The dialogue between European officials and Fidan and the five-party talks hanging by a thread

Last Tuesday morning, a general sense of numbness prevailed at the Presidential Palace. The reason, of course, was not the expected visit by the leaders of EDEK, the Democratic Party, and the Ecologists’ Movement, who had come to be briefed by Nicos Christodoulides on developments in the Cyprus issue, but rather the very early morning phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to the President of the Republic of Cyprus.

This was preceded by the dinner the previous night in Ankara, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, following the conclusion of the NATO summit, and the results of that dinner were eagerly awaited in Nicosia.

Erdogan would be called upon to decide whether to accept a package of concessions from the European Union in exchange for the accession of a reunified Republic of Cyprus to NATO, and, consequently, concessions regarding security and guarantees.

However, the news was not at all encouraging regarding the prospect of resuming talks and resolving the Cyprus issue in the coming months.

The… exhausted Erdogan

Both von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa—with whom the President of the Republic spoke a few hours later— told him that they were essentially unable to discuss much with the Turkish President.

“They mainly spoke with Fidan. Erdogan was sitting at the other end of the table,” a government source told *Alpha tis Kyriakis*.

In fact, the President’s interlocutors reportedly told him that Erdogan was so exhausted that he seemed anything but ready for such serious negotiations.

During the conversation with the Turkish Foreign Minister, the two European Union officials assured Nikos Christodoulides that they had said everything they needed to say. That is, they are willing to offer incentives to Turkey, provided it makes concessions on the Cyprus issue. As they said, there was no encouraging stance, but rather the opposite.

A step backward…

Fidan reportedly said at first that it is Turkey’s long-standing position that the Cyprus issue is one thing, and EU-Turkey relations are another. He also called on his interlocutors to recognize that it is in Brussels’ interest to decouple the two issues.

However, von der Leyen and Costa assured President Christodoulides that they had reminded Fidan that the Republic of Cyprus has the right of veto and that they would constantly find it standing in their way.

Subsequently, the Turkish Foreign Minister requested that Brussels take the first steps, after which Ankara would take its own actions regarding the Cyprus issue.

Von der Leyen and Costa responded that this should happen simultaneously.

In fact, the President of the European Council told Fidan that Brussels’ proposals are being made in full consultation with the UN Secretary-General, to whom Erdogan himself pledged to support his latest effort.

At the conclusion of their conversation with the President of the Republic, the two officials made no secret of their pessimism regarding any substantive moves by Turkey on the Cyprus issue.

He Is Not Sacrificing Cyprus

In less than 48 hours after the dinner in Ankara, Erdogan took two actions that effectively torpedoed Antonio Guterres’s initiative.

First, he declared the European Union an enemy, citing a 1974 European Parliament resolution on abused women.

Sources from the Occupied Territories told “Alpha on Sunday” that you cannot, on the one hand, express the desire for Turkey to move closer to Europe, and on the other hand constantly condemn it through resolutions and reports.

The same sources also said that in Ankara, officials were annoyed by President Christodoulides’ remark, just a few hours before the dinner, that not a single European country had asked him to lift the veto against Turkey on numerous occasions. They added that “this was not true.”

Erdogan’s second move was to send to the Occupied Territories the official responsible for relations between Turkey and the pseudo-state, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz, to the occupied territories to sign an agreement for the construction of an undersea natural gas pipeline from Turkey.

This sends a clear message that, as far as he is concerned, nothing has changed, and he is continuing with these multimillion-dollar projects, transforming the pseudo-state into a Turkish province.

These moves demonstrate that the Turkish President is not sacrificing Cyprus for the sake of Euro-Turkish relations.

The ball is in Guterres’ court

Turkish analysts paint a picture in which Erdogan, while he did tell the UN Secretary-General to move forward, he backtracked following the backlash sparked by media reports and television coverage of a new solution plan being promoted by the UN, and that he wants Cyprus to join NATO.

From that moment on, a barrage of warnings was directed at Erdoğan, not only from his partners in the government, such as the Grey Wolves, but also from the opposition, which the Turkish President is determined to keep fragmented at all costs, so as not to give them any political capital through his handling of national issues.

The bottom line is that the NATO summit in Ankara represented a major setback for the new initiative on the Cyprus issue.

Support for this initiative—which had even been included in writing during the meeting between Hakan Fidan and High Representative Kaya Kallas—was nowhere to be seen here.

The Cyprus issue was not even listed as a topic of discussion in the Turkish Presidency’s communiqué following the dinner. But that is the least of it.

In essence, Erdogan appears to have ignored the Europeans’ proposals on the Cyprus issue and passed the buck to António Guterres to decide what to do.

Now, the informal five-party talks scheduled for this summer is hanging by a thread, with the odds now stacked against it, and María Olguín is being called upon to throw a lifeline during her new round of talks in the coming days.