ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s overseas minister accused the United Nations of abandoning its neutrality on Tuesday, a day after the U.N. Security Council criticized construction work by Turkish Cypriots contained in the buffer zone dividing Cyprus and condemned their assault on U.N. peacekeepers.
In an announcement issued Monday, the Safety Council described the development of a highway as a violation of the established order that’s opposite to council resolutions. The assertion got here on the finish of emergency closed consultations by the council’s 15 members.
Indignant Turkish Cypriots final week punched and kicked a group of international peacekeepers that blocked crews engaged on a highway that might encroach on the island’s U.N.-controlled buffer zone. The highway is designed to attach the village of Arsos, within the Turkish Cypriot north, with the multi-ethnic village of Pyla, which is contained in the buffer zone and abuts the Greek Cypriot south.
“We consider that with this transfer, the United Nations has misplaced its neutrality,” Turkish International Minister Hakan Fidan advised reporters throughout a joint information convention along with his Bulgarian counterpart.
Fidan maintained that Greek Cypriots had been allowed to go forward with comparable highway development tasks.
“The highway constructed by Greek Cypriots in direction of the Greek inhabitants in Pyla was by no means subjected to obstruction and condemnation by the United Nations,” he mentioned. He accused the U.N. of appearing “like a hawk” to dam the Turkish Cypriots’ mission.
Earlier, the Turkish International Ministry issued an announcement rejecting the U.N. Safety Council’s condemnation, which is claimed was “divorced from the realities on the bottom.”
Talking after a Cupboard assembly late Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan known as the U.N. peacekeepers’ motion “unacceptable” and accused the power of bias towards Turkish Cypriots.
Cyprus was divided right into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally acknowledged Greek Cypriot south in 1974 following a Turkish invasion that was triggered by a coup geared toward uniting the island with Greece. Turkey maintains greater than 35,000 troopers in the Mediterranean nation ’s northern third. The Greek Cypriot south is a member of the European Union.
Since 1974, a U.N. peacekeeping power often called UNFICYP has supervised the de facto cease-fire and maintained a buffer zone between Turkish and Turkish Cypriot forces within the north and Greek Cypriot forces within the south.
The Safety Council welcomed the halt in development by the Turkish Cypriot aspect and the removing of apparatus and personnel. It known as on each side to indicate flexibility and help efforts by the U.N. envoy “to barter mutually agreed improvement within the space involved.”
The highway would give Turkish Cypriots direct entry to Pyla by circumventing a checkpoint on the northern fringe of a British navy base, considered one of two bases that the U.Ok. retained after Cyprus gained independence from British colonial rule in 1960.
Greek Cypriots understand the highway’s development as a transfer with a navy goal at a delicate spot alongside the buffer zone, which spans 180 kilometers (112 miles).
Turkey has described the highway as a “humanitarian” mission for the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot residents of Pyla.