Turkey accuses UN Security Council of losing its neutrality in Cyprus after assault on peacekeepers

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister has accused the United Nations of abandoning a position of neutrality in Cyprus. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan responded Tuesday after the Security Council criticized a Turkish Cypriot road project inside a buffer zone on the ethnically divided island nation and condemned an assault last week on U.N. peacekeepers who tried to block construction workers. The road is designed to connect a village in the Turkish Cypriot north with a multi-ethnic village in the U.N.-controlled buffer area. Cyprus was divided into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south in 1974. Fidan accused the U.N. of acting “like a hawk” to stop the Turkish Cypriot project.