The Cyprus problem will not be solved with visas, nor is the issue of recognition, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said on Wednesday, as the European Commission proposed the lifting of visa requirements for Turkish citizens provided Ankara fulfilled outstanding benchmarks, including the abolition of visa restrictions for all EU citizens.
The Turkish cabinet late on Monday approved waiving visas for visitors from all 28 EU member states once Europe relaxes its own visa requirements for Turks.
Although the visa waiver will apply to Greek Cypriots, Turkish officials said it did not amount to recognition of the Republic.
Kasoulides said recognition was not one of the preconditions.
“We will not solve the Cyprus problem with the visas, nor the matter of recognition,” the minister said after a cabinet meeting. “I am hearing outrageous things from political leaders.”
The minister said he did not know if it was because of the upcoming election, adding that the government at least, would continue to be serious.
“We remain faithful to the provisions of the roadmap and the 72 benchmarks,” he said.
The benchmarks had been set by the EU in 2012.
Kasoulides said three of the seven outstanding benchmarks were not directly related to Cyprus.
For example, there was the biometric passport, corruption, and the counter-terrorism law.
The rest were issues that Cyprus had a direct interest in, like the need for co-operation between police forces and Europol.
“We also have the matter of the presence of Turkish settlers and Turkey’s well-known policy to alter Cyprus’ demographic character,” Kasoulides said. “Things will not be uncontrollable, at least in the free areas.”
Kasoulides said comments made by DIKO chairman Nicolas Papadopoulos, who claimed there will be uncontrolled movement of 70 million Turks, were exaggerations.
“I cannot listen to unreasonable things and I wonder if the Cypriot people also want to listen to unreasonable things.”
Asked if a mechanism would be put in place to restrict the number of Turkish nationals, Kasoulides said there was a French and German proposal to suspend the visa-free travel if an unjustifiably large number of people flow into one country or there was a high number of asylum applications.
Liberalising visa rules for Turkey, a Muslim country of 79 million people, is a contentious issue among EU states, but Brussels is pushing ahead to keep a migration accord in place that should help ease Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two.
Turkey should get visa-free travel to the European Union, the EU executive said but it should not think that its deal with the EU on controlling migration gives it a “free ride”.
That controversial deal agreed in March helped sharply cut arrivals of refugees and migrants to Europe but Ankara says it would scrap it should the bloc reneges on its promise to liberalise visa rules, in theory by the end of June.
EU Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said Turkey had yet to meet five of the required 72 conditions.
“There is no free ride here,” he told reporters, stressing that Ankara must meet standards required of other states exempt from visas.
In its proposal to allow visa-free access to Turkey – which now must be approved by EU governments and the European Parliament – the Commission included a “snap-back mechanism”, that would allow the EU to suspend the system.
Applicable to any country that has a visa-free deal with the EU, visa requirements could be re-imposed if there were problems such as a surge in people staying beyond the allowed 90 days.
That was proposed last week by France and Germany, both facing public concern about easing visas. Turkey’s minister for EU relations told a news conference in Ankara that he believed all 72 criteria had already been met.
“The Commission confirms this to a large extent,” Volkan Bozkir said, adding that he hoped the process could be completed on schedule by the end of June.
However, few if any Turks would be able to come to Europe’s Schengen zone in July without a visa since the regulation is limited to those with biometric passports, including fingerprint data, which Turkey does not issue at present.
Timmermans said Turkey had made “impressive progress, particularly in recent weeks”.
“There is still work to be done as a matter of urgency but if Turkey sustains the progress made, they can meet the remaining benchmarks,” the EU commissioner said.
The leader of the biggest group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber from a German party allied to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, said the assembly would not be rushed or drop existing standards to approve the Turkish visa deal and welcomed the Commission’s plan for a rapid suspension mechanism.
“We will take all the time we need for a thoroughly detailed examination and discussion,” Weber said.
Among the five outstanding issues are new legislation on corruption, data protection and terrorist offences.
EU officials say the March agreement with Ankara has succeeded in stemming the flow of migrants. Only 123 people reached Greek islands from Turkey on Tuesday, U.N. data showed, compared to daily averages around 10,000 in October’s peak.
Questioned about other elements of the deal under which the EU promised to revive negotiations on Turkish membership of the bloc, Timmermans said Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan was “moving further away” from Europe on human rights.
He said the way to reverse that trend was to open relevant areas of membership negotiations, not shun Ankara. “We need to engage with them and take them to task,” he said.
