Address by Chrystalla Antoniou, AKEL Political Bureau member, at the anti-NATO event organized by the Cyprus Peace Council
“Neither Cyprus in NATO – Nor NATO in Cyprus”
13th June 2021, Larnaka
Dear friends and peace activists.
The NATO Summit is convening tomorrow in Brussels. According to the Secretary General of the NATO Alliance, the summit will “be a unique opportunity to strengthen NATO.” They will discuss, so they say, Russia’s aggressive actions, the provision of additional military support to Ukraine, terrorist threats, cyber-attacks and the rise of China’s power. They will adopt decisions to prepare the New Strategic Concept on the basis of the report “NATO 2030”. Although the United States and NATO are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years of waging a catastrophic war, they are leaving Turkey behind as a proxy replacement.
An integral part of NATO’s plans is to increase member states’ defense spending, which has increased by $ 260 billion over the last 7 years! At a time when the peoples are suffering from the global economic crisis, and now from the pandemic too, the NATO member states were spending generously at the expense of the peoples with the war industries making enormous profits and with the peoples the victims of these weapons.
In other words, NATO is proceeding relentlessly on the path of militarization with the ultimate goal of imposing global sovereignty and securing control of energy and natural resources by using its military might. Aggression, imperialist interventions and the provocation of local and regional conflicts are being placed even higher on NATO’s agenda.
The Cypriot people, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, are still paying the heavy price for the execution of the NATO plans for the partition of Cyprus, which were carried out in 1974 by the Greek military junta, the fascist armed group of EOKA B and Turkey. Today, Turkey is turning our occupied territories into a vast military base, with the most recent example being the base for drones at the illegal airport of Lefkoniko in the occupied areas. But we must not forget that Turkey is an important NATO member state, with the second biggest army in this murderous Alliance.
Here in front of us, the Anastasiades government is building the proof of the military cooperation it has forged with the United States. A cooperation that has nothing to do whatsoever with the perspective of reunification and for a peaceful future for Cyprus itself that will mean real security for Cypriot people. This Centre, which is presented as an innocent training ground for “Land, Open-seas, and Port Security” (CYCLOPS), is an extension of the well-known Menendez-Rubio law because, in the words of the Americans themselves, “the centre is a significant result of the continued American involvement in the Eastern Mediterranean region” and “the goal is to try to eradicate harmful players from the region” (namely, Russia and China). That is to say, Cyprus will carry out and execute orders from the US. And we know very well what the American imperialism’s criminal plans are for our region.
For AKEL, it is clear that NATO has no place in Cyprus, nor does Cyprus has any place in NATO, and that certain forces and circles shouldn’t try to convince the people that the so-called “Partnership for Peace” is not the “waiting room” of NATO.
For AKEL, the future of Cyprus cannot be anything other than a reunited and federal Cyprus, a bridge of peace and friendship with all the peoples of our region.
