A few months ago, when Greece and Cyprus blocked Turkey’s access to SAFE — the European Union’s €150-billion financial instrument for joint defence procurement — Ankara reacted with fury.
That reaction, although it failed to find public political resonance, has not subsided. On the contrary, it persists, with Turkey attempting to advance the narrative that Cyprus and Greece are obstructing the interests of the European Union itself. As Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, put it last December, the EU–Turkey “zone of synergy”, encompassing more than 400 million people, is being held “hostage by a small group”.
The argument is shrewd and superficially plausible. Above all it sidesteps the central issue: that Cyprus and Greece cannot reasonably be expected to finance, through their own taxpayers, a country that simultaneously threatens Athens and Nicosia with war.
A year earlier, Cyprus’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, had stated that Nicosia could submit an application to join NATO once its armed forces had acquired the training and equipment required to meet alliance standards. Turkey’s response was immediate. Such an application, Ankara argued, lacked a legal basis and would require unanimity — something Turkey itself would not provide.
The reality, however, is more nuanced.
Gradually and methodically — and with Israel’s assistance — Cyprus has been integrated into the broader American and NATO strategic framework in the Eastern Mediterranean. Beyond the lifting of the US arms embargo, Nicosia has also joined the Excess Defense Articles (EDA) programme, through which it receives surplus equipment from the US armed forces at no acquisition cost.
Under these conditions, Turkey finds it increasingly difficult to position itself openly against NATO, particularly as the Eastern Mediterranean has acquired heightened geostrategic importance for both Washington and NATO. Cyprus, for its part, is equally aware that it cannot indefinitely block Turkey’s participation in SAFE.
This leaves all sides engaged in a balancing act, in which advantage favor those who succeed in presenting their position as serving broader collective interests.
Cyprus has played this game before. Despite Turkish threats of “action and escalation”, it secured EU accession by framing the issue as one of European credibility rather than a bilateral dispute. More recently, in April 2024, Nicosia succeeded in ensuring that Turkey’s obligations towards Cyprus — and Ankara’s cooperation — were explicitly included as conditions for progress in Turkey’s accession talks with the EU.
It is precisely this approach that Ankara fears Cyprus may deploy again during its forthcoming presidency of the Council of the EU.
Turkey’s posture does little to generate sympathy as it serves only Ankara’s interests.
Nicosia is calling, on the one hand, for accession to Partnership for Peace — NATO’s antechamber — and, on the other, for a reduction in Turkish assertiveness, a demand that Greece directly links to the lifting of the casus belli.
Turkey, by contrast, approaches the discussion with a negative agenda, the self-image of a regional power, and a single overriding argument: economic transactions. Yet few EU governments are prepared to disregard the security concerns of a fellow member state in favour of commercial considerations alone, given the political cost involved.
During its presidency, Cyprus will not be able to impose its priorities unilaterally. It can, however, elevate them — provided it secures the backing of other capitals. The fact that President Christodoulides has acknowledged discussions on the matter with both the NATO secretary-general and Germany’s chancellor, hinting at a measure of receptiveness, has not gone unnoticed in Ankara.
Depicting the Republic of Cyprus as “defunct” is increasingly self-defeating. Respect for Cyprus is a condition for meaningful EU–Turkey dialogue. A non-partner does not get to deny the existence of a partner at a table.
Nicosia is conscious that overt unilateralism would be counterproductive, particularly as it has pledged not to instrumentalise the presidency for narrow national purposes. A safer path lies elsewhere: in the principle that no EU member state should be excluded from EU–NATO cooperation or security arrangements due to the veto of a third country, and that Cyprus must have access to such frameworks if it is not to remain outside Europe’s emerging defence architecture.
And it is not willing to allow that to happen.
Raised at Council level and grounded in collective responsibility, shared interests and solidarity, this argument may yet prove decisive by the end of Cyprus’s presidency.
To describe an EU member state — part of whose territory remains illegally occupied — as the “Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus” by the very power responsible for that occupation is unlikely to persuade many. If anything, it achieves the opposite.
Kostis Konstantinou lives in Tel Aviv. He has been a professional journalist for 30 years, currently working as a correspondent for the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation ERT (i.e. the Greek public broadcaster) and as the Middle East correspondent for the Cyprus News Agency. He also writes for the largest daily newspapers in Greece and in Cyprus, Ta Nea and Phileleftheros, as well as Digital Tree Media in Cyprus. Moreover, Kostis also contributes regularly to TPS-IL, the Press Service of Israel.