Cyprus accuses Turkey’s president of seeking new Ottoman empire

A bridge spans the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul (Anthony Devlin/AP)

The foreign minister of the divided island of Cyprus is accusing Turkey’s president of attempting to promote a new Ottoman empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and says such an approach to geopolitics could adversely impact regional security.

Nikos Christodoulides, whose Mediterranean island nation is divided into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and internationally recognised Greek Cypriot south that is a member of the European Union, pointed to what he called aggressive Turkish behaviour not only in Cyprus but in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other Arab countries in the region.