Cyprus authorities say they’re taking extra efforts to ensure flight safety isn’t compromised from Turkish warplanes and navy drones flying inside Cypriot-monitored airspace with out submitting both flight plans or speaking with air visitors management.

The concern over unregulated Turkish military flights once more got here to the fore earlier this month when Cypriot authorities stated a Turkish warplane “illegally” flew low over a United Nations-controlled buffer zone that cuts throughout the ethnically-divided island nation on what was believed to be a surveillance mission.

“Despite these illegal acts by Turkey, and the illegal operation of the self-styled air traffic control by the secessionist entity, the Department of Civil Aviation of Cyprus is doing its utmost to ensure the safe provision of air traffic services within the Nicosia FIR in its entirety,” the Cyprus authorities advised The Associated Press late Wednesday.

Despite the International Civil Aviation Authority recognizing the Cyprus authorities as the only real air visitors authority inside the island’s 67,567-sq. mile Flight Information Region (FIR), Turkish Cypriots have declared their very own airspace within the north and direct flights out and in of an airport within the north that noticed a mixed 23,224 arrivals and departures final yr.

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But passenger jets traversing Cyprus’ FIR have acquired differing flight directions, main to “confusion and misunderstanding” amongst pilots though the danger of an accident is extraordinarily distant, in accordance to Europe’s air safety company.

In the previous, there have been quite a lot of cases the place plane obtained dangerously shut to each other because of these contradictory directions.

Turkey doesn’t acknowledge Cyprus as a state and is the one nation to acknowledge a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state within the island’s northern third. Turkish Cypriots declared independence practically a decade after a 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by a coup aiming at union with Greece.

Turkey additionally maintains a sizeable navy pressure and quite a few navy installations within the north, together with an airfield from which military drones are recognized to function.

Turkish Cypriot authorities insist that there are “two sovereign states” on Cyprus “where each has effective control over their own territory, including their airspace.” In a press release to the AP, they accuse Cypriot authorities authorities of being “confrontational” and of issuing “potentially misleading instructions” to pilots whereas calling for “dialogue and cooperation.”