Yet another spatio-temporal turn in the Turkey-EU relations: The continuing saga of the “Cyprus problem”

The temporality of the Turkey-EU relations, coupled with the “state of affairs” of the Cyprus problem, reflected the “linkage politics” as initially opposed by Turkey. 2024 was the 30th anniversary of the so-called “Europeanisation of the Cyprus Problem” when the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) was included in the EU enlargement process in the 1994 Corfu Summit without the resolution of the problem. Cyprus became an EU member state as a divided island on May 1st 2004 whilst RoC was considered as the sole representative of the island on behalf of both the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities despite the lack of the latter’s representation. The current political stalemate on the island and the lack of a constructive dialogue between Turkey and EU unveiled the linkage between Turkey’s prospective EU membership and the solution of the Cyprus problem. In this regard, the trajectory of the TurkeyEU relations evolved into a new temporality under geopolitical contestation in which Cyprus conflict is coupled by the hydrocarbon economy developing in the Southeastern Mediterranean. Although a new political economy dimension has been added with the rise and fall of the hydrocarbon agenda, the whole process can be best summed as “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”. Key words: Cyprus problem, temporality, Europeanisation, carbonization, linkage politics.