ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey and Britain on Wednesday signed a preliminary agreement for the sale of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets to Turkey, a significant step in Ankara’s efforts to modernize its air fleet.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler and his British counterpart, John Healey, inked a memorandum of understanding during a defense industry fair in Istanbul, Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense said.

NATO member Turkey has long aimed to buy 40 Eurofighter jets, which are built by a consortium of British, German and Italian companies. Germany reportedly initially opposed the sale but later reversed its position. Britain led negotiations on behalf of the consortium.

A Turkish defense ministry statement said the memorandum takes the two countries “one step closer to a full agreement on the Typhoon.”

“Both Ministers welcome signature as a positive step towards bringing Turkey into the Typhoon club and share a mutual ambition to conclude the necessary arrangements as soon as possible,” it added.

Turkish officials have said that they are still negotiating over pricing and technical terms, saying that they have received an initial offer and expect to submit a counter-proposal.

Turkey is also seeking to return to the U.S.-led F-35 fighter jet program, from which the country was ousted in 2019, following its purchase of Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems. The U.S. said the systems posed a risk to the F-35s.

Turkey is also developing a domestic fifth-generation fighter jet, the KAAN, which is slated to be operational in 2028.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Turkish Cypriots on Sunday celebrated Turkey’s military invasion of Cyprus that cleaved the island nation along ethnic lines 51 years ago. Turkey’s president reaffirmed his full backing for a controversial peace deal that envisions the establishment of two separate states.

It’s a proposal that the majority Greek Cypriots in the island’s internationally recognized southern part reject out of hand. It would formalize Cyprus’ partition and give Turkey a permanent foothold they see as a bid for control of the entire, strategically situated country and its offshore hydrocarbon wealth.

“Our support for (Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s) vision for a two-state solution is absolute,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks to a crowd during celebrations that culminated with a military parade. It was scheduled this year for the evening to avoid the worst of the scorching mid-summer’s heat.

“It is time for the international community to come to terms with the facts on the ground,” Erdogan added, urging the international community to establish diplomatic and economic relations with the breakaway state in Cyprus’ northern third that Turkish Cypriots declared in 1983.

Turkey’s invasion came in the immediate aftermath of a coup staged by Athens junta-backed supporters of uniting Cyprus with Greece. Currently, only Turkey recognizes the Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and maintains 35,000 troops in the north.

Erdogan’s renewed support for a two-state deal came just days after Tatar, the island’s Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, the foreign ministers of ‘guarantor’ powers Greece and Turkey, and Britain’s minister of state for Europe gathered at U.N. headquarters in New York for meetings with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to end an eight-year moratorium on formal peace negotiations.

The meeting achieved little in the way of a return to fully fledged negotiations as Tatar insisted on recognition for the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state as a prerequisite. The meeting did, however, achieve some progress on a number of confidence-building measures such the exchange of cultural artifacts and the setting up of an advisory committee on civil society.

Guterres said he’ll meet again with Tatar and Christodoulides in September and hold another wider meeting after a Turkish Cypriot leadership election in October in which Tatar is running on a two-state platform.

Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots insist a two-state deal is the only way forward because decades of U.N.-mediated peace talks based on a U.N. Security Council endorsed framework of reunifying Cyprus as a federation no longer had any meaning.

That switch came after the last big push for a peace accord in the summer of 2017. It fell through on what Greek Cypriots said was a Turkish and Turkish Cypriot insistence on keeping a permanent Turkish troop presence on the island and enshrining military intervention rights for Turkey as part of any deal. Greek Cypriots also rejected a demand for blanket veto powers for the minority Turkish Cypriots on all government decisions.

In the south where Greek Cypriots commemorated the invasion with solemn memorials to the war dead, Christodoulides said the international community gives no support to a two-state deal. He said Turkey’s continuing “occupation of European territory” subverts its ambitions for closer European Union ties and undermines the role it wishes to play in the region.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Bulgarian border authorities said Sunday they have seized one of the largest hauls of cocaine from a Belgian-plated van en route to Turkey.

According to customs officials, the nearly 206 kilograms (453 pounds) of cocaine was the largest seizure at Bulgaria’s land border. A vehicle inspection led to the discovery of the drugs valued at 20 million euros ($22 million). The drugs were hidden in 179 sealed bags stashed among personal belongings in five suitcases.

