President Nikos Christodoulides has written a letter to the European Union’s leadership expressing “strong concern” after it was reported that veteran Cypriot journalist Sener Levent had been summoned to present himself to the Ankara chief public prosecutor’s office lest he be extradited to Turkey, according to reports.

The Cyprus News Agency wrote on Saturday that Christodoulides had penned the letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa, and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and that he had described the reported summons as a “flagrant violation of freedom of expression”.

He reportedly stressed that the reported action taken against Levent s “part of a broader campaign to silence independent voices in the Turkish Cypriot community and strengthen Ankara’s control over the occupied territories”.

Additionally, the report said, he had “underlined that Turkish Cypriots, as citizens of the Republic of Cyprus and of the European Union, are entitled to full protection of their fundamental rights”.

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The report also said he had “called on EU institutions to closely monitor the case” and to “intervene and protect the rights of Levent”.

It added that the letter had asked the EU’s leadership “to make it clear that progress in relations between the EU and Turkey must be inextricably linked to respect for human rights and the rule of law, including in the occupied territories of the Republic of Cyprus”.

To this end, he reportedly called on the EU to “use all available means to ensure that Turkey stops these practices and creates conditions for a comprehensive solution to the Cyprus problem, with respect for the human rights of all citizens”.

The same report stated that Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos had sent similar letters to EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, Council of Europe secretary-general Alain Berset.

Additionally, it said that more letters on the same subject will also be sent to the United Nations high commissioner for human rights Volker Turk and to the Organisation for security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) representative on freedom of the media Teresa Ribeiro.

The north’s ‘foreign ministry’ had on Friday evening denied reports that Turkey had filed an extradition request against Levent, with Turkish Cypriot news agency Tak reporting that ‘ministry’ sources had said that reports of an extradition request “do not reflect the truth” and are “disinformation”

Levent himself had said he had been summoned to present himself to the Ankara chief public prosecutor’s office lest he be extradited to Turkey.

The summons is reportedly related to the publication of a cartoon published in Levent’s newspaper, then called Afrika, on December 21, 2017, showing a Greek statue urinating on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As a result of the cartoon, he had been sentenced in absentia to a year in prison in Ankara for “insulting” Erdogan, before later being acquitted of related charges at a court in northern Nicosia.

Earlier on Friday, he had promised to “never surrender” over the matter.

“They are calling on me to surrender, right? I will not surrender. I will not surrender, as I wrote in the newspaper. I did not surrender in the past to fascism, and I will not surrender. If they want, let them arrest me. For me, this Ankara court decision is non-existent,” he told the Cyprus News Agency.