Erdogan threatens to build naval base in Cyprus amid tensions

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that his country was ready to build a Cyprus naval base “if necessary”, 50 years after Turkish forces invaded the now-divided island.

“If necessary, we can construct a base and naval structures in the north” of the divided island, the official Anadolu news agency reported him as saying.

“We also have the sea,” Erdogan said he flew back to Turkey after visiting northern Cyprus on Saturday to mark 50 years since Turkey’s invasion.

He also accused rival Greece of wanting to establish a naval base of its own on Cyprus, on whose future both sides remain as divided as ever.

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In 1983, Turkey installed what it calls the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which no other country has recognised four decades after it was proclaimed by Turkish Cypriot leaders.

As Greek Cypriots mourned those killed and still missing since the 1974 convulsion of violence, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said Saturday that reunification was the only option.

Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004 still divided after Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected a UN plan to end their differences with Turkish Cypriots.

But on the other side of the UN-patrolled buffer zone that separates the two communities, Erdogan on Saturday rejected the federal model championed by the United Nations, saying he saw no point in relaunching talks on such a plan.

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“Frankly, we do not think it is possible to start a new negotiation process without establishing an equation whereby both parties sit down as equals and leave the table as equals,” Erdogan said.

The last round of UN-backed talks to reunify the island collapsed in 2017.

“We are constructing on the island the building of the presidency of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the parliament building. They are constructing a military base, we are building a political base,” Erdogan added.

He also hailed the “precious” presence during Saturday’s visit of the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ozgur Ozel, saying it demonstrated the “unity” of Turkey’s population with regards to Cyprus.