EU’s Rehn urges Turkey over Cyprus missing persons issue

NICOSIA, Cyprus — EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has called on Turkey to help solve the issue of missing persons in Cyprus, local media reported on Friday (March 20th).

Turkey is obliged under a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling to allow for an effective investigation into the fate of 1,500 Greek Cypriots who went missing during Ankara’s military intervention in 1974, Rehn said. In January, Greece threatened to bring the issue to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. 

Also Friday, an Istanbul court charged a man with planning to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at an election rally in the western city of Tekirdag.

In other news, police on Saturday detained three members of the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Istanbul who allegedly planned to stage an attack in the city, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said. They entered Turkey about a month ago from northern Iraq, he said. There is no information about the target of the planned attack.