Cypriot members of the European Parliament Costas Mavrides of Diko and Geadis Geadi of Elam on Tuesday accused Turkey of carrying out “hybrid attacks” on Cyprus, as the parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg discussed the matter of alleged Russian hybrid attacks on other European Union member states.

Mavrides said that “hybrid attacks against EU Member States include cyberattacks, sabotage of critical infrastructure, undersea cables, drone incursions, instrumentalisation of migration flows and much more”, before calling the Russian hybrid attacks “a primary source of real threat”.

“However, hybrid attacks are also taking place for years by the neo-Ottoman Erdogan regime against member states in the eastern Mediterranean,” he said in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, before saying that the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas “never talks” about the issue.

This, he said, is “not European unity that makes us stronger”, but instead “hypocrisy that weakens us”, and in turn “feeds the extreme right wing”.

He called for the EU’s mutual defence clause, Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union, which is commonly known as the Lisbon Treaty, to be made “workable and operational”, before returning to Kallas, saying that “your double standard policy is increasing part of the problem”.

Geadis, meanwhile, said that “hybrid warfare is warfare conducted through non-military means, aimed at destabilising, coercing, and undermining the sovereignty of a state, cyberattacks, propaganda, the manipulation of non-governmental organisations, and even the weaponisation of illegal immigrants”.

He, too, called for the EU to “establish a clear roadmap for activating Article 42.7”, saying that this should “ensure that the mutual defence clause can be applied immediately and effectively”.

“However, there can be no European defence without consistency and credibility. When the European Commission’s leadership cozies up to the Turkish government, and you, Mrs Kallas, label it a partner,” he began.

He then added that Kallas describes Turkey as a “partner of Europe, referring to a state with a criminal record, accountable for genocides and human rights violations”, and added that Turkey is “a state which is waging hybrid warfare against us and occupies European territory belonging to the Republic of Cyprus”.

“Mrs Kallas, be careful when you shake hands which are stained with the blood of hundreds and thousands of innocent people,” he said.

Member states’ leaders demanded defence ‘playbook’ in April

The leaders of the EU’s 27 member states had during a European Council summit in Nicosia in April resolved to demand the creation of a defence “playbook”, with Cypriot government sources at the time lamenting that “nothing has been done” in the decade since the first and only time that the bloc’s mutual defence clause was activated.

It was France which triggered Article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union, better known as the Lisbon Treaty, after Paris was hit by a series of terrorist attacks in November 2015.