My Side of the (Mediterranean) Mountain
Plus: Running Threads on Azerbaijan, Ukraine, the Houthis, Myanmar, and Sudan
As the easternmost island in the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus has historically sat at the crossroads of civilizations. It once straddled the Eastern Roman Empire and the ascendant Umayyad Caliphate; today the mountainous island nation finds itself divided between the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (an unrecognized client state of Ankara’s) in the north.
Cyprus’ current divide stems back to the middle of the twentieth century but to fully grasp today’s situation it’s important to understand the island’s long history. A quick summary is that Rome annexed Cyprus in the first century BCE which it controlled continuously until the third century imperial schism created the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Greek-dominated Byzantium would go on to rule the island for roughly the next eight hundred years until Constantinople’s decline led to brief periods of Frankish and Venetian control. By this point the Ottoman Empire was the dominant regional power and invaded Cyprus in 1570 bringing a population of Turkic Muslims with them that remains to this day.
The Ottomans ruled a now ethnically mixed Greek and Turkish Cyprus for three-hundred and eight years before turning the island over to the British Empire in 1878 in the wake of their devastating loss in the Russo-Turkish war. It’s crucial to note here that almost a half century prior, Greece attained independence from the Ottomans which sparked the enosis movement in Cyprus for a union with the new Hellenic state among the island’s Greek inhabitants.
The United Kingdom granted Cyprus independence in 1960 amid the dismantling of the world’s largest empire but the new sovereign island nation would only remain united for a fraught fourteen years before a military coup and subsequent Turkish invasion set the stage for fifty years of Cypriot division.
In 1974 the military dictatorship in Athens sponsored a coup d'état on the island to overthrow Cyprus’ democratically elected president after a decade-plus of internal ethnic strife. The Cypriot National Guard installed Nikos Sampson with the aim of pursuing enosis which precipitated a Turkish invasion of the north. Following this, the Greek Junta fell giving way to today’s Third Hellenic Republic and a civilian government resumed control of the Republic of Cyprus. Turkey’s parliament would go on to recognize the occupied north as the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” which brings us to the present day.
Real efforts at Cypriot re-unification have not occurred since the ill-fated 2017 Switzerland conference, but The Guardian optimistically reported in July:
Cypriot diplomats are seeking to revive peace talks on the divided island with proposed appointments of UN and EU envoys in a bid to find a federal solution five decades after occupation of the north of the island by Turkish troops.
A small window of diplomatic opportunity may have opened due to Turkey’s recent interest in negotiating its relations with the European Union, especially on visa-free travel and the customs union. Furthermore, the Cypriot foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, is hoping to restart the process, the Guardian understands.
This seems incredibly unlikely given the December 8 statements from TRNC President Ersin Tatar to Politico (“EU must accept there won’t be a united Cyprus, Turkish Cypriot leader says” reads the headline). Turkey and the TRNC have also moved aggressively in recent years, re-opening an occupied ghost town as a tourist attraction and beach vacation destination, and building a road in the U.N. demilitarized buffer zone on the island. The latter of which resulted in an ugly episode in August in which Turkish Cypriots assaulted U.N. soldiers attempting to cease the illegal construction:
Angry Turkish Cypriots last week punched and kicked a group of international peacekeepers that blocked crews working on a road that would encroach on the island’s U.N.-controlled buffer zone. The road is designed to connect the village of Arsos, in the Turkish Cypriot north, with the multi-ethnic village of Pyla, which is inside the buffer zone and abuts the Greek Cypriot south.
Thankfully the incident did not further spiral out of control and the two Cypriot administrations came to an agreement the following month:
Cyprus government officials said the deal meets the Turkish Cypriot demand for construction of the road linking the village of Arsos…But Turkish military guard posts inside the buffer zone will be removed, there will be no Turkish or Turkish Cypriot military or police presence permitted there and the U.N.’s jurisdiction of the area will be affirmed and uncontested.
How does a tiny divided island in the Mediterranean tie in to the growing global disorder? As usual, the answer lies in Moscow and Tehran. Cyprus has historically cultivated deep ties with Russia, courting investment and tourism from the former Soviet state. A recent probe from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists starkly displayed just how much Russian money, influence, and criminality has been sloshing around the island since the 1990s.
However as the country has attempted to re-orient itself westward in recent years and amid sweeping sanctions on Moscow, rubles have found safe harbor in the TRNC. The Guardian reported in November:
It is clear that seven months after Anglo-US sanctions were slapped on individuals and entities for ‘“enabling” oligarchs – including Roman Abramovich – to manage assets in the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, Russians seeking to move their money inside Europe are looking elsewhere.
And, increasingly, it appears they have looked no further than across the UN buffer zone that bisects the war-split island, to the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Russians will continue playing three card monte with their plundered fortunes abroad while they wage their unprovoked war of aggression on Ukraine and North Cyprus offers a perfect safe haven:
“The north is a de facto state. It’s not bound by international agreements, has weak institutions and is only recognised by Turkey,” says Sertaç Sonan, a prominent political scientist, who describes the construction boom as “a money printing business” for the breakaway state. “It’s a grey area, perfect for anyone wanting to do shady business.”
