.
Just six months into the new administration and Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides seems to be going for a new effort at getting Turkey back into a negotiating mood with the hope of restarting the stalled Cyprus talks.
On Monday he fired off the first salvo telling his colleagues at the General Affairs Council in Brussels that “if Turkey responds to its commitments, then Cyprus, too, will respond in a relative manner”. He did not use the word “favourably”, but that is what was meant.
Speaking within the context of the European Commission’s willingness to re-open accession talks on Chapter 22 (Regional Policy and Coordination of Structural instruments) Kasoulides rightly said that this chapter is not among the eight that were frozen because of Turkey’s refusal to implement Ankara Protocol as it continues to shun Cyprus. So, after a brief interruption following the Gizi riots, membership talks are back on track. Or are they?
The fact that Cyprus is trying to bring the talks back to within the realm of the UN resolutions and sponsored by the EU, is surely hurting policy-makers in Ankara who have used every means (and envoy) available to them to push their own expansionist agenda that includes grabbing as much of the oil and gas resources that belong to the islanders, supposedly to ensure that the rights of Turkish Cypriots are not being abused.
Perhaps that is why there is a push for a mid-2014 deadline for progress on the Cyprus talks (a.k.a. “convincing the Greek Cypriots to accept Turkey’s terms”).
But Ankara’s recent attempts to regain regional hegemony have failed, especially as regards its strategies regarding Egypt, Syria and, of course, Israel.
So, perhaps now is the time for Minister Kasoulides to seek some form of “oil and gas diplomacy” to lure Turkey back to becoming a willing negotiator, but according to the terms acceptable to the Greek Cypriots and without any asphyxiating deadlines. He should push for the plan to re-open the ghost town of Famagusta as a genuine initiative on behalf of President Anastasiades, in return for other EU accession chapters to be considered.
