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Dr Edmond Melhem – The Garrison Island: How Cyprus Became a Western Military Platform – Part 18

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24 September 2025, 2:49 PM

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Dr Edmond Melhem - The Garrison Island: How Cyprus Became a Western Military Platform – Part 18 — profilenews

Global powers have consistently sought to strengthen their presence on the island due to its value as a security and energy hub. The United States and France have shown particular interest in engaging with Cyprus. As for the U.S., Cyprus is a crucial state for maintaining regional stability, reducing Russian influence in the Greater Middle East, and countering Russia’s naval presence. The increasing presence of Russian naval forces in the region incentivized the US to engage in Cyprus and use intelligence gathered from the British military bases to defend its security interests in the eastern Mediterranean and NATO’s south-eastern flank.[1] Cyprus “became part of the US Middle East strategy towards the so-called rogue states and oil supplies.”[2] Similarly, Cyprus is vital to France’s strategic priorities. Recently, France and Cyprus signed a military agreement allowing the French navy to dock in Cypriot ports.

Furthermore, Cyprus officially joined NATO in May 2004 and hosts critical military bases of the United Kingdom (the two Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia).[3] It remains the only part of the world where the United Kingdom still retains Sovereign Base Areas, with its military presence guaranteed by a multilateral treaty of guarantee. When Cyprus became an independent republic on August 16, 1960[4], following the Zurich and London agreements of February 1959, Great Britain secured privileges on the island to safeguard its strategic and economic interests. These privileges included maintaining sovereignty over two areas on the southern coast, amounting to 99 square miles (two military bases), equivalent to 2.75 of Cyprus’s territory overall.[5] Additionally, Great Britain retained the right to use, without restrictions or interference, forty small sites consisting of camps, buildings, water sources, parts of certain ports, the Nicosia airport, and other areas for training the British Air Forces, including some Cypriot villages in the Sovereign Areas. Military aircraft can fly over the Republic’s airspace without restrictions.[6] These military bases served as a launching point for Britain’s attacks on neighbouring Arab countries, such as the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the June 1967 aggression. Additionally, these bases were used for intelligence-gathering, surveillance, and communication purposes and to defend “Israel” and NATO’s southern flank.[7] They also supported the Zionist entity during the October War in 1973.

Moreover, Cyprus’s natural gas deposits and mineral resources attract the attention of global and regional powers. Exxon Mobil, one of the largest hydrocarbon companies in the world, has acquired rights to exploit significant natural gas deposits within Cyprus’s jurisdiction.[8]

[1] Andreas Stergiou. The Exceptional Case of the British Military Bases on Cyprus, in Middle Eastern Studies, 2015, Vol. 51, No. 2, p. 297.

[2] Ibid., p. 291.

[3] The biggest air force base at Akrotiri is located within the limits of the Limassol district and the other is in the Larnaca district.

[4] In 1960, Archbishop Makarios III, the political leader of the enosis (union with Greece) movement became the President of Cyprus and remained in office until he died in 1977.

[5] Many Cypriots regard the presence of British military bases as an unwelcome colonial remnant restricting the national sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus. See Andreas Stergiou. The Exceptional Case of the British Military Bases on Cyprus, op. cit., p. 286.

[6] George A. Papacostas & Christina G. Papacostas. “Cyprus in Geopolitics”, op. cit., p. 50.

[7] Ibid., p. 7.

[8] Alexander Drivas. “The strategic importance of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea”, Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr), 13 February 2022.