Boycott of Cyprus harms Turkey's bid to join EU

Turkey's decision to give the presidency of the EU the cold shoulder while its nemesis Cyprus is in charge will do nothing to improve EU-Turkish ties and its troubled membership bid.

Ankara decided last year to boycott the EU presidency when Cyprus takes over from Denmark on July 1, due to a decades-old dispute over the Mediterranean island split between the Turkish north and the internationally-recognized south.

"They don't even want to talk to us," Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis told AFP, adding there was a "total impasse."

Turkey opened EU membership negotiations in 2005, but the talks stalled in June 2010.

Only one of 35 policy "chapters" that all EU aspirants must negotiate to join the bloc has been closed. (...)