Turkey's EU membership

Sir,

As I write, news is breaking that eight chapters out of 35 will be suspended following Turkey’s failure to meet its obligations.
The BBC is reporting that many Turks already believe that the EU is stringing them along! What a joke.

As a Cypriot, I believe that my government is just about to sell me out, together with the rest of the population, by slowly and steadily surrendering all the aces. Turkey has become the mouthpiece of the Turkish Cypriots, who are already in the EU, but isolated by their own choice, as if part of Cyprus is some sort of a Turkish province. The fact of the matter is that we are on the defensive. And no defences, however good, ever won a political battle.

So, I am asking those in charge:

What happened to the occupying army of 40,000? Why is it not on the agenda? Ghost towns and villages, waiting for their owners to return – should that not be on the agenda?

The Greek world was humiliated in 1974, in Geneva. It seems to me like yesterday. The memories of impotence of George Mavros, the then Greek Foreign Minister, are coming in front of me as I write.

The time has come for Turkey to put right some of the atrocities it has committed on a small island of 600,000 people at the time.

In the foreign press, we are been presented as the obstacle to Turkey’s accession. Is that so? It seems that selective memory has taken over once more. Let’s use that veto wholesale. There is no other chance, (to get something, but not all, back), coming our way for many millennia to come.

Dr Vasos Sophocleous, London SW3

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.