Haskovo District Prosecutor Ivan Stoyanov identified the three people attempting to cross the border into Turkey as a 40-year-old diplomat from the Democratic Republic of Congo accredited in Belgium, a 54-year-old Belgian citizen and a 43-year-old Bulgarian driver.

Stoyanov told reporters that they could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted on drug trafficking charges.

An investigation has been launched together with partner organizations in other EU countries into the origins of the cocaine and its final recipients.

Bulgaria, which has taken steps in recent years against drug trafficking, is considered a transit point on the Balkan drug-trafficking route, which is used to supply Western Europe with heroin from Asia and the Middle East, and with cocaine from Latin America.

BEIRUT (AP) — An eruption of violence in Syria this week that entangled government forces, Bedouin tribes, the Druze religious minority and neighboring Israel highlighted just how combustible the country remains seven months after its longtime authoritarian leader was toppled.

The Druze and other minorities increasingly mistrust a central government run by a man once affiliated with al-Qaida, even though he has pledged to protect Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious groups since helping to oust Bashar Assad after a nearly 14-year civil war.

This sectarian turbulence within Syria threatens to shake-up postwar alliances and exacerbate regional tensions, experts say. It could also potentially draw the country closer to Turkey and away from Israel, with whom it has been quietly engaging since Assad’s fall, with encouragement from the Trump administration.

The spark for this week’s violence

Deadly clashes broke out last Sunday in the southern province of Sweida between Druze militias and local Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes.

Government forces intervened, ostensibly to restore order, but ended up trying to wrest control of Sweida from the Druze factions that control it.

Hundreds were killed in the fighting, and some government fighters allegedly executed Druze civilians and burned and looted their houses.

Driven by concerns about security and domestic politics, Israel intervened on behalf of the Druze, who are seen as a loyal minority within Israel and often serve in its military.

Israeli warplanes bombarded the Syrian Defense Ministry’s headquarters in central Damascus and struck near the presidential palace. It was an apparent warning to the country’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led Islamist rebels that overthrew Assad but has since preached coexistence and sought ties with with the West. The Israeli army also struck government forces in Sweida.

By Wednesday, a truce had been mediated that allowed Druze factions and clerics to maintain security in Sweida as government forces pulled out — although fighting persisted between Druze and Bedouin forces. Early Saturday, U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack announced a separate ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Syria.

Worsening ties with minorities

This past week’s clashes aren’t the first instance of sectarian violence in Syria since the fall of Assad.

A few months after Assad fled and after a transition that initially was mostly peaceful, government forces and pro-Assad armed groups clashed on Syria’s coast. That spurred sectarian attacks that killed hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority to which Assad belongs.

Those killings left other minority groups, including the Druze in the south, and the Kurds in the northeast – who have a de facto autonomous area under their control — wary that the country’s new leaders would protect them.

Violence is only part of the problem. Syria’s minority groups only have been given what many see as token representation in the interim government, according to Bassam Alahmad, executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, a civil society organization.

“It’s a transitional period. We should have a dialogue, and they (the minorities) should feel that they’re a real part of the state,” Alahmad said. Instead, with the incursion into Sweida, the new authorities have sent a message that they would use military force to “control every part of Syria,” he said.

“Bashar Assad tried this way,” and it failed, he added.

On the other hand, supporters of the new government fear that its decision to back down in Sweida could signal to other minorities that it’s OK to demand their own autonomous regions, which would fragment and weaken the country.

If Damascus cedes security control of Sweida to the Druze, “of course everyone else is going to demand the same thing,” said Abdel Hakim al-Masri, a former official in the Turkish-backed regional government in Syria’s northwest before Assad’s fall.

“This is what we are afraid of,” he said.

A rapprochement with Israel may be derailed

Before this week’s flare-up between Israel and Syria, and despite a long history of suspicion between the two countries, the Trump administration had been pushing their leaders to post-Assad to work toward normalizing relations – meaning that Syria would formally recognize Israel and establish diplomatic relations, or at least enter into some limited agreement on security matters.

