It s fair to say that over the last year, Turkey has been subjected to enormous pressure to open its ports and airports to Greek Cyprus, but not once has Turkey given ground, this is something, whether you believe the policy to be right or wrong, you have to admire in a leader who is willing to stand by his judgement. Compare this to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, we read that today she says:
"We don't want to set any kind of ultimatum," on Turkey
But on Monday she was saying the complete opposite:
French President Jacques Chirac is to support German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bid to set an 18-month deadline for Turkey to comply with the Ankara Protocol and open its ports and airports.
What has changed, the only thing I can point to is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned Merkel hours before she was to meet French President Jacques Chirac and told her:
“I reminded her what the costs of a wrong step could be,”
Well done Recep Tayyip Erdogan who unlike another week leader Tassos Papadopoulos who has used the “Veto” threat so many times but never really had the courage of his convictions to carry out his threat
THE FRENCH would call it deja vu, while the Americans would use the less elegant ‘groundhog day’ to describe our government’s latest failed attempt to score a humiliating diplomatic victory over the Turks at the EU and give us all something to celebrate.
Yes, we’ve seen it all before: been to the show, bought the ‘Veto Turkey’ T-shirt, ate the patriotic popcorn, applauded our guys’ valiant stand on principles, sulked about the unjust ending, collected our free tickets for next year’s repeat performance and went home to ponder why everyone sides with the barbarous Turks.
Our big fear now is that there will not be a repeat performance next year, or the year after that – even though we know how it will end – because our European partners seem thoroughly bored with the annual Cyprus pantomime and are taking steps to prevent it from being staged again.
The Commission’s recommendations on the dispute set no new deadline for Turkey to comply on Cyprus, which if adopted would mean the end of the Ankara protocol show. We will not be able to do our three-month, grandstanding routine every year if this recommendation is adopted, as Turkey will not be obliged to open its ports and airports to us before it reaches the end of its accession negotiations in 10 to 15 years.
The recommendation has infuriated our government which has stated that it would never accept it, but in reality it was a blessing in disguise, as it allowed the staging of a new, short-running, show, within the main show. In fact it has already begun with our government once again threatening to block accession talks if there is no deadline for implementation of the protocol.
THE SCRIPT of our EU show never changes. In the first act, our government sets a host of conditions that need to be satisfied before it gives its approval to an EU decision regarding the Turks’ accession course. In one of the first farces, we had set a host of conditions such the withdrawal of occupation troops and settlers, return of territory etc.
In the second act, which is the longest, all our politicians act as the ‘veto chorus’, banging their hands on tables and singing that we would exercise our veto if our conditions were not satisfied. The lead player in this act is the Foreign Minister who angrily assures the audience that this time he means business – our conditions are not negotiable and unless they are met Turkey can forget the EU, because we will use our veto. This was the most popular act of the show in the past but now the audience do not even applaud.
The third act is divided into two parts – in the first, we have the state propaganda corporation, reporting everything that foreign officials say in support of our just demands and conditions, while avoiding mentioning the negative bits, while in the second part, clues are given that things might not be going as well as we would like. It concludes with our government doing what it had promised never to do – negotiating its conditions.
Tragedy and depression strike in the fourth act, when it becomes clear that hardly any of our conditions will be satisfied and the media join the chorus of politicians, in despair, blaming the British and the Americans for the outrage. This is when we start looking for a face-saving solution for our President, who gets his flunkeys to announce that he will block Turkey’s EU path.
It has happened in every play: first, we were going to block the granting of a date for the start of talks, then we were going to block the start of the talks, now we are going to block the talks. But there is no suspense anymore because everyone knows that Tassos will not carry out his threat,
The fifth and final act takes place at the European Council at which our president digs in his heels for an hour, then accepts the hollow promises given to him by his fellow leaders, as a Christmas present, and returns to Cyprus victorious.
As one metrios drinker astutely, observed, our annual pantomime (some call it strategy) is a bit like the five stages of dealing with death – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
WHAT ARE the chances of the European Commission granting our Ethnarch’s demand of a deadline for the implementation of protocol by the Turks? I would say none, because the Europeans are so pissed off with our behaviour they are never going to give us another opportunity to stage our pathetic protocol pantomime.
They see our government as a total pain in the arse, which causes unnecessary trouble for them and who could disagree with them. What we are doing now is raising a big fuss at the EU, threatening to block accession talks, because the punishment of the Turks for failing to fulfil their obligations proposed by the Commission is not tough enough! We can’t be satisfied with the fact that some sanctions are being imposed – we want tougher ones and a deadline so we can have the chance to punish them again.
Under the circumstances, it is highly unlikely they will give us the opportunity to be a nuisance again in 12 months time. If the Commission sets a deadline for the Turks to comply as a compromise it will probably be in December 2012, by which time our Ethnarch might have become a nicer and more forgiving bloke.
REMEMBER how the bad-boy foreign minister, Giorgos Lillikas, was going to safeguard the EU’s credibility by taking a hard line on Turkey? He was not going to engage in “eastern bargaining” over the protocol and was determined to block Turkey’s accession talks, even if this meant going against the wishes of the other 24 member states.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2006
