Where are UN, US while children are being massacred in Gaza: TRNC president

Where are the world’s superpower and its international institutions while Israel is massacring women, children, and the elderly in Palestine's Gaza, the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has asked.

At a conference on “The Strategic Importance of the TRNC in the Turkic World” held by Pamukkale University in Denizli, Türkiye, Ersin Tatar stressed on Tuesday that the country has been monitoring the situation in Gaza “very well.”

“Where is the UN? Where is the US? Where are the others?” he asked.

“This is how cruel the world can be,” he lamented. “We went through the same processes in the 1960s when nobody acknowledged us,” he added, referring to Greek Cypriots’ ethnic attacks from the 1960s until 1974, when the Turkish Peace Operation was launched to protect the island’s Turks.

Israel has pounded Gaza since a cross-border attack by Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, killing nearly 21,000 people. It has attacked hospitals, schools, and refugee camps, claiming that they were used by Hamas, but without presenting concrete evidence.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

Human rights organisations have slammed Israel for its war tactics, calling it “collective punishment” of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

Turkish Cypriots

The Eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus has been mired in a decades-long dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts to achieve a comprehensive settlement.

Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their own safety.

In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. The TRNC was founded on November 15, 1983.

It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Türkiye, Greece, and the UK.

The Greek Cypriot administration was admitted to the EU in 2004, the same year the Greek Cypriots thwarted a UN plan to end the longstanding dispute.