Our View: Government had no choice but to give consent to Turkey attending EU meeting

The government was at pains to justify its approval of the EU invitation to Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan to attend the informal meeting of the General Affairs Council on August 29. Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis was given this thankless task, but did not make a very good job of it.

A few hours after the news broke, Letymbiotis told the Cyprus News Agency: “The consent of the Cyprus Republic constitutes a strategic political move of high importance and a practical show of good will and sincere political will, both for the strengthening of EU-Turkey relations and for progress in efforts for resumption of talk, chapters that are linked with what is envisaged by the conclusions of the European Council of April about EU-Turkey relations.”

To pre-empt accusations that the government had softened its stance and would no longer be using its position as an EU member state to apply pressure on Turkey, he added that this consent was within the framework of “the gradual, proportional and reversible approach, as regards the progress in EU-Turkey relations with the parallel progress in efforts for the resumption of the talks”. In other words, this consent should not be taken for granted as the government’s strategic political move would be reversed if Turkey did not “demonstrate corresponding sincere will as regards progress in the Cyprus issue”.

It would be interesting to know why the government changed its stance. Last February it refused to give its consent to the attendance of Turkey’s foreign minister at the General Affairs Council, but Ankara’s approach to the Cyprus problem has not changed in the slightest. The sincere will has been as absent now as it was in February. Government backer Edek on Saturday described the government decision a “mistaken strategic and tactical move as it had not secured in exchange any gesture of goodwill by Turkey on any level”. The move would have been correct, the party said, if in exchange Turkey would not veto the participation of Cyprus in EU-Nato activities.

That the government could not secure anything in exchange for its sincere political will was that, despite its past claims about linking the Cyprus problem to progress in EU-Turkey relations and making the Cyprus problem a European problem, it is not in a position to call the shots at the EU. It is highly unlikely that the Cyprus government would have been able to block dialogue between Brussels and Ankara until Turkey showed goodwill on the Cyprus problem. We suspect this was made clear to Nicosia by Brussels when the invitation was discussed and that another Cyprus veto was not an option.

The reality is that the big countries of the EU want relations with Turkey to be put on a new basis after a rocky period, and they will not allow a tiny member like Cyprus to prevent this from happening. In the end, the Cyprus government had no choice but to give its consent, although it presented this as “a strategic political move of great importance”. This was also a reminder to the government of the extent to which it could use the EU to punish Turkey for its negative stance on Cyprus talks.