Brussels, Belgium. German MEP Irmhild Bossdorf said on Tuesday that a scheduled European Parliament vote on a report into the sexual violence suffered by Cypriot women during Turkey’s 1974 invasion was “incomprehensible”. The vote is set to take place on Wednesday.
Comments at plenary session
Bossdorf, of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, told the plenary session that the Cyprus conflict was among the topics at Tuesday’s Nato summit and that European Council President Antonio Costa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were due to meet on Wednesday to discuss it.
She said a solution to the Cyprus conflict was not expected and added that Turkey was demanding a two-state solution as the basis for further negotiations, while the EU preferred moving closer to a confederation model.
Reference to reconciliation
Bossdorf said Germans knew how difficult it was to reconcile decades after the outbreak of a conflict, resume dialogue, and forgive one another. She said Germany had made considerable progress in this regard with Poland and that they were now working together in the European Parliament for a Europe of sovereign nations.
Criticism of committee approach
She said that, in that context, it was understandable that the European Parliament’s gender equality committee, Femm, had chosen to issue a resolution concerning the 1974 attacks by Turkish armed forces on Cypriot women and girls.
Bossdorf said no one wanted to downplay or trivialise the suffering and crimes of that era, but described the move as another attempt to link an ongoing geopolitical conflict to EU directives on gender mainstreaming.
She said that a hearing involving gender-sensitive non-government organisations to formally recognise past witness testimony within the EU’s institutional framework, a retrospective justification of abortions to place them within the international legal context, and EU financial and technical support for gender-sensitive counselling were not the pressing issues between Turkey and Greece.
Call for cooperation
Bossdorf said the Femm committee was overstepping its authority and seeking to have the conflict interpreted through a gender lens. She called instead for efforts to improve cooperation between the two Nato partners.