The WPS Agenda in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Cases of Greece, the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey

Abstract

The implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, despite its global prominence, has been slow in the Eastern Mediterranean. This article is aimed at examining how three neighbouring states in the Eastern Mediterranean, namely: Greece, the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey, have responded to the normative traction of the WPS agenda. It is not only their geographic proximity that have rendered a comparative analysis of the three countries important but also the ongoing tensions that Greece and Cyprus experience at different times with Turkey. An evaluation of the three countries’ standing regarding the promotion of the WPS agenda will shed light on the missed opportunities that a substantive commitment to the WPS would have offered, especially in the context of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Cyprus adopted in 2020 its first WPS National Action Plan while Greece finalised its first WPS National Action Plan (NAP) in 2021 and awaits its official adoption. Turkey is yet to adopt a NAP despite its deteriorating women’s rights record. The article evaluates the perspectives that both Greece and Cyprus have adopted in their NAPs and assesses Turkey’s perspectives on gender equality. Through a content analysis with the support of respective secondary literature, the article highlights the unexplored, and thus missed, opportunities that a substantive implementation of the WPS normative settings would have offered in a region suffering from tensions, power competition and revisionism.