Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on Saturday said that his country’s government only sent frigates and fighter jets to Cyprus to protect the United Kingdom’s bases on the island, rather than to protect the Cypriot people.

“It is a pathetic situation. Our prime minister supposedly sent four F-16s and a frigate to protect Cyprus. In reality, he is protecting the British base there,” he told Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

He added that the United States “is using that land to kill people in Gaza and Iran”.

“Europeans are cowards and guilty of antisemitism. They used to support the Holocaust, now they support the genocide of Palestinians,” he said.

After the British Akrotiri air force base was hit by an Iranian-made drone on March 2, Greece deployed two frigates to the island, including the Kimon, which Greek Prime Minister described during a subsequent visit to the island as the “pride of the Greek fleet”, while also stationing four F-16 fighter jets in Paphos.

France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom have all also deployed naval or aerial assets to the island and its vicinity, with Turkey having deployed six F-16s of its own and Hisar-A surface-to-air missiles at the north’s Ercan (Tymbou) airport.

Asked whether Turkey and Greece are being “pitted against each other over Cyprus”, Varoufakis said that this has been the case for decades, “even before I was born”.

“During my military service, I was on a Greek navy ship. We encountered a Turkish navy ship. I noticed that both ships were identical. I later learned that they were both built in the same shipyard in the US. The tension between Turkey and Greece is extremely profitable for arms dealers,” he said.

“The west, for its own interest, does not care about Turkey or Greece”.

Nonetheless, he did say that Turkey, in its foreign policy, has “achieved what Greece failed to do”.

“Nobody takes Greece seriously anymore. We are the servants of the Israeli and US war machines. We have become their satellites. Your government, on the other hand, maintained very good relations with Russia and Ukraine during the Ukraine war. While selling drones to Ukraine, it also facilitated the trade of Russian gas,” he said.

He said that this constitutes “an example of a reasonable and intelligent policy”, and that Turkey “positioned itself as a mediator” in that conflict.

“I hope that Ankara will be a mediator in this war as well,” he said.

He also said that Greece’s relations with Israel “harm the interest of the Greek people” and are “shameful”.

“Greece has become a satellite of Israel. We lost our independence. We are in the clutches not only of the US, but also of Israel,” he said, before adding that Mitsotakis was “caught red-handed using Israeli technology to eavesdrop on his own ministers and members of the armed forces”.

In this, he was referring to the Greek surveillance scandal of 2022, when opposition party Pasok MP Nikos Androulakis, now the party’s leader, and two journalists said attempts had been made to hack their phone using Predator software, which was developed by Tal Dilian, a former chief commander of the Israeli military’s secret technology unit.

It was later found that the technology was used to target 87 people, including government ministers and senior military officials, with Dilian being handed a 126-year prison sentence last month.

Mitsotakis has denied all knowledge of the matter.

Dilian was also charged in Cyprus during the “spy van affair” of 2019, when it came to light that a company called WiSpear, which had Dilian as its chief executive officer, was offering private surveillance services using state-of-the-art technology which had been installed in the back of a van.

The charges against Dilian in that case were eventually dropped, and WiSpear was handed a €76,000 fine.