| Last week I travelled to Latvia to take part in the Riga Conference. The Riga conference takes place every year and looks at key events and challenges facing the world. | |
| This year was no different. With Turkey’s increasingly visible role on the international stage, there was also a panel focused on the role Turkey can play as a bridge between Europe and Eurasia and more broadly on Turkey’s doomed EU membership talks. The speakers included a former Turkish foreign minister, a German Christian Democrat politician and the foreign minister‘s of Georgia and Latvia. Former French President Jacques Chirac once famously said, “If the EU simply wants to be a Free Trade Area we can do it without Turkey, to be a global player with global responsibilities we need Turkey on board.” This was very much the sentiment of all the speakers who praised the role Turkey is playing in its region. In fact one of the speakers even suggested that Turkey’s geographical position put it “at the center of the world.” While the membership negotiation process is to all intents and purposes frozen, at the same time, there are increasing calls for Turkey to be involved to a far greater extent in EU foreign policy decisions given that Turkey is a crucial partner and a flank country of the EU. Speakers also suggested that the EU should spend more time listening to Turkey rather than preaching to it, something the EU is very good at. There was also a lot of praise for Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s zero problems with neighbors policy with speakers concluding that while the policy is still very much a work in progress, nobody can accuse Davutoğlu of not being sincere. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent tour of Arab spring countries also received a lot of praise -- encouraging the various leaderships to move towards the Turkish model is viewed extremely positively and many hope it will dampen the influence of Iran. Not surprisingly, events in the eastern Mediterranean also arose and the topic of Cyprus was hotly discussed. There is increasing concern over Turkey’s continuing threats to EU member Cyprus over exploratory gas and oil drilling in its Exclusive Economic Zone. Earlier this week the EU, once again requested Turkey to stop this behavior following Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız’s warning on Monday that Turkey would start oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean next week if the Greek Cypriots press ahead with their drilling plans. Turkey cites the drilling as both not conductive to the on-going peace negotiations and unfair by excluding Turkish Cypriots. Turkey, which is not a member of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), states it has a right to involve itself because it considers itself a littoral state, something that the Greek Cypriots reject and are ready to go to the European Court of Justice over. Cyprus is really a thorn in the side of Turkey, which considers the EU’s policy dishonest. In Turkey there is widespread belief that the resolution of the Cyprus issue has nothing to do with Turkey’s EU accession process. After all, if a divided island was not a hurdle in the Greek Cypriots’ entry to the EU in 2004, why is it an obstacle for Turkey? Furthermore, Turks believe that if the EU had sufficient political opportunities to settle the Cyprus problem, they could easily twist the arms of the Greek Cypriots. However, as one if the Turkish speakers put it “even if Turkey gives Cyprus away free of charge” the political problems will remain because of political opposition from a number of member states, going on to say that if the present round of Cyprus peace talks fails then Turkey would move to solve the problem “within its own parameters.” On my return to Brussels, I met with a senior Greek Cypriot official. To say he was angry with the behavior of Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean would be an understatement. However, he admitted that the chances of a solution look very slim, even with the intensified talks, some lasting all day. No breakthroughs are surfacing. The Greek Cypriots remain adamant that they are not the ones to blame for the failure of the talks; they are fed up with hearing about the Annan Plan -- after all there were many plans before it that they claim to have backed and which Turkey scoffed at. They also consider that in the ongoing negotiations they that have made the concessions and not Turkish Cypriots. They see the acceptance of 50,000 settlers and a rotating Presidency as proof of this. The Turkish Cypriots and Turkey, they claim, have not lifted a finger to make concessions on any issues of importance to Greek Cypriots. However, he thought that even with all Turkey’s bellicose statements over the oil exploration, Ankara would not send its ships into the zone of drilling. Even for Turkey this would be a step too far. |
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