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........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)