Britain will deploy HMS Dragon and helicopters with anti-drone capabilities in Cyprus, Keir Starmer has confirmed.
In a post on X, Starmer said the UK was “fully committed to the security of Cyprus and British military personnel based there”. The prime minister said he had spoken with the president of Cyprus “to let him know that we are sending helicopters with counter-drone capabilities and HMS Dragon is to be deployed to the region”.
The deployment of extra protection follows criticism of the UK by Cyprus following a drone strike on the RAF base of Akrotiri, which forced locals to flee.
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The government in Nicosia will make a diplomatic complaint and hasn’t ruled out renegotiating the status of British bases there after the attack “effectively dragged the island into the “unfolding crisis” in the Middle East, said Politico.
What is the UK’s history in Cyprus?
In 1878, Cyprus and its population of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots was transferred from the Ottoman Empire to British control. The Greek Cypriot majority wanted the removal of British rule and union with Greece, while Turkish Cypriots favoured continued British rule or partition.
In 1955, government and military installations and personnel were attacked by Greek Cypriot fighters. British reinforcements arrived and began a series of operations against the Greek Cypriots. By 1957, most of the Greek Cypriot leaders had been killed or captured and in 1959, the UK agreed for Cyprus to become an independent republic.
In the following decades, the island was “plagued with violence” between its Greek and Turkish communities, said the Imperial War Museum. In 1974, Turkey invaded and divided the island between Turkish Northern Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus. It remains divided to this day.
So from imperial outpost to diplomatic headache, the Mediterranean island has occupied a significant place in British foreign policy. In 2010, a UK government minister said it was a “scandal and a tragedy” that the EU included a divided capital and divided island. A Greek Cypriot leader remarked that Britain bore much of the blame.
Why are British bases there?
When Britain “relinquished control” over Cyprus in 1960 a “condition of the handover” was that Britain retained two Sovereign Base areas: Akrotiri and Dhekelia, said The Telegraph. They cover “roughly 3% of the island” and are among the 14 surviving British Overseas Territories, such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.
The bases “enable the UK to maintain a permanent military presence at a strategic point in the Eastern Mediterranean”, said the British Army. RAF Akrotiri is an “important staging post” for military aircraft and its communication facilities are an “important element” of the UK’s global links. The Akrotiri base has been used in the past for military operations in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Why is Cyprus angry?
The drone attack was the first time one of the UK bases on Cyprus has been hit since a rocket attack by Libyan militants in 1986.
Expressing “dissatisfaction” towards Britain over the latest attack, a Cypriot government spokesperson, Konstantinos Letymbiotis, said that despite assurances to Nicosia, “there was no clear clarification” from Keir Starmer that the UK’s Cyprus bases “would under no circumstances be used for any purpose other than humanitarian reasons”.
Asked whether the Cypriot government, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, will seek to renegotiate the status of the bases, Letymbiotis said “in this context, we are not ruling anything out”.
