The media ethics committee in the north on Tuesday called on a Turkish news agency to correct a mistranslation of Archbishop Georgios’ Easter message.

According to the ethics committee, the Turkish News Agency-Cyprus (Turk Ajansı Kibris or TAK) mistranslated a phrase in the archbishop’s message. The mistranslation was then disseminated and reproduced by other media in the north.

In his message, the archbishop denounced Turkey for its 51-year-long occupation of the north of Cyprus, and called for “coordinated efforts to drive out the Turkish invaders and liberate our country”.

However TAK translated this to “drive out the Turks”.

The north’s media ethics committee described the translation as “misleading, out of context, and conducive to hate speech”, criticising the agency’s correction attempt as insufficient and calling on TAK to issue a public clarification.

In a statement, the committee stressed that translating the term “invaders” as “Turks” distorts the original meaning and promotes a narrative of hostility.

“Translating conflict-related content between different languages demands particular ethical sensitivity,” the committee said, noting that misuse of terminology or misinterpretation of idioms can lead to misinformation, especially in conflict regions.”

The statement added: “In the case at hand, the attempt to substitute the term ‘invaders’ with a more generalised meaning resulted in a loss of context, fostering manipulation and hate speech, and ultimately leading to a distorted understanding of the original message.”

The committee called on TAK to take responsibility and issue a full correction to prevent the spread of misleading and inflammatory narratives.