Syrian officials have acknowledged holding indirect talks with Israel, but defusing decades of tension was never going to be easy.

After Assad’s fall, Israeli forces seized control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in Syria and carried out airstrikes on military sites in what Israeli officials said was a move to create a demilitarized zone south of Damascus.

Dareen Khalifa, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said she believes Israel could have gotten the same result through negotiations.

But now it’s unlikely Syria will be willing to continue down the path of reconciliation with Israel, at least in the short term, she said.

“I don’t know how the Israelis could expect to drop bombs on Damascus and still have some kind of normal dialogue with the Syrians,” said Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, a New York-based organization that focuses on global security challenges. “Just like Netanyahu, al-Sharaa’s got a domestic constituency that he’s got to answer to.”

Yet even after the events of this past week, the Trump administration still seems to have hope of keeping the talks alive. U.S. officials are “engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between two sovereign states,” says Dorothy Shea, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Shea said during a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on Thursday that “the United States did not support recent Israeli strikes.”

Syria could be drawn closer to Turkey

During Syria’s civil war, the U.S. was allied with Kurdish forces in the country’s northeast in their fight against the Islamic State militant group.

But since Assad’s fall, the U.S. has begun gradually pulling its forces out of Syria and has encouraged the Kurds to integrate their forces with those of the new authorities in Damascus.

To that end, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces agreed in March to a landmark deal that would merge them with the national army. But implementation has stalled. A major sticking point has been whether the SDF would remain as a cohesive unit in the new army or be dissolved completely.

Khalifa said the conflict in Sweida is “definitely going to complicate” those talks.

Not only are the Kurds mistrustful of government forces after their attacks on Alawite and Druze minorities, but now they also view them as looking weak. “Let’s be frank, the government came out of this looking defeated,” Khalifa said.

It’s possible that the Kurds, like the Druze, might look to Israel for support, but Turkey is unlikely to stand by idly if they do, Khalifa said.

The Turkish government considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey. For that reason, it has long wanted to curtail the group’s influence just across its border.

Israel’s latest military foray in Syria could give its new leaders an incentive to draw closer to Ankara, according to Clarke. That could include pursuing a defense pact that has been discussed but not implemented.

Turkish defense ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity according to procedures, said that if requested, Ankara is ready to assist Syria in strengthening its defense capabilities.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations chief said Thursday that he would have liked more results from his meetings with the rival leaders of divided Cyprus, while the Turkish Cypriot leader said he was “very, very upset” that there was no agreement on opening four new border crossings.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the meetings “constructive” and pointed to progress on four of the six initiatives that the leaders agreed to in March. He cautioned, however, that “there’s a long road ahead.”

The Mediterranean island was divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by Athens junta-backed supporters of uniting the island with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence, and it maintains more than 35,000 troops in the island’s northern third.

Negotiations between the rivals have been stalled since 2017. When asked whether he would start a new round, Guterres responded that there is more to be done before any negotiations. The current talks are “complex,” he said, stressing the very different views of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots on a solution.

“I think we are building, step by step, confidence and creating the conditions to do concrete things to the benefit of the Cypriot people,” the secretary-general said.

The agreed-upon, U.N.-endorsed framework for a peace deal has been a reunified Cyprus as a federation composed of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar has been demanding a two-state deal ever since his 2020 election. He faces reelection in October and says he’s running on the same two-state platform with Ankara’s full backing.

Tatar told reporters after the meeting that “unless our sovereign equality and equal international status is reaffirmed, we will not resume formal negotiations for the resolution of the Cyprus problem.”

Greek Cypriots reject any agreement that would formalize partition, fearing Turkey would seek to control the entire island in light of its demand to maintain a permanent troop presence and military intervention rights in Cyprus. Turkey also insists the minority Turkish Cypriots should have veto rights over all federal government decisions.

Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides did not speak to reporters after the meeting, which included the foreign ministers of guarantor countries Turkey and Greece and a United Kingdom deputy minister.

Despite differences on the future of Cyprus, the rivals have made some progress on trust-building measures.

Guterres told reporters that four initiatives had been achieved: creating a technical committee on youth; initiatives on the environment and climate change, including the impact on mining areas; the restoration of cemeteries; and an agreement on demining, where technical details still need to be finalized.

