Cyprus-Forum.com

[MR-from-NG]

Do your politicians ever read and pay attention to the press? I would be worried if I was in Papas shoes.


EU makes colossal mistakes on Cyprus
Ilnur Cevik

[email protected]14 December 2006


The results of the EU ministerial council meetings in Brussels show that Turkey will face a dormant period in its accession efforts in the European Union through at least 2007.

The EU will shelve negotiations in eight chapters while talks on other chapters will continue provided the Greek Cypriots do not stall them through a series of vetoes. The European Commission is already keeping a brave face by saying talks can now resume immediately on at least four chapters even before Finland's term presidency ends.

What is sad is that some EU member countries whose conservative governments have used the Greek Cypriots as an effective weapon to stall Turkey did not have the courage to openly oppose Ankara. Now Germany will be term president for the next six months and there are already indications that this will be a tough period for Ankara's accession dreams as Chancellor Angela Merkel has never pretended she favors Turkish accession in the EU.

We feel if it were not the Cyprus issue, the conservatives within the EU who oppose Turkey would have found another alibi to block Turkey…

The Greek Cypriots have been allowed to effectively hijack Turkey's accession process but that is not all. Because of the clumsy politicians of the EU, who in the past were the culprits of the bloodbath in Bosnia, now they have committed the historical error of importing the Cyprus issue as a major problem for the EU and have effectively ended the role of the United Nations in finding a solution to the issue.

The EU unfortunately has a bad reputation of creating international problems and then recruiting American help to solve them. But in this case by importing the Cyprus issue to become a EU problem they have also closed the doors to any outside help…

The failure of the EU ministers to mention that the UN is the forum where the Cyprus issue should be solved shows the extent of how the Greeks Cypriots have managed to toy with the Union and its members. Let us hope we all do not have to pay a very high price for this colossal mistake.

The EU countries realized they were being extremely insincere and provocative so they tried to balance the mess by promising they will start opening trade channels with the Turkish Cypriots in a bid to end their isolation. Can this be achieved? We will wait and see because even this will need a sincere effort on the part of Germany as term president and we doubt the will to do something constructive is there…

Turkey's last-minute effort to make a gesture by opening one seaport and one airport to Greek Cypriot vessels made quite a noise but it seems it was too late to influence the efforts of even those countries that have positive views on Turkey. Maybe these gestures should have been made a couple of weeks ago.

Ankara is heartbroken. Turks are frustrated. But worse is still to come as the Cyprus issue is being pushed into a total impasse. Greek Cypriot antagonism has reached new heights. Turkish nationalism is on the rise which means future governments will be much tougher with them and less creative in their approaches, which suggests sooner or later Turkish patience may run out and they may face a huge slap in the face. The Greek Cypriots should pray that Erdogan wins the next elections.

[DT.]

i'm already praying for erdogan.

[MR-from-NG]

So should Papa

[DT.]

papa doesn't pray...he is there by divine intervention...n o need to pray when that close to god.

[Tony-4497]

I wonder what the "huge slap on the face" he is referring to might be..

..another "piece operation" I presume.. I think you'll find these are slightly harder to carry out on EU land.. even if you are a big regional bully like Turkey