Cyprus

Victoria Νuland with the backing of the European Commission are exercising now maximum pressure to the governments of Nicosia and Athens in order to agree into a new version of the Annan plan for the solution of the Cyprus conflicted, which was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Cypriot citizens back in 2004.

The Russian ambassador to Cyprus repeatedly voiced the position that there should be no outside interferences or imposed time limits in the negotiations over Cyprus or foreign guarantees. In fact, he said that it is unheard of in this day in age for a third country (Turkey) to demand to become the guarantor power of a country (Cyprus) that does not wish to have guarantors. Turkey has an atrocious record over Cyprus, having invaded the island militarily 42 years ago on a pretext, and still occupies 37% of the country.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that his goal in Syria was to end the rule of Bashar Assad has caused consternation in the Kremlin, with officials saying it contradicted previous assurances and was out of sync with Moscow’s take on the situation.

Suspending European Union membership negotiations would be the wrong signal for Europe to send Turkey. The move, set to be debated in the European Parliament, would eliminate what’s left of the EU’s leverage over Ankara and further erode the credibility of Turkish liberals, whose European-friendly narrative has already made them an endangered species.

One of the reasons, many observers believe, President Obama comes to Greece this week, is to press Athens to be “helpful” for a “solution” to the Cyprus problem. On the other hand the European Commission is also pressing hard both Nicosia and Athens to accept a solution, even worse than the one the Cypriot people had rejected back in 2004, by voting by an overwhelming majority NO in a referendum held in both the territories controlled by the Republic of Cyprus and those under the control of the Turkish Army, which invaded Cyprus in 1974 and does not seem in any way willing to leave the island, with or without an agreed solution.

Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov has called on “the United Nations and the UN Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide to stop trying to artificially appoint timeframes for reaching agreements and imposing solutions that are rejected by any of the parties to the Cyprus settlement.”

Aris Petasis* The Cyprus problem is a Russian problem as well. The current purblind negotiations, ostensibly between the two Cypriot communities (82% Greek and 18%...

The same forces which "predicted" and encouraged the July coup in Turkey are again in action. Michael Rubin, a neoconservative activist, connected in the past with Turkish Kemalists, has posted an article in the website of the ultra-hawkish American Enterprise Institute titles "Is a new coup in the cards in Turkey". Rubin's "prophecies" may not ne just "prophecies". They constitute also an indirect, still clear threat. Rubin and the AEI are anything but innocent observers. The same author has already written about the possibility of a coup in Turkey in March 2016, encouraging the Turkish army to go on with it.

By essentially denying the principle of popular sovereignty, it is also denying the principle of national sovereignty, the (relatively) independent character of the Greek state. Greece occupies a strategic place in the Eastern Mediterranean, on the route connecting Russia with the Mediterranean and Western Europe with the Middle East. Its independence was never completely tolerated by the British and then the American empires. Greeks were also suspected of leaning towards Russians, or at least this was the argument justifying the innumerable Western interventions in this country.

Jean-Claude Juncker’s 2016 State of the European Union address was clear in its analysis: the EU is at a critical juncture and has to become more effective to regain its credibility. But the solution needs more work. Crucially, it needs political will. And it needs an understanding of past failures – not least those that have inflicted harm on Cyprus since 2013.