NICOSIA: Turkish Cypriot foreign minister Kudret Ozersay has announced his resignation in protest at the nationalist prime minister’s decision to reopen the Greek Cypriot resort of Varosha, a sealed-off ghost town since 1974, just days before a presidential election.
Ozersay’s People’s Party, the third largest in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state’s parliament, also pulled out of the governing coalition, depriving it of its majority, he announced late on Tuesday.
Speaking after Tuesday talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Cypriot prime minister Ersin Tatar announced that the coastal section of Varosha would reopen on Thursday.
The move was condemned by Tatar’s opponents as a ploy to shore up his nationalist base ahead of Sunday’s election and an act of interference by Ankara in Turkish Cypriot affairs.
“It is unacceptable that Tatar ignored the will of his coalition partner and the Turkish Cypriot people,” Ozersay said.
Both Tatar and Ozersay are challenging dovish incumbent Mustafa Akinci in Sunday’s election, which was delayed from April by the coronavirus pandemic.
Akinci too strongly criticized the announcement from Ankara, calling it a “shame for our democracy” and “interference in our elections.”
The president, who is the only Turkish Cypriot official to have international status as leader of the island’s minority community, has long had difficult relations with Ankara, the only government which recognizes the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state.
In February, Turkey accused him of being “dishonest” after he described the prospect of annexation by Ankara as horrible.
Akinci represents the Turkish Cypriot side in currently dormant UN-backed talks on ending the island’s decades-long division.
The return of Varosha to its Greek Cypriot former inhabitants has been a central part of every UN-backed proposal to reunify the island.
In its heyday in the early 1970s, the resort was a favored haunt of celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
But the Turkish invasion of 1974, launched in response to a Greek Cypriot coup seeking to annex the whole island to Greece, emptied the resort district and the wider city of Famagusta of its Greek Cypriot residents and property owners.
It has been sealed off by the Turkish army ever since.
The Turkish Cypriots have long considered unilaterally reopening Varosha as a means of jump-starting talks.
But they have previously always held back in the face of opposition from the island’s internationally recognized government and the international community.
Cyprus government spokesman Kyriakos Kousios described the move as “a pre-election stunt created in Ankara, on the eve of an election for a new Turkish Cypriot leader.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was “very concerned” about Tuesday’s announcement and stressed the “urgency of restoring confidence and not of creating greater divisions.”
Akinci is the favorite going into Sunday’s election, which is likely to be decided in a second-round runoff between himself and Tatar.
Former prime minister Tufan Erhurman of the center-left Turkish Republican Party, the second largest in parliament, is also standing, alongside minor party candidates and independents.
Turkish Cypriot FM quits in protest at move to reopen ghost resort
https://arab.news/rtvf4
Turkish Cypriot FM quits in protest at move to reopen ghost resort
- Move condemned by PM Ersin Tatar’s opponents as a ploy ahead of Sunday’s presidential election and an act of interference by Ankara in Turkish Cypriot affairs
- In its heyday in the early 1970s, the resort was a favored haunt of celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
Trump warns Maduro against playing ‘tough’ as US escalates pressure campaign on Venezuela
- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday fired back at Donald Trump, who has ordered US naval forces to blockade the South American country's oil wealth, saying the US president would be "better off" focusing on domestic issues rather than threatenin
- The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the US Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.
Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro as he took a break from his Florida holiday vacation to announce plans for the Navy to build a new, large warship.
Trump levied his latest threat as the US Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade US sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a US judicial seizure order.
“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.
It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that US officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, seized a sanctioned tanker called Skipper on Dec. 10, also part of the shadow fleet of tankers that the US says operates on the fringes of the law to move sanctioned cargo. That ship was registered in Panama.
Trump, after that first seizure, said the US would carry out a “blockade” of Venezuela. Trump has repeatedly said that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.
Last week, Trump demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from US oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Coast Guard, said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends” that the targeting of tankers is intended to send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone, and that we will stand up for our people.”
Russian diplomats evacuate families from Caracas
Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The official told The Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.
The scene on a Venezuelan beach near a refinery
While US forces targeted the vessels in international waters over the weekend, a tanker that’s considered part of the shadow fleet was spotted moving between Venezuelan refineries, including one about three hours west of the capital, Caracas.
The tanker remained at the refinery in El Palito through Sunday, when families went to the town’s beach to relax with children now on break from school.
Music played on loudspeakers as people swam and surfed with the tanker in the background. Families and groups of teenagers enjoyed themselves, but Manuel Salazar, who has parked cars at the beach for more than three decades, noticed differences from years past, when the country’s oil-dependent economy was in better shape and the energy industry produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.
“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” Salazar, 68, said. “Now, look, one.”
The tanker in El Palito has been identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent watchdog promoting government accountability, to be part of the shadow fleet.
Area residents on Sunday recalled when tankers would sound their horns at midnight New Year’s Eve, while some would even send up fireworks to celebrate the holiday.
“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said of Venezuelan families spending the holiday at the beach next to the refinery. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”
Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Monday gave initial approval to a measure that would criminalize a broad range of activities that could be linked to the seizure of oil tankers.
Lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello, who introduced the bill, said people could be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years for promoting, requesting, supporting, financing or participating in “acts of piracy, blockades or other international illegal acts against” commercial entities operating with the South American country.
The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond.
At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September. The strikes have faced scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
