The world took only passing notice when Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched down in Nicosia on June 15. Yet for close watchers of Eurasian geopolitics, the visit was a strategic inflection point: New Delhi’s most pointed riposte to Ankara’s unabashed support for Islamabad and a deft assertion of India’s own red lines on sovereignty.

Picture Credit Rahul Sharma @CIHS

Turkey’s dictatorial President Erdogan has, for years, amplified Pakistan’s Jammu and Kashmir narrative at the UN, transferred unlawful killer drone technology to Rawalpindi, and aligned diplomatically after every India-Pakistan flare-up in May 2025.

For New Delhi, Indo-Pacific is no longer the only arena where coercive partnerships need balancing; the Eastern Mediterranean now figures prominently in India’s “extended neighbourhood". With its 1974 invasion of Cyprus, Turkey occupies roughly 36 per cent of the island, a fait accompli recognised only by Ankara. The occupation like the Pakistani Occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and territories of Ladakh namely Gilgit-Baltistan is rarely headline news. But Modi’s landing in Cyprus made sure it briefly elbowed Gaza war, Red Sea shipping routes and Ukraine off analysts’ front pages.

Nominally, the trip produced standard diplomatic deliverables: a joint declaration pledging intensified defence – industrial collaboration, an information-sharing framework on counter-terrorism, cyber security and expanded naval cooperation, Indian warships will make more calls at Cypriot ports and conduct joint search-and-rescue........

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