United Cypriot Republic

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The United Cypriot Republic is a federal state aborted project proposed in 2004 under the Annan Plan to reunite the two states that share Cyprus: the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This entity would have been created if the plan had been accepted by the two populations of the island, which was not the case, as it limited the proportion of refugees in 1974 who could return to their homes to 33% and involved the withdrawal of the Turkish army from the island.

Constitution

The RCU would have covered the entire island of Cyprus with the exception of the two areas remaining under British sovereignty; a new constitution would have been federal to two autonomous entities, keeping separate constitutions of each state, with a series of common federal laws, and a proposal for a common flag and national anthem. A reconciliation commission was to bring the two communities together and resolve their differences.

At the federal level, new governmental bodies were reportedly set up: a Presidential Council of six voting members and three non-voters representing both communities proportionally, with a President and a Vice-President, chosen by the Presidential Council from among its members, one from each community, alternating their functions every 20 months for a five-year term. There would also have been a bicameral parliament with a 48-member upper chamber and Chamber of Deputies, divided between the two communities in each, because legally, this plan did not call into question the constitutional blood law in Cyprus, which recognizes the Greek and Turkish communities separately and shares the State institutions with each other, while according to the law of the ground all Cypriots would have been taken into account as citizens without distinction of language or religion, an option that was not adopted during the independence of the island on .

Rejection of plan
Due to the limitation to 33% of the number of refugees in 1974 who could return to their homes, the Greek population of the island rejected the Annan plan to 75.83% in a referendum on , while the Turkish population approved it to 64.90% because it would have allowed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to safeguard most of its achievements while returning to international legality and escaping the embargo and dependence on Ankara; In exchange, the Turkish side reportedly returned some areas adjacent to the Green Line to the Greek side and opened its ports and airports to international traffic under the 2005 Ankara Protocol.

Progressive settlement of the dispute

With a view to reuniting the island, tripartite talks between the two communities and the UN began in 2008 and finally failed in 2016 and 2017; However, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders do not formally give up on "point-by-point resolution of the problems