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.”
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.