TEPAV hosted Hugh Pope, the Turkey and Cyprus expert of the International Crisis Group (ICG) on February 12, 2007. Pope has served as the Turkey and Middle East Correspondent of the Wall Street Journal during 1997- 2005, Turkey and Central Asia correspondent of the "Independent" during 1990- 1997 and the Middle East Correspondent of the Reuters during 1982- 1984. He is also one of the main writers of the new ICG report on Cyprus called "Cyprus: Reversing the Drift to Partition", published in January 2008. In this meeting at TEPAV, Pope shared the outcomes of the new ICG report with the participants. He mentioned that the year of 2008 can be very important regarding the Cyprus problem. He said that there needs to be a signal from the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities in favor of a solution and only after that the international community can step in to broker a solution. He emphasized that the change against the status-quo needs to come from inside the island. He specifially emphasized the importance of the time factor. In the last part of his speech, Pope talked about the upcoming Greek-Cypriot elections to take place on February 17, 2008. Pope's presentation continued with the question and answer period. The great interest to this meeting and the wide participation proved once again the importance of the Cyprus issue on Turkish agenda.