Christodoulides accuses European Council’s ex-head of ‘double standards’

President Nikos Christodoulides on Wednesday accused former European Council president Charles Michel of “double standards”, after Michel had censured European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for controversial comments she had made earlier in the week about Turkey’s relations with Europe.

“Dear Charles, since you are talking about double standards, let me remind you that Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, and still occupies European territory,” he wrote in a post on social media.

His post was written in response to a post written by Michel who had said that Turkey is “a core Nato ally, a key migration partner, an energy corridor, a major defence actor on Europe’s flank, and a serious regional power”.

“Europe doesn’t get stronger by applying double standards or simplifying reality,” Michel said.

Von der Leyen had said at an event held by German newspaper Die Zeit on Sunday that “we must succeed in completing the European continent so that it is not influenced by Russia, Turkey, or China”.

“We must think bigger and geopolitically,” she added.

Those comments proved controversial, with commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho attempting to smooth matters over on Tuesday after eyebrows were raised at von der Leyen seeming to list Turkey, an EU candidate country, as an adversary of the bloc.

“The president referred to Turkey, and what was said here is, of course, that Turkey, precisely as a candidate country, also has an additional responsibility in the neighbourhood and we do not oversee that influence that it has in the neighbourhood,” she told a press conference.

However, that clarification failed to convince critics, with the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey Nacho Sanchez Amor describing von der Leyen’s comments as “totally inconsistent with recurrent signals for stronger cooperation on security and defence and … a geopolitically flawed analysis”.

This week is not the first time that Michel and von der Leyen have found themselves at odds over relations with Turkey, with a diplomatic protocol incident now referred to as “sofagate” having soured relations between von der Leyen and Michel, and between von der Leyen and Turkey, in 2021.

Both Michel and von der Leyen had been invited to Ankara to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but when the meeting took place, only two chairs had been laid out in the room, with two sofas laid out in front of them.

Erdogan and Michel took the chairs, while von der Leyen and then Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sat on the sofas.

In the meeting’s aftermath, von der Leyen denounced the seating arrangement as a sign of sexism on the part of the Turkish government, though Michel had pointed out that diplomatic protocol rates the European Council president ahead of the European Commission president.

As such, he said, the Turkish government may have strictly adhered diplomatic protocol. He nonetheless faced calls to resign, but withstood them, eventually standing down at the end of his term in 2024.