Turkiye reveals intelligence that Cyprus serves as military base for Israel 

Turkiye has said that southern Cyprus is acting as a military base to support Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip, in the latest such assertion of the island’s role in the ongoing offensive.

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.”

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Over the past year, numerous outlets have reported that US and UK military aircraft have increasingly arrived at Britain’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus last year, in an effort to reportedly assist Israeli forces in their offensive on Gaza by supplying arms and ammunition and conducting surveillance to collect and provide intelligence.

Cyprus’s alleged involvement has made it a potential target of the Lebanese group, Hezbollah, with its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, last week warning Nicosia against allowing Israel and its Western allies to use its territory for such purposes. “Opening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon would mean that the Cypriot government is part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war” in the case of a full Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Nasrallah said.

For its part, Cyprus has denied the reports of its role in the offensive, with its President, Nikos Christodoulides, stressing that the country “is absolutely not involved in any way, and is not part of the problem.” Referring to Cyprus’s participation in the establishment of a maritime aid route to Gaza, he insisted that “we demonstrate in practice that we are part of the solution”.

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