Tales from the Coffeeshop
CYPRUS-FLAGGED ship, Abel F, was not allowed to dock in Mersin, Turkey on Wednesday, allowing our government to inform the European Commission that the Turks were not honouring their signature of the Customs Protocol and allowing Cyprus ships to use its ports. There is little doubt that the government set up this incident. No ship-owning company would waste money sending containers to Turkey on a Cyprus-flagged ship when it knew there was no chance the Turks would allow it to dock and unload its cargo.
In Greece, it is being said that the incident was not intended to expose Turkey – the Turks never said they would allow Cyprus-flagged ships into their ports. It was aimed at forcing Greece’s dovish new Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyianni to follow the confrontational policy towards Turkey that Tassos has chosen. The government in Nicosia had tried in vain to block the appointment of Dora, so it is now trying to dictate the foreign policy she should follow. This was why the Greek government had not been informed about the ship scheme and found out about it from the news. The hope is that this Turkish behaviour would force Dora, who has made the improvement of Greece-Turkey relations one of her main foreign policy priorities, to take a more Tassian approach to Ankara.
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