Turkish officials are warning that Cyprus could become the next flashpoint in the Eastern Mediterranean, with Ankara planning to demand a rollback of Greek and Western military deployments once the Persian Gulf situation stabilizes.
A senior Turkish diplomat told sources that once the Gulf war winds down, Turkey's foreign affairs and defense ministries will "swivel their full attention to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean." Ankara is specifically demanding that Greece's Patriot air defense missiles, deployed to Karpathos and the Evros border region, be returned to their original locations. Officials in Turkey view those deployments as Athens exploiting the Gulf conflict to quietly shift the balance of power in the Aegean.
What has Ankara most alarmed, however, is not the Greek moves alone. According to a senior official in Turkey's ruling party, "the next conflict in the region may be on Cyprus," driven largely by what Turkey sees as an unacceptable Israeli and French military presence on the island. The same official claimed Israel views Cyprus as a more favorable battlefield than Syria for any potential aerial or naval confrontation.
A separate experienced Turkish diplomat did not rule out Ankara moving to declare the occupied north of Cyprus as Turkey's "82nd province," a step Turkey avoided when it unilaterally declared independence for the north in 1983. That diplomat said Turkey will no longer tolerate being "made a fool of" over the Cyprus issue for decades, and that if negotiations fail, Ankara and the Turkish Cypriot leadership are prepared to take what he called "important decisions on the next step."
Greece's deployment of F-16 jets to Cyprus was described by Ankara as a lesser concern, since Greece is one of Cyprus' guarantor powers. Still, Turkey views the cumulative military picture on the island, with France and Israel both maintaining a presence, as a red line it is not prepared to accept indefinitely.
