Illusions lead to dangerous dead ends

Statement by the member of the Central Committee of AKEL Giorgos Koukoumas:

21 November 2021, “Haravgi” newspaper

This is the umpteenth time that the EU has postponed the approval of sanctions on Turkey. The Cypriot people are quite rightly asking why the EU, which cares so much about the affairs of third countries, is not unanimous and decisive in the case of one of its member states (the Republic of Cyprus) being subject to violations of international law by Turkey, a candidate for accession country.

Surely the reason why the imposition of sanctions is not going ahead is not because the EU isn’t fully informed about what the occupying power Turkey is committing against Cyprus. The truth is that what AKEL has been warning about from the very beginning is being confirmed. There mustn’t be any illusions whatsoever about how the EU operates, nor should the enormous economic and geopolitical interests that link EU states with Turkey be ignored.

NATO, economic relations, the arms trade and the refugee issue are just some of the objective facts that obviously tip the EU’s scales in favour of serving powerful interests rather than upholding principles. The case of the EU’s leading power, namely Germany, which not only prevents the imposition of sanctions on Turkey, but continues to produce war submarines to be delivered to the Erdogan government, is characteristic.

Of course, all this was and is known to the Anastasiades-DISY government. The question therefore arises: how wise was it for the government to be pinning so much diplomatic and political hopes on the goal of imposing sanctions when it knows what the realistic prospects actually are? We should not forget that the DISY government was deliberately fostering illusions within society and arbitrarily raising the bar of expectations as regards imposing sanctions that supposedly “would hurt Turkey”. However, the government ultimately fell well short in fulfilling this goal every time.

Every policy is judged by its end result. Neither the policy of sanctions, nor the forging of military cooperations with the US, Israel, etc. have protected our country from Turkish aggression, as the government and the ruling DISY party claimed.

In the critical moments that the Cyprus problem and Cyprus are going through, illusions lead to dangerous dead ends. We are adamant that the most appropriate way to address Turkish provocative actions is the resumption of the negotiations from where they had remained at Crans Montana in 2017. This is where the government should have focused on.