Turkey planning annexation in coming months
By Theodoros Panayotou for Cyprus Mail
First a clarification. I am not a politician, nor do I belong to any political party. I am an academic. I don’t like to get involved in politics. I’ve only done it once before, in 2010-2013 when I foresaw the financial disaster coming and felt a moral obligation to sound a warning and help address it. I do it now because I foresee half of my homeland being lost forever and I feel the same moral obligation to alert my fellow citizens, who may not have realised that annexation of the occupied territories by Turkey is pending in just a few months, during the interval between the Cypriot and Turkish elections. Let me explain.
In view of the Turkish elections and the adverse opinion polls for Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president is issuing daily threats against Greece and Cyprus. Since Greece is fortified both militarily and with bilateral defence agreements with France and the US, it is unlikely that Erdogan will carry out his threats against Greece. As stated, by the Cyprus Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Kasoulides, among others, the weak link, which is at risk, is Cyprus. But one more intervention in Cyprus’ EEZ, or an episode on the Green Line will not inflame nationalism in Turkey enough to raise Erdogan’s popularity to levels that will ensure his re-election to the presidency.
The only action that will be of historical importance is the annexation of the occupied territories to Turkey. This will expand Turkey’s territories for the first time in the hundred years since the founding of the modern Turkish state by Kemal Atatürk, the ‘Father of the Turks’, an honorific title bestowed on him by the Turkish parliament in 1934. This has a great symbolism for Erdogan, who wants to
