This past week’s agreement between Egypt and the Republic of Cyprus to export the latter’s offshore natural gas to the North Africa country’s two LNG terminals has apparently “ruffled the feathers” of official Ankara.
Turkey, which continues to occupy roughly 37% of Cyprus’ territory after invading the island republic in the summer of 1974, refuses to recognize the Republic of Cyprus – a UN and EU member-state – and bitterly reacts to international and regional cooperation in which Nicosia participates.
According to media reports out of Turkey on Thursday, sources in that country’s defense ministry bemoaned what they called the “usurpation of the rights of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (sic)” by the “Greek Cypriot administration of south Cyprus”.
The “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” is a reference to the pseudo-state created by Turkey in 1983 in the areas of the island republic that it continues to occupy with a massive military force.
The same sources, according to Turkish media reports, said the Cyprus-Egypt agreement “threatens” regional stability and harms the process to find a solution for the Cyprus problem.
The reactions, albeit anonymous, are reminiscent of past saber-ratting and belligerence on the part of Turkish leadership, with the sources quoted charging that the agreement is “null” as far as Ankara is concerned. The same reports also conveyed a threat to use “all the powers given to us as a guarantor power against the activities of the Greek Cypriot administration of south Cyprus”.
