Residents of Rizokarpaso on Sunday staged a protest to demand that the road linking the village to the Apostolos Andeas monastery be completely rebuilt.

A couple of hundred people blocked the existing road, holding signs reading “the people are here, where is the road?” and “the road you have gone down is not a road”, and threatened bigger protests if the road is now completely rebuilt.

Turkish Cypriot Yialousa and Rizokarpaso mayor Hamit Bakirci spoke at the protest, insisting that he is “still in favour of finding a solution through dialogue” for the road to be built, but warned, “we have waited for 40 years, we cannot tolerate this any longer”.

The existing road has fallen into disrepair, with its structure unable to cope with the large number of tourists who visit the Apostolos Andreas monastery.

Plans to build a new road have also sparked controversy, with Bakirci expressing his upset after workmen and their vehicles were diverted to work on the road linking the Famagusta district villages of Kalopsida and Acheritou instead of to Rizokarpaso earlier this month.

The north’s ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli had said this decision had been made based on weather conditions.

“As we have previously announced, the road from Rizokarpaso to the monastery was included in our ministry’s programme, and according to that programme, the work would start at the end of this month, with construction vehicles moving in at the end of March or at the start of April when the rain stops,” he began.

He said that in the meantime, he had asked the contractor to mend the road between Kalopsida and Acheritou, as “this was a road which would not be affected much by rain and mud, since the work would be done on the old road”.

“We agreed. The company will quickly shift its vehicles to Acheritou, build this road in a very short time, and then shift its vehicles up to Rizokarpaso,” he added.

He then offered harsh words for Bakirci, saying he had “tried to incite the local people against us”.

He pointed out that Bakirci had been elected as mayor in 2022 after having been endorsed by the north’s ruling coalition, but that “he has never even contacted us on the phone about the latest developments”.

Bakirci and Arikli both belong to ruling coalition parties, the UBP and the YDP respectively, with the three-party ruling coalition jointly endorsing candidates in the 2022 local elections.

He then added, “please do not overstep your limits and your manners”.

Bakirci fired back, saying he had “called the honourable minister eight times” and that “he answered his phone twice”.

He also questioned Arikli’s reasoning over sending construction vehicles to Acheritou first, saying that the same techniques of road construction would likely be used for both roads, before accusing ‘governments’ of leaving the Karpasia region behind.

They have locked us up here since 2004. Of course, while all this was going on and the road was scheduled to be built and is now being postponed, were we ever going to remain silent while the people of Rizokarpaso were talking about it. Was that what they wanted?”

He added, “I am not speaking here as Hamit Bakirci, I am speaking as the spokesman of this community. More than 90 per cent of this community has the same opinion as I do, as Arikli should very well know.”

File photo: the Apostolos Andreas monastery