Turkey’s relations with Cyprus and Greece are among the issues affecting the assessment of Ankara’s regional cooperation and good-neighbourly relations with the EU, according to a study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and published on Tuesday.
The study, which examines methods for assessing the alignment of EU candidate countries with the CFSP, states that Turkey’s bilateral relations with other enlargement countries were generally positive, but remained difficult with some neighbouring EU member states, ‘particularly Greece and Cyprus’. For this specific indicator, the authors give Turkey a score of 3 out of 5, describing the overall picture as mixed.
Cyprus is also specifically mentioned in the context of security and defence cooperation. The study notes that Turkey remains the largest non-EU troop contributor to the EUFOR Althea operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a significant contributor to NATO’s KFOR force in Kosovo. At the same time, it states that Ankara continues to pursue a policy of excluding Cyprus from cooperation with NATO. Despite this issue, the authors give Turkey’s overall security and defence cooperation a score of 4 out of 5.
Cyprus is also referred to in the study’s historical context, where the authors underline that foreign policy divergences emerging before a country joins the EU may continue after accession. As an example, they note that Greece and Cyprus maintained distinct positions towards Turkey even after joining the EU, highlighting the limits of pre-accession alignment as an indicator of the future CFSP cohesion.