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Cyprus Holds Military Drill with France, Italy and Greece to Bolster Security in East Mediterranean

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides shake hands with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides shake hands with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 4, 2023. (Reuters)
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Cyprus Holds Military Drill with France, Italy and Greece to Bolster Security in East Mediterranean

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides shake hands with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides shake hands with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outside the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 4, 2023. (Reuters)

The Cypriot president said Thursday that joint military maneuvers with three other European Union member states underway in the Eastern Mediterranean underscore the bloc's readiness to ensure security and stability in the region.

President Nikos Christodoulides said the drill with France, Italy and Greece is of “particular geostrategic significance” for the 27-member bloc and others, including the United States.

Christodoulides said his government is putting a “special emphasis” on upgrading the island’s military installations in order to take full advantage of its geographical location at the southeasternmost corner of Europe and close to the Middle East and Africa.

He spoke ahead of a visit to the French frigate Chevalier Paul, which is taking part in the drill, and stressed that the show of strength is not turned against any other country — a veiled allusion to Türkiye, with which Cyprus shares a violent past, including a 1974 Turkish invasion brought on by a coup aimed at forming a union with Greece.

Since then, the island has been divided along ethnic lines, with the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north separated from the Greek Cypriot south where the internationally recognized government is seated.

NATO-member Türkiye does not recognize Cyprus as a state, and claims much of the island’s offshore exclusive economic zone where several significant natural gas deposits have been discovered.

The five-day drill, which kicked off on Monday and is code-named EUNOMIA 4-2023, involves naval and air forces, including French Rafale jet fighters and Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft, according to a Cyprus Defense Ministry statement.

The exercise also includes for the first time this year civilian evacuation drills in the event of a regional emergency.

Britain used Cyprus as a waypoint to evacuate hundreds of its citizens from Sudan when fighting erupted there between Sudanese military and a rival, paramilitary force in mid-April. As chaos and violence engulfed the African country, many foreign countries rushed to evacuate their citizens from Sudan through complex airlifts and land

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Ocalan is Reported to Suggest he Might be Ready to End Insurgency

FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) display flags with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 17, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) display flags with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 17, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo
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Ocalan is Reported to Suggest he Might be Ready to End Insurgency

FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) display flags with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 17, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) display flags with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 17, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo

The jailed leader of Türkiye's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group's decades-old insurgency.

Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade, Reuters reported.

DEM requested the visit after a key Erdogan ally expanded on a proposal to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and Ocalan's PKK.

"I am ready to take (the) necessary positive step and make the call," Ocalan was quoted as saying, according to a statement by the MPs on Sunday.

Ocalan did not specify what the call would be but his comments came after the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, said Ocalan should make a call for the militants to lay down arms.

DEM requested the visit soon after Bahceli expanded on a proposal to end the conflict, suggesting in October that Ocalan should announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.

Erdogan described Bahceli's initial proposal as a "historic window of opportunity" but has not spoken of any peace process.
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.

Recent developments in Syria and Gaza showed that the solution for the Kurdish issue has become "undelayable,” Ocalan was also quoted as saying, adding that opposition and Parliament should also contribute to the new process, in a veiled reference to possible legal amendments.

One major development in the region has been the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria this month. Türkiye has repeatedly said there would be no place for the Kurdish YPG, which Ankara sees as an extension of the PKK, in Syria's future.

"I am also qualified and determined to make the necessary positive contribution to the new paradigm that Mr. Bahceli and Mr. Erdogan have empowered," Ocalan said, according to the DEM statement.

Türkiye and its Western allies deem the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centered on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.