Cevdet Yılmaz delivered Türkiye's answer from the island itself. Standing at Ercan Airport in northern Cyprus on Friday, next to Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Prime Minister Ünal Üstel, the vice president said Ankara does not recognize the European Parliament's new resolution on Cyprus in any way. "It is null and void," he said, and it "diminishes the credibility and reputation of the European Parliament."
The Parliament had adopted the text two days earlier, on 8 July in Strasbourg, by 575 votes to 33 with 43 abstentions. It concerns the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation. The Parliament titled it around what it called "the 1974 Turkish invasion on Cypriot women and girls, and the crimes committed by Turkish forces."
One fact shapes everything that followed: the resolution is non-binding. It is a statement of the Parliament's position, not a law, and it obliges no one to do anything. That is what let Ankara wave it away within a day, and it is also why the vote reads as a message rather than a move.
The message landed, and the reply was a wall.
Türkiye's Foreign Ministry called the text "null and void" on Thursday night, before Yılmaz spoke. It said the resolution carried "baseless and preposterous allegations against the heroic Turkish Armed Forces" and described it as "replete with despicable slanders." The EU, the ministry said, is "increasingly approaching the Cyprus issue in a manner that departs from historical realities and impartiality."
The TRNC Foreign Ministry got there first and went further, condemning the resolution as unacceptable and saying it served only "Greek Cypriot propaganda aimed at deceiving the world." Its substantive complaint was about what the Parliament left out. Rather than voice the violence and crimes against humanity that Greek Cypriots inflicted on Turkish Cypriots, the ministry said, the assembly had reached instead for unfounded accusations against the Turkish army. Turkish Cypriots lived through years of intercommunal killing before 1974, driven into enclaves after the violence that began in 1963, and Ankara has always framed the 1974 operation as the answer to that danger. The ministry made a point of noting that women members of the TRNC parliament had written to the relevant Parliament committee ahead of the vote, laying out that account. The letters did not change the count.
From Ankara the party statements followed in a line. Communications Director Fahrettin Duran, government spokesman Ömer Çelik, who said Türkiye rejects "this vile decision at its root," and AK Parti deputy chair Zorlu all answered the same day.
Here is the history the resolution reopens. Türkiye landed troops on Cyprus in 1974 as a guarantor power under the 1960 treaties that founded the republic, after a coup on the island aimed at union with Greece. Ankara's position, held without a break for 51 years, is that it acted to protect Turkish Cypriots and retains both the right and the duty to keep protecting them. The TRNC has governed the north as its own state since. The Greek Cypriot administration and much of the EU call the same events an occupation. The Parliament's resolution is written in that second language, and Ankara reads it as the Greek Cypriot case wearing an EU stamp.
The timing points at the EU's own Cyprus policy, which has gone quiet. Settlement talks have led nowhere for years, and the TRNC's stated position has hardened into two sovereign states side by side, with Türkiye's guarantee off the table for negotiation. A resolution about 1974, passed in 2026 by a parliament that cannot move the present, is easy for Ankara to file under gesture.
The rest of the relationship carried on in the same 24 hours, in the register that actually binds the two governments. Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar toured the Teknecik power plant in the north and pledged continued Turkish support for the TRNC's power supply, which he called an inseparable part of Türkiye's own energy security. A Turkish firefighting helicopter was sent across to the island.
Yılmaz put the through-line plainly before he left Ercan. The resolution, he said, harms neither the Republic of Türkiye nor the TRNC. It costs the Parliament, and no one else.