As Murat Yetkin writes for YetkinReport, Commissioner Kos's visit was interpreted as a response both to the Turkish government's recent overtures toward the EU and to the business community's Financial Times appeal. However, the promise of updating the Customs Union was received in Ankara as though it were a groundbreaking announcement, when in reality it is a dish that Brussels has reheated and served to Turkey repeatedly over the years. The goodwill gestures—such as organizing a meeting with Turkey's influential women leaders during the visit—were presented as warming signals, yet, as Yetkin pointedly observes, many of those same women would likely be unable to obtain visas or would face humiliating queues at consulate doors if the event had been held in an EU member state.
The Cyprus factor is the elephant in every room where Turkey-EU relations are discussed. The Republic of Cyprus, an EU member since 2004, wields veto power over virtually every dimension of Turkey's European aspirations. Together with Greece, it has consistently blocked Turkey's participation in the EU's evolving security architecture—known by the acronym SAFE—and has stalled any substantive progress on updating the Customs Union. The EU's pledge that it will work harder to integrate Turkey into European security frameworks rings hollow when Southern Cyprus is set to assume the EU's rotating presidency in the first half of 2026, a period during which Nicosia's obstructionist leverage will only intensify.
The visa liberalization dialogue, initiated in 2016, remains equally deadlocked. Six benchmarks—including amendments to Turkey's Anti-Terror Law—remain unfulfilled, and Ankara's workaround of issuing green (special) passports to an ever-expanding segment of the population is a stopgap measure approaching its limits. Meanwhile, the only tangible outcome of the Kos visit appears to be the European Investment Bank's decision to resume operations in Turkey—a welcome but modest development that hardly constitutes a strategic breakthrough.
The fundamental paradox is clear: the EU cannot indefinitely leverage Turkey's military strength and geographic position without offering genuine reciprocity, while Turkey cannot afford to hide behind the fatalistic assumption that compliance with EU standards would go unrewarded. Both sides bear responsibility for the impasse, but it is the Cyprus problem that provides the most convenient—and most durable—excuse for inaction. Until a comprehensive settlement on Cyprus is achieved, or until the EU devises institutional mechanisms to prevent a single member state from holding an entire bilateral relationship hostage, Turkey-EU relations will remain trapped in a loop of grand declarations and negligible results. Dialogue is never meaningless, but dialogue without deliverables eventually erodes the credibility of both parties and deepens the strategic drift that neither side can truly afford.
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