The north’s ‘education minister’ Nazim Cavusoglu on Friday said teachers should apologise to him over the months-long saga which enveloped the north’s education system over the ruling coalition’s attempts to legalise the wearing of headscarves by girls at public schools.

Asked during an appearance on Ada TV whether he would apologise to the teachers, who had throughout fought against the attempts, he said, “I do not need to apologise to the teachers, the union needs to apologise to me”, in reference to the Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union (Ktoeos).

He added that the union had “attacked” his ministry and accused teachers of “lying and speaking incorrectly”.

“Instead of saying things like, ‘the law has been repealed, we have won’, I believe that we need to sit down at a table to discuss things rationally and act in a healthy manner. I urgently expect those who spoke incorrectly and lied to apologise,” he said.

He then said that in response to the north’s supreme court annulling the law which allowed the wearing of headscarves in public schools on Thursday, the ruling coalition will now prepare a new law and attempt to pass it through the north’s ‘parliament’.

This will be a different process to the previous two attempts, which had seen the north’s cabinet effectively decree the amendment of the regulation dictating school dress codes.

Cavusoglu on Friday stressed that by passing the change through the legislature rather than decreeing a change to the regulation, the ruling coalition may be able to avoid having the change overturned again by the judiciary.

“The court did not find the content of the amendment to be contrary to the principle of secularism and freedom of religion and conscience, or the right to education and learning,” he said, adding that it had instead found that “the government had exceeded its authority”.

“The regulation we have made is correct in terms of its content, but we need to implement it through an act of parliament,” he said.

After the law had been annulled on Thursday, Ktoeos leader Selma Eylem thanked teachers and their supporters for standing firm against the law, with thousands of Turkish Cypriots having taken to the streets to protest against it in the spring.

“We especially thank our teachers who fought despite all the pressure and threats, all the representatives of civil society organisations and political parties who stood by us, and our people who took to the streets to protect our girls,” she said.

Meanwhile, the union’s lawyer Oncel Polili said after the case had concluded that the north’s ruling coalition “does not recognise the TRNC’s constitution”.

“They are trying to overthrow the constitutional order. The supreme court read three different decisions, all of which were in favour of the plaintiff. We will continue our fight,” he said.

The matter of headscarves first grabbed headlines in the spring, with the ruling coalition having initially legalised the wearing of them to school in March.

It then faced a fierce backlash from teachers, the majority of whom are staunchly secular, before withdrawing the law and reinstating it the following month.

Turkish Cypriots rejected the law in large numbers, taking to the streets of Nicosia in their thousands on three separate occasions, with numerous smaller such protests having taken place across the north in the meantime.

The matter even attracted an intervention on the part of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May.

“If you try to mess with our girls’ headscarves in the Turkish republic of northern Cyprus, I am sorry, you will find us against you,” he said.