In an interview broadcast by the Turkish news channel, Haberturk, on Monday, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, revealed that Ankara has received intelligence reports further indicating that Greek Cyprus is assisting Israel and its Western allies by serving as a base for their operations.
“We constantly see in intelligence that the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus is a base for certain countries in operations targeting Gaza,” Fidan said. “When we brought this to the agenda, our European counterparts suddenly declared it a logistics base.”
The Foreign Minister said that labelling Cyprus a “logistics hub” was only an attempt to veil military operations, and insisted that its military purpose will neither benefit the southern side of the island nor Greece. “The regional actors need to see this. There is serious militarisation there,” Fidan stressed. “It needs to be prevented.”
Seems like Cyprus has already been dragged into Isn’treals planned invasion of Lebanon
I’m Cypriot, and our government for the past 11 years has been neoliberal right wingers. Cyprus has always had a steady line of neutrality. We were one of the very few European countries to recognize Palestine’s statehood since the 70s and we were condemning Israel’s occupation,
These neoliberal idiots have been steadily trying to get Cyprus into the US bossom. They think (or at least present it this way) that being closer to the US will help reunite the island. They’ve even tried to get us into NATO, but thankfully there was too much backlash for that to happen.
One of the first things they did to signal to the US we want to be their vassals was to start getting better relations with Israel. A bunch of blunders occured because of this. Namely and most famously, Cyprus has served as a testing ground and tradehouse for Israeli surveillance technology. There was even a whole international scandal of spyware being found on journalists’, activists’ and politicians’ phones all over Europe, which originated from an Israeli company registered in Cyprus, with ties to the Cypriot government (look up the Predator spyware case).
Long story short, we thought Israel’s military might would help make us secure, so we made treaties with them for bilateral military assistance. Turns out, nobody thought the bilateral nature of those treaties would bite us in the ass, and they did.
There’s something to be said about the 2 british military bases on the island, and 1 american surveillance station, which have been used extensively for Israel’s sake, and obviously Cyprus can’t really consent about that.
There’s also something to be said about Turkey always trying to fuck around with Cyprus in an effort to get their illegal military occupation entity recognized as a state.
But we’ve also fucked up, because we enabled the Americans to start constructing the “humanitarian” dock in Gaza, that was used for that massacre a few weeks ago. Not only that, but our government (before the incident) had been boasting that it was their idea. Essentially they gave Israel and the US the excuse to end UNRWA’s humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
If it is alright for me to ask, are you from, and referring to, southern Cyprus, or to the northern Turkish puppet state?
Yes, from “southern” Cyprus
I don’t know much about Cypriot politics, so I appreciate your insight. I’d venture to guess that Cyprus is being used as an EU tripwire to give cover for US-Isreal operations in a regional war. I feel like this could blow up any day now and all the empire’s client states will have their necks out, one way or the other. What would you say the general civilian attitude is there for being partner to these war criminals? Are people there willing to become entangled in a hot war with Iranian resistance networks?
Certainly the government is kind of panicked right now. There’s this weird thing going on where Hezbolah has accused Cyprus of participating in Israel’s war crimes, but at the same time, the Lebanese government is saying the Cypriot government isn’t involved in any hostilities with Lebanon, and ambassadors have been exchanging friendly compliments.
People in general are not willing to be entangled in war at all. But at the same time, most live in a bubble where they think nothing bad will happen.
Still, the majority of people assume that the government is lying. The communist party (AKEL) has been against whatever Cyprus is doing to aid Israel since almost the beginning, and has been organizing marches in support of Palestine since December. The right-wingers are more apathetic and critical than supportive, with few exceptions. Even parties that are cooperating with the government, are now unsure what to do, and some have started criticizing the government.