Trikomo on Monday night became the fifth town in the north to host a protest against the ruling coalition’s decision to legalise the wearing of hijabs by children at public schools, with fires lit in the town’s centre.

The protest is the eleventh of its kind to be staged since the law was enacted for the second time by the north’s ruling coalition earlier this month, and the first since teachers and their supporters announced their plans for an escalation of measures after the ruling coalition missed a deadline they had set for the law to be withdrawn.

Those measures entail a general strike on Friday and a march through the streets of northern Nicosia on Friday evening, and were announced by teachers’ trade union leaders earlier on Monday.

Those who belittle us Turkish Cypriots, ignore our will and existence, attack us, insult us, and threaten to put us in our place will be answered,” Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union (Ktoeos) leader Selma Eylem said, promising that “the fight will go on until the law is withdrawn”.

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Meanwhile, Cyprus Turkish teachers’ trade union (Ktos) leader Burak Mavis highlighted the heightened rhetoric used against teachers and their supporters in recent weeks.

“There are those who call us ‘Greek Cypriot lovers’ or other names. They have come to the point of claiming that we are a terrorist organisation. If they cannot govern this country, they will hear every word and watch every protest. Our expectation from them is that they should not get in the way of our secular education and secular lives,” he said.

At a previous protest, Ktoeos secretary-general Tahir Gokcebel had spoken to the Cyprus Mail about the people’s reaction to the fight he and his colleagues have put up against the law.

“Of course, we did not initially think people would be so accepting and leap to our defence as they have, but the Turkish Cypriot community has an accumulated energy which reflects its own will,” he began.

He also said that “there has been interference in the Turkish Cypriot culture, lifestyle, beliefs, democracy, and will for a long time”, and that “at the same time, the Turkish Cypriot community, despite being an equal partner in the Republic of Cyprus, has lost contact with the world”.

his resistance, he said, “has become a basis, and that fight has multiplied and grown”.

He added that he believes this fight “will not fade”, but that in fact, “I think these events will grow and come to enough of a result so as to allow a democracy which can manage its own will and itself can be created, where intervention in its own institutions, education, and lifestyle can be prevented”.

He added that if the law is not withdrawn, “I do not think there can be a government which can find itself against this fight which can carry it further”.