Justice Minister Costas Fitiris on Friday moved to play down the seriousness of the throwing of rocks and explosives across the buffer zone at Turkish Cypriots earlier in the week, saying that they are attempting to exaggerate the matter.
“When someone wants to exaggerate an issue, even if it exists, they can do it, and the Turks are specialists in such things,” he told CyBC radio.
The matter, he added, is being investigated and thus far, police have not uncovered any information, though Fitiris was keen to stress that “these actions cause problems, especially in terms of talks” on the Cyprus problem, but then moved to insinuate that the Turkish Cypriot side is blowing the matter out of proportion.
“They are looking for it. Look, the occupied territories, they are trying to create situations many times, so as to pressure both the United Nations and international public opinion. We will not get into this game. We will investigate it,” he said.
He then said that even if something did happen, Turkish Cypriots “go in and out of the free areas and the occupied territories, thousands of cars, every day, and nothing has gone wrong”.
As such, he said that “it cannot be that now, for the Turks and for the occupied territories, for people to believe that the free areas, and that the Republic of Cyprus, are being provocative”.
“I think that is utopian, and it is, for them to cause so many problems, and for them to then make into an international crisis an incident which we have already said is being investigated,” he said,
The incident was captured by local CCTV cameras, with video footage showing a man clad in black on Markos Drakos street, below the city walls’ Roccas bastion, which is under Turkish Cypriot control, throwing projectiles at people stood in the park atop the bastion.
A second video shows a larger group of men clad in black on Paphos street, inside the walls near the Roccas bastion, though it does not show any of them throwing projectiles.
Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said at the time that “rocks and explosives” had been thrown at people in the park, and that he had contacted both the Greek Cypriot side and the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus (Unficyp) about the incident.
He added that it was “unacceptable that no precautions were taken in such an area on a day like April 1” and described a “failure to take the necessary precautions” on the part of both the Greek Cypriot side and the UN.
Since then, Unficyp has stepped up its patrols in the area, while Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said that “the responsibility for this heinous incident lies with the Greek Cypriot administration in southern Cyprus, which, for decades, has glorified and lionised murderers and terrorists”.
He had also said that the Greek Cypriot side has “embedded in the minds of younger generations that Turkish Cypriots are enemies and targets”, and is “distancing the Greek Cypriot community from the notion of living peacefully side by side with their Turkish Cypriot neighbours”.