Cyprus diplomacy gathers steam ahead of EU

Talat, accompanied by Turkish Cypriot Foreign Minister Hüseyin Özgürgün, met with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu earlier, at a working dinner on Monday.

The EU leaders will discuss Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to traffic from EU-member Greek Cyprus at the summit, scheduled for Dec. 10-11. The 27-nation bloc is not expected to impose significant sanctions on Ankara, although the Greek Cypriots are pressing for tough measures. In a 2006 decision, the EU froze accession negotiations on eight chapters with Turkey because of Ankara’s refusal to agree to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot vessels, and suggested that a suspension of the talks was an option when the issue is reviewed at this year’s summit, which is to be held in Brussels.

Ankara says it will not open its ports and airports unless the EU takes steps to ease the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, as it promised in 2004.

The dispute was a top item on the agenda of talks when Foreign Minister Davutoğlu met Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in Athens on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Tuesday. Similarly, Egemen Bağış, a state minister and Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, was in Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, on Tuesday for talks with Swedish officials. He is due to proceed to Brussels following his talks in Stockholm.

The Cyprus issue is expected to come up at another key meeting before the EU summit: the White House talks between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and US President Barack Obama scheduled for Dec. 7. The US is a strong supporter of Turkey’s accession into the EU and has backed UN-led efforts to broker a peace deal on the island, divided between a Turkish north and Greek south.

There is little information on what the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot decision-makers are planning to do but Turkish officials have made it clear that no concession will be made. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said earlier Turkey would assess other options if the ongoing talks between Talat and Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias to reunite the island fail.

Last week, at a press conference in İstanbul following talks between Turkish and EU officials, Davutoğlu said the problem would be resolved “not by exerting unilateral pressure on Turkey, but by finding a comprehensive, just and durable solution to the Cyprus conflict.”

Talat and Christofias broke a four-year stalemate on talks in March 2008 and have been engaged in face-to-face negotiations with the goal of reunifying the island. Yet, there has been little progress so far in resolving the main issues of dispute between the two sides. Analysts say the EU threat of suspending talks with Turkey if there is no progress in opening of the Turkish ports and airports to traffic from Greek Cyprus has affected the talks negatively because it prevented the Greek Cypriots, waiting for the threat of EU sanctions to force Ankara to make concessions, from taking any conciliatory step for reunification.