The end or easing of coronavirus-related lockdowns across Europe has apparently sparked a new round of provocations by the official Turkish state against its western neighbour, coming on the heels of a failed attempt in late February and early March to flood Greece with tens of thousands of third country nationals through the land border on the Evros River, incessant saber-rattling in the eastern Mediterranean, and of late, threats by Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to reconvert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
Days after the most recent threats to convert the greatest of all cathedrals of eastern Christendom back into a mosque, from its current status as Turkey’s most visited museum, the so-called “prime minister” of the Turkish Cypriot pseudo-state threatened to resettle and open the closed city of Varoshia, which today lies abandoned in a no-man’s land in the occupied part of the island republic — and adjacent to occupied Famagusta.
Turkey has occupied 37 percent of Cyprus since 1974 and has propped up a TC pseudo-state in the occupied areas since 1981.
Speaking on Turkish television, Ersin Tatar said works to illegally resettle Varoshia were stopped due to the pandemic, but will now start anew and in an accelerated manner.
Varoshia, once a thriving trade and tourism center in the eastern Mediterranean, known for its 365 churches, one for each day of the year, has been a ghost town since the Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974.