the government was working to minimize the impact of war-related costs.