Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman has vetoed plans for forest land in the Karpas peninsula to be developed by Turkey’s Istanbul Technical University, sending the plans back to the Turkish Cypriot legislature for reconsideration.

The plans had been passed by the legislature last month, with the ruling coalition at the time remaining coy regarding what the university would use the land for.

It had initially been believed that the land would be used to host a Cyprus-based campus for the university, similar to that of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University in the village of Kapouti, near Morphou.

However, after the plans were passed by the legislature, ‘prime minister’ Unal UStel said that the matter of the land’s allocation is related to “national security and Turkey’s strategic use for military purposes”.

Asked by opposition party CTP leader Sila Usar Incirli what he meant by this, he answered that “I cannot discuss this because it is a strategic issue”.

“I wanted to explain why such a large area was requested, but I cannot give a detailed explanation,” he said.

The area which had been allocated spans across 3,500 donums, or around 353 acres, or 4.68 square kilometres.

Ustel had prior to that vote waved away demands from the opposition for the bill to be withdrawn or reconsidered, pointing out that plans for the construction of a university campus in the Karpas peninsula had first been laid out in 2008, with earlier iterations of the plans having involved Kyrenia’s Girne American University.

He had also made reference to possible underlying military purposes behind the land’s allocation prior to the vote, pointing to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and prior statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the possibility that Iranian missiles could hit Europe.

Netanyahu had warned days prior to the vote that Iran has “the capacity to reach deep into Europe” and that “they are putting everyone in their sights”, with Ustel’s reference to those comments and “military purposes” regarding the land’s allocation suggesting that part of the allocated land may be used for defence purposes.

Turkey’s Incirlik airbase, which is located in the Adana province, across the Levantine Sea from Cyprus, has been the ostensible target of Iranian missile fire on three occasions since the conflict broke out at the beginning of last month.

Diplomatic sources in both Turkey and Cyprus had confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that the first missile intercepted in Turkish airspace, which was fired on March 4, had been aimed at the Incirlik airbase, for example.