Tatar offers Famagusta port for humanitarian aid to Gaza

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar on Friday offered the Famagusta port to be used to transport humanitarian aid from Cyprus to Gaza.

Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, he said the transfer of aid from Larnaca to Gaza had been done to “create the perception that the entire island of Cyprus belongs to the south”.

“If the main thing is aid and the transfer thereof to Gaza, this could also be done from the Famagusta port, and Turkey could support this process and thus the TRNC could extend a helping hand to Gaza,” he said.

He said Turkey is being “very sensitive and courageous on this issue” and that the Turkish Cypriots “also wish to be included in these activities” but lamented that “all of them are being done by the Greek Cypriot administration.”

When the matter had been raised by the north’s ‘parliament speaker’ Zorlu Tore earlier in the year, diplomatic sources told the Cyprus Mail that the government “would not take a negative stance” if he north wished to send humanitarian aid to Gaza through the existing Amalthea plan – the Republic of Cyprus’ humanitarian aid corridor to Gaza.

They added that the government would be willing to help facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid from the north towards Gaza should there be an initiative in the north for aid to be collected and sent via the Amalthea plan.  

“In a hypothetical stance where ten tonnes of aid are at a crossing point aimed at going to Larnaca and being sent to Gaza, we would not stand in their way,” the sources said. 

There was only one matter on which the sources insisted: that any aid sent from the north must bear no symbols relating to the ‘TRNC’.