He said discussions will continue on opening four new crossings between the Greek and Turkish sides of the island and on solar energy in the buffer zone between them, which is patrolled by a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Tatar accused Christodoulides of preventing the announcement of the four border crossings on Thursday by insisting that one of them go through the buffer zone, which he called unacceptable to Turkish Cypriots.

He also sharply criticized Greek Cypriots for pursuing legal action over the sale of properties in the Turkish Cypriot north, saying the moves “are certainly damaging to the relations of the two peoples and are aimed at damaging our economy and our tourism.”

Property rights are a deeply contentious issue in Cyprus. A recent boom in construction of luxury villas and apartments in the north has prompted Cypriot legal authorities to take a more assertive stance toward realtors and developers to discourage what they say is the large-scale “illegal usurpation” of Greek Cypriot land.

Guterres said the meeting also produced an understanding on a consultative body for civil society engagement, exchange of cultural artifacts, an initiative on air quality monitoring and addressing microplastic pollution.

The secretary-general said Tatar and Christodoulides agreed to meet with him in late September during the annual gathering of world leaders at the General Assembly and to hold another informal meeting later in the year.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian forces largely withdrew from the southern province of Sweida on Thursday following days of clashes with militias linked to the Druze minority.

While the truce between Druze armed groups and government forces appeared to be largely holding, state media reported that Druze militants had launched revenge attacks on communities of Sunni Bedouins, leading to a wave of displacement.

Bedouin clans had fought alongside government forces against the Druze groups.

Druze leaders and Syrian government officials reached a ceasefire deal mediated by the United States, Turkey and Arab countries.

Under the ceasefire agreement reached Wednesday, Druze factions and clerics have been appointed to maintain internal security in Sweida, Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa said in an address broadcast early Thursday.

The fighting had threatened to unravel Syria’s postwar political transition and brought further military intervention by neighboring Israel, which on Wednesday struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters, in central Damascus. Israel said it was acting to protect the Druze religious minority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday to keep southern Syria demilitarized and to protect the Druze community, which has a sizeable population in Israel.

“This will also be the continuation of our policy,” said Netanyahu, who said the ceasefire was reached because of Israel’s intense strikes on government forces during the clashes. “We will not allow military forces to descend south of Damascus, we will not allow the Druze to be harmed in Jebel Druze.”

Convoys of government forces started withdrawing overnight as Syrian state media said the withdrawal was in line with the ceasefire agreement and the military operation against the Druze factions had ended.

It remained unclear if the ceasefire would hold after the agreement was announced by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader. A previous agreement Tuesday quickly broke down after being dismissed by prominent Druze cleric Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri.

Looting homes and killing civilians

A Turkish official said Thursday that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and intelligence chief İbrahim Kalin held a series of diplomatic and security contacts to de-escalate the clashes. They worked with the U.S. special envoy for Syria, Israel, and regional officials and leaders, including Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, said the official who requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

Video circulated on social media showed government forces and allies humiliating Druze clerics and residents, looting homes and killing civilians hiding inside their houses. Syrian Druze from Sweida told The Associated Press that several family members who were unarmed had been attacked or killed.

“We are committed to holding accountable those who wronged our Druze brethren,” Al-Sharaa said, describing the Druze as an ”integral part of this nation’s fabric” who are under the protection of state law and justice.

‘Militant sectarianism’

The Druze community had been divided over how to approach al-Sharaa’s de facto Islamist rule over Syria after largely celebrating the downfall of Bashar Assad and his family’s decades-long dictatorial rule. They feared persecution after several attacks from the Islamic State militant group and al-Qaeda-affiliates the Nusra Front during Syria’s 14-year civil war.

Issam al-Reis, a senior military adviser with Etana, a Syrian research group, said the lack of “effective state-led negotiations” could sow further divisions between the Druze community with the Sunni Beduins who largely were able to coexist.

“This is leading to militant sectarianism which is dangerous,” he said, adding it’s a sign that the government needs to speed up its integration of other sects into the Syrian army, that could make it a more unifying force and could help resolve sectarian tensions.

“There have been agreements and talks about this with different communities, but until now none of this has been implemented,” he said.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser from Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.