Christofias likens EU-Turkey relations with appeasing Hitler

PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias has compared the EU’s concessions to Turkey to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, he said in an interview published in The Guardian yesterday.

“I don’t compare Turkey with Nazi Germany,” he said. “But it is not reasonable to say don’t challenge Turkey because it will get angry. There are rules and unfortunately Turkey does not respect those rules … This reminds me of the situation before the second world war, appeasing Hitler so he doesn’t become more aggressive. The substance of fascism was the substance of fascism. Hitler was Hitler,” he told the British newspaper.

Christofias said yesterday many of his comments to The Guardian had been “distorted”.

In the interview he also warned that any European concessions to Ankara to keep Turkey on a pro-European path could backfire, and played down any notion of progress in the ongoing Cyprus talks.

“Unfortunately, my expectations have not been justified,” he said. “We have differences and divergences, deep, deep differences.”

Christofias rejected talk of a looming deadline when Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat faces an election in 2010. He said this was artificial and suggested the Turkish side was exploiting Talat’s electoral problems to blackmail him.

Hans Van Den Broek, the former Dutch foreign minister who sits on the Independent Commission on Turkey, has already warned that if the talks fail this time around “the island will certainly head towards partition. Tensions will rise in the eastern Mediterranean and EU-Turkey tension will deepen.”

Christofias blamed the Turkish leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the problems. “We don’t agree on anything with Mr Erdogan,” he said in the interview.

Meanwhile, Christofias has also reportedly turned down an invitation for November 9 to attend events marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reports said it was due to a busy schedule. German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited him last month to attend the event.

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.