Help Declassified expose the powerful by donating today - www.declassifieduk.org/join After a drone hit a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus on Sunday night (believed to be Iranian-made but not fired from Iran), the debate in Britain has centred on why the airfield was not better protected. But in Cyprus, anger is focused on why Britain still has military bases there at all. “We got no sleep last night,” local resident Melanie Steliou told Declassified on Monday, as sirens blared in the background. “My son has not gone to school today because it is next to the base. “I naturally feel scared, frustrated and mad at what is going on...I’m mad at Keir Starmer for putting Cyprus on the spot,” she said of the prime minister’s announcement the night before that America could use British bases to bomb Iran. While some UK personnel are being evacuated from Akrotiri, local Cypriots have nowhere else to go. “It’s a sickening example of a colonial mindset,” Steliou said. “The base shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
These are not just idle words. Steliou is a candidate for parliamentary elections being held in Cyprus this May. She is running on a left-wing slate organised by AKEL, the main opposition party, who currently hold 15 out of 56 seats in parliament and want the British bases gone. If elected, Steliou will become an MP for Limassol, a coastal constituency next to RAF Akrotiri, which sits on Cyprus’ southernmost peninsula. Miles of land around the airbase, including a salt lake, wildlife centre, farms and beach bars, is occupied by Britain and almost completely encircles parts of the constituency. The UK claims this as a “sovereign base area”, and has another on the east of the island at Dheklia, near the clubbing hotspot of Ayia Napa. Together these 98 square miles amount to three percent of Cyprus, which Britain refused to fully decolonise when it granted independence to the rest of the Mediterranean island in 1960.
