The latest developments in a jittery eastern Mediterranean, particularly a military build-up of western forces to protect EU-member-state Cyprus, appear to have touched another sensitive “nerve” in Turkey, the power that illegally occupies one-third of the island republic’s territory.
Speaking on a pro-government television station on Monday, Omer Celik, a spokesperson for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), bemoaned that the “…Greek Cypriot side is making the following mistake: When it brings certain actors there (Cyprus), it thinks it can establish a superiority of power over Turkey or the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. However, for one of our fighter jets to go there from our southern provinces is a distance of 5–6 minutes,” he said, in reference to the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the Turkish Cypriot pseudo-state created and propped up by Ankara in the areas it occupies.
French President Emmanuel Macron meets Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as part of a visit focused on supporting Cyprus after recent drone attacks amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, and strengthening European coordination in the region, in Paphos, Cyprus March 9, 2026. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/Pool
Celik then turned his attention to Greece, charging that a Patriot anti-missile system has been deployed on the island of Karpathos, which has irked Ankara because it claims the island must be demilitarized as based on the 1947 Paris Treaty which granted Greece the Dodecanese Islands in the aftermath of WWII. Turkey is not a party to the treaty.
File photo: A Patriot air defense unit
“The islands where they have placed these weapons are islands with a demilitarized status, and this deployment of weapons is illegal. Therefore, Greece has promoted certain approaches that open the way for a political division within NATO, that create divergence within NATO and that will create confrontations…As you know, recently they deployed Patriot systems on the island of Karpathos, south of Crete. And they are increasing their forces there.”
“In the eastern Mediterranean, there is almost no place left for a fishing vessel to go out. It’s full of warships everywhere. Of course, we here are obliged to consider the security of the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. The Greek Cypriot side at the moment is one of the parties that stands closest to Zionism, to Zionist aggression and to this network of genocide,” he chimed, in directing opprobrium against Nicosia and its ties to Israel.
Among others, Celik said:
“Of course, we do not see anything that can be taken seriously in these initiatives by the Greek Cypriots and Greece. For example, France comes out and says: ‘I will send a warship there to support the Greek Cypriot side because it is being targeted by Iran’s missiles.’ Naturally, it is absolutely normal for us to take these steps, first to further strengthen the balance of power in all this chaos in the eastern Mediterranean with regard to our rights and interests there, and second to ensure the security of the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’,” he added, in again citing the illegal pseudo-state.
