THE ‘Nikiforos’ war games ended on Sunday after six days of land, water and air combat drills. Unlike in past years, the Greek military neither participated in nor observed the exercises, leaving many to question whether the Unified Defence Dogma between Greece and Cyprus is as strong as officials claim.
The bulk of the National Guard’s firepower was incorporated in the exercises, including for the first time Russian MI-35 combat helicopters. About 25,000 reservists participated.
The annual Nikiforos exercises are the largest that the National Guard conducts and are designed to test the capacities of the military to ward off a foreign invasion. Nikiforos has been cancelled for the past four years due to foreign pressure, which has also come from Greece, to reduce tension between Cyprus and Turkey.
Up until 2001, Greece and Cyprus conducted the military operations in conjunction –with Greece simultaneously running the sister exercises ‘Toxotis’.
This year, Cyprus broke with Greece and decided to stage the operations alone. The Greek contingent in Cyprus ELDYK did not participate in the exercises, nor did any high-ranking official from the Greek Defence Ministry attend.
Military Spokesman Yiannis Patsalides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the exercises had gone off without any hitches and that they had met their goal of “observing the military under real conditions of combat”.
When asked whether it was true that Greece had, as some newspapers alleged, refused to participate in Nikiforos even in a limited spectator capacity due to grievances with Cyprus for defying Greek wishes to cancel Nikiforos, Patsalides said he could not comment because it was a “political matter, not a military one”.
On the first day of the exercises, an armed vehicle overturned, injuring the seven passenger reservists. Patsalides said that all seven had been released from the hospital and that no-one else had been injured during the staged combat.
President Papadopoulos attended one of the Nikiforos exercises codenamed ‘Lightning’. “The political message of the Nikiforos exercises is that we want peace,” Papadopoulos said, adding “in order to maintain peace, you must be prepared for war”.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan referred to the Nikiforos exercises as “impeding efforts in the region for stability and co-operation.”
In an act that Papadopoulos said “does not help Turkey very much”, four Turkish aircraft – two warplanes and two surveillance jets – violated Cypriot airspace last Thursday for 45 minutes in response to the Nikiforos exercises by buzzing over the island and taking photos. Turkish fighter and surveillance jets had also violated Cypriot airspace a week earlier.
The Military Spokesman said that after both flyovers the military lodged a complaint with the Foreign Ministry – the relevant authority that then transmits the complaint to the United Nations.
With an immense military machine backing it, Turkey routinely violates Cypriot and Greek air space.
Last week, the chief of the Greek army contingent in Cyprus said that the Unified Defence Dogma was as strong as ever and downplayed the fact that the Greek contingency was not participating in Nikiforos, which he characterised as an “event for the media.”
Defence Minister Koulis Mavronikolas said that the government’s decision to conduct Nikiforos demonstrates the government’s desire for the existence of a worthy National Guard, adding that “a state without an army cannot be considered a state, given that it cannot exercise its sovereign rights”.
Costa Rica abandoned its national army half a century ago. The Costa Rican Constitution prohibits the establishment of an army.
