The Turkey Wing

…called “Cyprus”.

…Mr Erdogan was the first Turkish prime minister since the invasion to unfreeze the glacial position of immovability into which Ankara had put its Cyprus policy during the 1980s and 1990s. Appearing to put the interests of 70m Turks ahead of 150,000 Turkish Cypriots, he urged support for the Cyprus unification plan drawn up by Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, and which was put to a referendum on the island in early 2004.
In doing so, he undercut the position of Rauf Denktash, the TRNC leader at the time. Mr Denktash actively opposed the deal, and had been blamed for squandering earlier opportunities for a settlement during two decades of fruitless negotiations with his Greek Cypriot counterparts and UN officials. The 2004 referendum turned out to be another false Cypriot dawn, but it ultimately secured for Turkey the bigger prize of getting its EU entry process under way.
However, to the growing dismay of Mr Erdogan’s government and the Turkish public, the EU was unable, partly because of its own mis-steps, to broker the ending of the trade and political embargo on the TRNC. In Turkey, the EU is widely blamed for this, but so, to his political discomfort, is Mr Erdogan.
…Turkey’s experience in dealing with the EU in the past three years has turned Cyprus from a positive – the key that unlocked the door in 2004 – to a negative. Many in Turkey cannot understand why an institution as powerful as the EU is unable to honour a small and relatively uncontroversial pledge to bring the TRNC in from the wilderness.

Imagine that. The EU is unable to act on even the littlest promise.
More stories on Cyprus.

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