Cyprus dispute threatens to halt talks on Turkey

Turkey risks its bid to join the European Union coming to a standstill next month unless it lifts restrictions on traffic from Cyprus, the European Commission has warned. At their summit on 16-17 December, the EU’s national leaders are to assess Turkey’s stance toward the divided island of Cyprus, whose Greek half was admitted to the EU in 2004. Cyprus and other member states are expected to press for a freeze on opening additional policy chapters in accession talks with Turkey. “We are concerned that Turkey’s accession process is losing its momentum,” Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for enlargement, warned on Tuesday (9 November), as he presented the annual progress reports on Turkey and eight other countries aspiring to join the EU. 

Füle said that the “key” to changing the situation lay “primarily with Turkey, which is expected to fully implement its current contractual relations with the EU”. His report said it was “urgent” that Turkey lift restrictions on traffic from Cyprus and seek a normalisation of relations with the country. “Turkey has to understand that it, too, has to yield every once in a while,” said Elmar Brok, a centre-right German MEP.

Turkey rejects the suggestion that it is responsible for an impasse in settlement talks between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Turkish diplomats said that threatening to freeze its EU membership talks would not help solve the Cyprus problem. “The Cyprus issue will be solved on its own parameters, and we will not settle for anything just in order to open a chapter or two,” a diplomat said. Egemen Bagis¸, Turkey’s EU minister, said in Istanbul on Tuesday: “Seventeen chapters are blocked. I don’t even have a clear date to end the negotiations. I have so many [EU] leaders saying Turkey shouldn’t join at all. So why should I give up on Cyprus?”

New chapters

Only three chapters are still available to be opened, and Brok warned against blocking any of them over the Cyprus issue. But Werner Langen and Markus Ferber, who represent Brok’s political group, argue that the talks “must stop completely until Turkey ends its blockade of Cyprus”.

On the sidelines of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels at the end of October, Demetris Christofias, the president of Cyprus, said: “My experiences from the negotiations of the last two years make me believe that Turkey is not ready yet to make Cyprus a priority and to take the decisions that would lead to a solution.” A member state diplomat suggested that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s centre-right prime minister, wanted to find a solution to the division of Cyprus but had decided that he would not confront the Turkish military’s entrenched interests in the matter. “He is picking his fights, and the Cyprus issue is not one of them,” the diplomat said.

Christofias, representing the Greek Cypriot community, will meet Dervis¸ Eroglu, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, in New York next Thursday (18 November) in what diplomats describe as a “last-chance” meeting in the two-year-long talks.