NICOSIA: A tense calm held Monday in Cyprus after the United Nations accused Turkish Cypriot forces of assaulting peacekeepers attempting to block road construction in the divided island’s buffer zone.
It was the most serious incident of its kind in years on the east Mediterranean island and drew widespread international condemnation.
The confrontation occurred on Friday in Pyla, an ethnically mixed village in the UN-patrolled buffer zone between the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus in the south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet in the north.
The UN said four peacekeepers were injured and its vehicles were also damaged as they tried to block the “unauthorized construction work” near Pyla.
“All is calm in Pyla this morning,” Aleem Siddique, spokesman for the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), told AFP.
“The mission remains on standby to block any resumption of construction works,” he said, adding that the injured peacekeepers have been released from hospital.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the peacekeepers of instigating the violence, calling their “physical intervention... unacceptable.”
“It is neither legal nor humane to prevent Turkish Cypriots living in Pyla from accessing their homeland,” Erdogan said in his first public remarks about the incident.
Cyprus government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told reporters that meetings have been held internally and with permanent members of the UN Security Council since Thursday over the tensions.
“At this time, very delicate and specific handling is required,” he said on Monday.
The Council, after a closed-door session, condemned the assaults and said they could constitute crimes under international law.
It said the road construction work “runs contrary to Security Council resolutions and constitutes a violation of the status quo in the UN Buffer Zone.”
Authorities in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), who say the road project is aimed at easing the plight of its people, dismissed the UN mission’s allegations as “baseless.”
Veysal Guden, the Turkish Cypriot mayor of Pyla, said construction on the road would continue Monday in Turkish Cypriot controlled areas, but workers would not enter the UN-controlled zone.
“A chance will be given to diplomacy. Talks will continue,” Guden told AFP.
The European Union condemned Friday’s incident, and in a joint statement Britain, France and the United States expressed “serious concern at the launch of unauthorized construction” of the road.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday that “preventing tensions and ensuring the maintenance of the status quo across the buffer zone is the mission’s top priority.”
The peacekeeping mission “is engaging with the Turkish Cypriot side and all concerned” to agree on a “mutually acceptable way forward,” Dujarric said.
Local media reported that talks took place between the TRNC and UN on Monday.
EU member Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish forces occupied the island’s northern third in response to a military coup sponsored by the junta then in power in Greece.
Only Ankara recognizes the statehood of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, proclaimed by Turkish Cypriot leaders in 1983.
Efforts to reunify the island have been at a standstill since the last round of UN-backed talks collapsed in 2017.
