Cypriot police said Turkish coastguards fired warning shots at one of its vessels patrolling for undocumented migrants Friday, as tensions mount ahead of the Turkish president’s visit to the breakaway north.
The Cyprus government condemned the reported shooting in representations to the United Nations, after earlier describing it as the first incident of its kind off the divided Mediterranean island, amid an ongoing surge in migrant arrivals.
But a Turkish diplomatic source denied that either the Turkish or the Turkish Cypriot coastguard had fired on any Greek Cypriot vessel.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due in the north of the island next week to mark the anniversary of Turkey’s 1974 invasion, a visit Greek Cypriots see as inflammatory with reunification talks in limbo.
The Cypriot police vessel spotted the Turkish coastguard some 11 nautical miles from the small fishing port of Kato Pyrgos, just west of the UN-patrolled armistice line separating government-held territory from the north, the Cyprus News Agency reported.
Cyprus police spokesman Christos Andreou told CNA that the coastguard cutter was inside Cypriot territorial waters at 3:30 am (0030 GMT) when the incident took place.
He said the boat was on a regular patrol to check for irregular migrants, as the area is a dropping-off point for migrants coming from Turkey.
‘Aggressive behavior’
“The patrol boat’s three-member crew, seeing the intentions of the Turkish coastguard, tried to avoid any incident and headed toward the fishing shelter at Kato Pyrgos,” he said.
“At a distance of four nautical miles from the shelter, the marine police boat received warning shots from the Turkish coastguard.
“Then, being a short distance from the shores, the Turkish coastguard left for the occupied territories” (of northern Cyprus), he said.
Cyprus government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said the patrol boat was acting within its rights, and it highlighted Turkey’s recent “aggressive behavior” towards the island.
“There has not been a previous incident of this nature,” Pelekanos said.
A foreign ministry spokesman later said Cyprus had made “representations to the UN peacekeeping force, condemning the incident and asking them to investigate it”.
The Turkish diplomatic source denied any coastguard vessel had opened fire.
“A Turkish or a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus vessel did not fire at a Greek Cypriot boat,” the source told AFP. “It is not true.”
Tensions have been running high ahead of Erdogan’s visit to the island, when he will make what Greek Cypriots see as a provocative tour on Tuesday of the abandoned beach resort of Varosha, which was emptied of its Greek Cypriot residents by the Turkish invasion.
UN-backed talks on reunifying the island as a bi-communal federation collapsed in 2017, and efforts to revive them have hit a new, tougher line from Ankara demanding a two-state solution.
Kemal Baykalli, a Turkish Cypriot analyst and activist for Unite Cyprus Now, warned that a tendency by the EU and other international actors to view Cyprus as a “frozen conflict... fails to see that it can turn into a real conflict anytime.”
A “solution to the Cyprus problem... cannot be delayed,” he told AFP.
‘Difficult situation’
Cyprus police have stepped up both land and sea patrols since the government declared a “state of emergency” in May following an influx of Syrian migrants.
Nicosia says most migrants enter government-controlled areas illegally, via the UN-patrolled buffer zone or by sea.
Cyprus, the European Union’s most easterly member state, has had the bloc’s highest proportion of asylum applications per capita for four consecutive years.
Interior Minister Nicos Nouris told reporters in June that the division of the island by a 180-kilometer-long (112 mile) ceasefire line “creates unique conditions for the development of irregular migration”.
Giannis Ioannou, founder of think tank Geopolitical Cyprus, said Friday’s incident reflected “a Turkish approach to create a new de facto situation in order to further undermine the Republic of Cyprus”.
“We need to see if this poses a hybrid threat regarding migration, since Kato Pyrgos is a destination for boats approaching Cyprus from Lebanon and Syria,” Ioannou said.
