When it comes to foreign policy, and in particular the relationship the Republic of Cyprus should have with the United States and Israel, recent moves and statements make one thing plain enough: there really is a right-wing alliance on the island. The Christodoulides government is on one side; DISY, DIKO and ELAM are on the other.
All four would struggle to admit it is an alliance. Yet the parties of the broader Cypriot right, from DIKO through DISY all the way to ELAM, are clearly sailing on the same course as the government on foreign policy, and above all on building alliances and partnerships with both the US and Israel.
Nikos Christodoulides’s government picked up the baton from Nicos Anastasiades’s and pressed on with upgrading relations with Israel and the US, at a far from easy time internationally. On strengthening the Republic’s defences in particular, major decisions have been taken and are being carried out. Cooperation between the island and its neighbour Israel has taken on a strategic character. It is no accident that the only country this cooperation bothers is Turkey.
On foreign policy and defence alike, the first concern of any government in Nicosia should not be pleasing Turkey but serving the country. And on that score there is no doubt whatsoever about what the Cypriot government is doing.
That is the message ringing out loud and clear from Nicosia, and it rattles Turkey. Ankara evidently wants the Republic of Cyprus diplomatically weak and militarily powerless… or, more to the point, gone altogether.
On these issues, the three parties of the broader Cypriot right have no real differences or disagreements with the Christodoulides government, once you strip out the tactical manoeuvring designed to stand apart for electoral gain. Read the government’s positions and those of the three parties carefully, and you will be hard pressed to find any disagreement of substance.
Which is why it is often baffling to watch the DISY leadership define itself not by the country’s Western orientation but by its stance towards the Christodoulides government. There are no real differences or disagreements of substance. Yet Pindarou seems to be clutching at anything it can find to prove it is in opposition on these issues too. It isn’t.
A Western orientation, with very concrete results, is the common ground on which the parties of the broader Cypriot right and the Christodoulides government agree. It was, after all, on this common ground that they all fell into step in February 2023, carrying Nikos Christodoulides to electoral victory. At the time, part of the then DISY leadership was urging DISY voters, indirectly or even openly, to side with AKEL. AKEL takes an entirely different approach to both foreign policy and the country’s defence.
What is at stake in 2028, as far as foreign policy goes, is keeping the country on its current path, clear of experiments and of choices that would suit Turkey. The right-wing alliance described here shows it can work together for the good of the country.
What is needed is for all sides to set aside any other ambitions or calculations and pull in the same direction. The tracks are already laid. All that remains is to avoid a derailment by candidacies looking in other directions to serve personal agendas…
