Ankara's Policy Towards Cyprus and the European Union

Abstract

This paper describes some basic parameters of Turkish foreign policy and analyses how these are applied in Ankara's policy toward Cyprus in the context of the bilateral Turkish-Greek and Turkish-EU relations. It is shown that the policy of dividing the island (taksim) is a long term policy which began in the 1950s and reached a negative climax in 1974. Since then Ankara and its henchmen in the north of Cyprus have been steering a course of intransigence which ironically enough recently blocked Ankara's road to the EU.