Turkey-Cyprus

Ankara starts spat with EU

Published on 19 September 2011 at 10:59

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Ankara is “ready to freeze relations with EU”, La Stampa reports. This is if Cyprus should take over the union’s rotating presidency in July 2012 without settling the long-running dispute with the breakaway Turkish part of the island. Speaking in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, deputy premier Besir Atalay took an unprecedented hard stance towards the EU and the Greek controlled part of the island, continuing the diplomatic onslaught opened by the severance of military ties with Israel and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's tour of the “Arab spring”states.

In a show of national pride, Turkey is angry at its stalled EU membership bid as well as flexing its newfound regional muscles, but according to La Stampa, the real cause of this dispute is more material. The huge Leviathan gas field, recently discovered in the waters between Cyprus and Israel, which the two countries are preparing to exploit, has prompted the Turkish navy and airoforce to conduct manouevres in the area.

“Ten months are long, and Erdogan will have plenty of opportunities to change his mind” La Stampa writes. But “Europe cannot afford to lose Turkey, not right now” because its future relations with new governments emerging from the Arab Spring depend heavily on Ankara's mediation and the model of a secular, western-friendly Islamic state it represents.

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