Not only is the TRNC clearly laundering blood-soaked rubles, it also appears to be a staging ground for Iranian attacks on Israeli citizens. On December 12, the TRNC angrily denied their territory is being used to facilitate terrorism but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office claims the Mossad assisted the Republic of Cyprus in thwarting an Iranian plan to target Jews on the island earlier that week.
Turkey’s President Dictator For Life, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has gone as far saying “Hamas is not a terrorist organization” in his public comments since the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel and it’s not hard to imagine Turkish forces (and by extension the TRNC) looking the other way while pro-Hamas Iranian operatives use the occupied gray zone to plan attacks on Jews.
Azerbaijan/Armenia
After conquering Nagorno-Karabakh three months ago, Azerbaijan recently made diplomatic overtures to Armenia, agreeing to swap prisoners of war and work towards establishing formal relations and a peace treaty:
The two countries said in a joint statement they “share the view that there is a historical chance to achieve a long-awaited peace.” They said they intend “to normalize relations and to reach the peace treaty on the basis of respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
This would be a welcome development but I’m highly skeptical of Baku’s sincerity. Azerbaijan now boasts unquestioned military superiority over their neighbor, powerful diplomatic and military ties to regional players (Turkey and Israel), and the benefit of Russia’s single minded obsession with Ukraine upending the uneasy status quo in the south caucuses. Azerbaijan still operates troops well within Armenia’s internationally recognized territory in a situation Foreign Affairs describes as a “Sword of Damocles”:
It would take mere hours for Azerbaijani troops to seize much of Armenia’s critical infrastructure, particularly in the country’s southern regions, leading to the major displacement of civilians. Armenia could well have no alternative but to surrender and accept any terms proposed by Azerbaijan.
As a reminder, Azerbaijan is led by a gas-fueled hereditary dictatorship that refers to Armenia regularly as “West Azerbaijan” and repeatedly makes clear the desire to connect Azerbaijan proper with the Azeri exclave Nakhichevan via a hypothetical land corridor through Armenia.
Ukraine/Russia
Polling consistently shows an overwhelming supermajority of Americans (88% as of August 2023) acknowledge Russia is our enemy. Yet a Financial Times-Michigan Ross poll published on December 11 shows 48% of those surveyed think America is “spending too much on Ukraine”. The same Ukraine being brutally invaded by our universally acknowledged foe. I’m certainly not the first to note that for <5% of America’s annual military budget we’ve assisted in annihilating a mind-boggling 300,000+ Russian troops without dropping a single ounce of American blood.
But with Republican congressional opposition to additional military and financial aide hardening the closer we get to Donald Trump’s inevitable presidential nomination, the window to get the Ukrainians what they need to win is getting perilously small. Hopefully Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Capitol Hill last week moves us closer to getting a supplemental aide package passed.
Meanwhile in Russia, Vladimir Putin has had Alexei Navalny moved to “a "special regime" colony, the harshest grade in Russia's prison system” in a clear move to slowly liquidate the unjustly jailed opposition leader.
Houthis
Another week, another string of Houthi attacks on commercial Red Sea shipping. From the AP:
A ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels slammed into a cargo ship Friday in the Red Sea near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, following another attack only hours earlier that struck a separate vessel, authorities said.
OSINT Twitter X user Damien Symon mapped out the stunning number of Houthi attacks in the southern Red Sea over the past two months on Saturday:
So what has the Biden administration done in the face of this relentless onslaught against international commerce? Backchannel warnings to the terrorist group via KSA, Oman, and Qatar according to Axios while they slowly consider striking back directly. That’ll probably get the job done.
Myanmar
According to a new U.N. report, Myanmar has overtaken Afghanistan as the world’s largest opium producer amid the ongoing civil war between the military junta and the National Unity Government:
Its opium production this year is estimated to rise by 36% to 1,080 tonnes, far ahead of the 330 tonnes Afghanistan reportedly produced. Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan dropped by 95% after a drug ban by the ruling Taliban last year. Meanwhile, cultivation has expanded in Myanmar, where a brutal civil war, has made it a lucrative source of income.
To catch up on the situation in Myanmar check out Son of a Diplomat’s feature on the conflict a few weeks back.
Sudan
The horrifyingly violent and atrocity-filled civil war in Sudan is now creating a massive famine in east Africa amidst the conflict:
Some 30 million people, almost two thirds of the population, are in need of assistance in Sudan according to the UN, double the number before fighting broke out between the army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in mid-April.
"More and more people are struggling to eat a basic meal a day, and unless things change there is a very real risk they won't even be able to do that," said WFP country head Eddie Rowe.
As I’ve written before, Sudan in 2023 really does seem like Hell on Earth and there doesn’t seem to be much international appetite to stop the ongoing carnage and destruction.
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