Turkish Cypriot Kythrea and Louroujina mayor Ali Karavezirler on Friday said the village of Louroujina is ready to “complete the 380-metre distance” between itself and the adjacent Greek Cypriot village of Lympia with a new crossing point.
“We are ready on the matter of a crossing point. We are ready to complete the 380m distance between Lymbia and Louroujina in cooperation with the central government and local government,” he told Kibris TV.
“All we need is to be told, ‘the crossing points are opening’. We will take the necessary steps as soon as the decision is made,” he added.
The village of Lymbia is located immediately south of Louroujina, with the town of Dali and the village of Potamia being located to the west and northwest.
With no adjacent crossing point, Louroujina’s only transport link to the rest of the island is a single road which heads northwards and under the runway of Ercan (Tymbou) airport towards the main road between northern Nicosia and Famagusta.
Until 2017, Louroujina was even more inaccessible, with would-be visitors having to pass through a military base and be submitted to identity checks to access the village from the rest of the north.
Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar had suggested that a crossing point be opened in Louroujina at Monday’s meeting with President Nikos Christodoulides, and Christodoulides seemed to be in favour of the idea, though questions remain over whether the eight proposals Christodoulides submitted to Tatar are divisible.
This is because one of the crossing points consistently floated by Christodoulides is a transit road through the Turkish Cypriot exclave of Kokkina from east to west – something Tatar has consistently been against.
While crossing point near Kokkina would make life easier for the residents of the surrounding Greek Cypriot villages, the exclave itself has a civilian population of zero, thus raising questions of whether such a crossing point would be beneficial for Turkish Cypriots.
In 2023, he poured cold water on the idea of a crossing point in Kokkina, saying that it is not possible to open a crossing point there as it is a “sacred area” and functions as a military base.
At the time, Tatar’s then-special representative for the Cyprus problem Ergun Olgun’s reaction to the Greek Cypriot side’s suggestion of a crossing point in Kokkina was scathing. He accused them of “putting forward impossible conditions in order to not open new crossing points”.
He later called the idea of a crossing point in Kokkina “a crazy proposition”.
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