President of the Republic of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades has expressed his disappointment for the double standards tactics of the European Union regarding Turkey.
Speaking to Euronews in the Czech Republic, following the new provocative statements by the Turkish President at the informal European Council in Prague, the Cypriot President underlined that “it is this tolerance that creates the risks of a new conflict within Europe”.
He stressed that “it is not possible to say that Russia violates international law, but when international law is violated by a candidate country against members of the European Union, to pretend that we do not understand its importance”.
Anastasiades pointed out that “we cannot say that today we are making sacrifices to help Ukraine- and we are rightly doing so – to cope with the illegal invasion and at the same time to consider firstly what are the interests in relation to Turkey, what is the exposure of the various European banks, member countries, to the Turkish banks, what will be the consequences for the countries either in terms of exports etc in Turkey and at the same time to talk about solidarity, which is unfortunately limited to words”.
In his interview, the President of Cyprus said that Europe should focus on Turkey “which makes it easier for products such as Russian steel to be exported to Europe”.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively.
Source: Cyprus News Agency