(ANSAmed) – ANKARA, DECEMBER 8 – The announced ”freeze” on Turkey’s relations with the EU will start already at the beginning of the coming year, and not only in the second half of it, due to the fact that Cyprus will soon be taking on the EU’s rotating presidency. This was underscored in a Turkish daily after the position was announced yesterday by a high-level deputy in Ankara. The newspaper, Turkiya, also underscored that the boycott of the EU Council would last 18 months, since it was linked to the presence of Cyprus in the ”troikas”, meetings chaired by the State currently holding the EU presidency but flanked by the countries holding the presidency in the previous and successive 6-month periods.
Cyprus – which represents only the Greek-Cypriot half, with the country divided in two since the 1974 invasion by the Turkish due to Greek Colonels regime’s aim to annex the island after they had taken power through a coup – will be taking on the EU presidency in the second half of 2012 and will therefore be present in the ”troikas” from January 2012 until June 2013.
Turkey does not want to sit at the same table as Greek-Cypriot representatives, reports the newspaper in referring to the fact that Ankara does not recognize the Republic of Cyprus (which represents only Greek Cypriots) as a state.
”We will be freezing our relations with the Council” presided over by Cyprus, co-chairman of the Turkey-EU joint parliamentary committee Afif Demirkiran told journalists yesterday. The statement confirmed previous early announcements made by Ankara last summer when, even at the level of the prime minister, it had threatened to freeze relations with the EU if the rotating presidency were to be entrusted to Cyprus in July without a previous conclusion of the talks on the status of the divided island underway with UN mediation. Cyprus’s veto is one of the obstacles to Turkey’s bid for EU membership. (ANSAmed).
via Turkey to freeze relations with EU from January – Cyprus – ANSAMed.it.
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