Just 13 per cent of Cypriots favour the idea of Turkey joining the European Union, according to data published by the EU’s Eurobarometer survey on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, 84 per cent of Cypriots said they would be against the idea of Turkey joining the bloc, with the remaining three per cent said they did not know.

The proportion of Cypriots in favour of Turkey joining the EU is significantly smaller than the proportion across the bloc’s 27 member states, with 37 per cent of people in the EU being in favour of Turkey joining, and 55 per cent being against.

Of the 10 countries classed by the EU as candidates or potential candidates for enlargement, Serbia was far and away the most popular among Cypriots, with 72 per cent of Cypriots being in favour of Serbia joining the bloc and just 19 per cent being against.

EU-wide, 47 per cent of people were in favour of Serbia joining the bloc, while 43 per cent were against.

The second-most popular candidate among Cypriots was Georgia, with 58 per cent of Cypriots being in favour of the Caucasian country superseding Cyprus as the EU’s easternmost member, while this view was shared by 46 per cent of people across the EU.

Moldova, meanwhile, which was recently visited by European affairs deputy minister Marilena Raouna, has the support of 55 per cent of Cypriots for its joining of the EU, while 48 per cent of people across the EU also support its joining.

Around 850,000 Moldovan citizens – around a third of the country’s population – are already EU citizens, having become citizens of Romania.

Exactly 51 per cent of people both in Cyprus and the EU as a whole support the accession of Montenegro to the EU, while 50 per cent of Cypriots and 48 per cent of people across the bloc support the accession of fellow former Yugoslav state Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, Cypriots are less favourable of the accession of both North Macedonia and Kosovo, the latter of which the Cypriot government does not recognise, than the EU average.

In total, 44 per cent of Cypriots support North Macedonia’s accession, compared to 48 per cent of people across the EU, while 40 per cent of Cypriots support Kosovo’s accession, compared to 43 per cent of people across the EU.

Cypriots are also less supportive of the accession of Albania than the EU average, with 34 per cent of Cypriots expressing support, compared to 45 per cent of people across the EU.

Support for Turkish accession was voiced over the weekend by former finance minister and current Disy MP Harris Georgiades, who said at an interparliamentary summit in Copenhagen that “through the accession process, Turkey will be forced to transform itself into a democratic country”.

At the same conference, Hulusi Akar of Turkey’s ruling AK Party and Elam member of the European parliament Geadis Geadi had a heated exchange with one another after the former had rejected notions that the Cyprus problem was an “issue of occupation”.

“The legitimate intervention in 1974 was carried out to stop irredentist Greek Cypriot terrorists from attempting to ethnically cleanse the Turkish Cypriots. There have been no incidents since the peace operation. The lasting solution has been blocked by the Greek Cypriots as they rejected the Annan plan in 2004,” he said.

Geadi was incensed by this, and said that “no country has the right to occupy another sovereign state”, before asking “are the words ‘democracy’ and ‘Europe’ interpreted with genocides against the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Cypriots in Turkish?”

“A country like Turkey, with its criminal record, has no place in Europe, neither as a member, nor as a partner,” he said.