Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Wednesday hit back at the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel amid a deepening row over cuts to the north’s cost-of-living allowance, with a general strike of public sector workers having restarted earlier in the morning.

“I never liked April fool’s day jokes at any point in my life. They always felt bad to me. They were usually bad jokes. Ustel called on me to show ‘seriousness’, ‘respect for the rule of law’, and to ‘avoid creating a crisis of confidence’. Ustel is saying this! It is like a bad April fool’s joke,” he said.

He added that April fool’s day “will pass”, and that “we have a lot of work to do to pave the way for our children and this nation”.

“We do not have time to deal with bad jokes,” he said.

His rebuttal comes after Ustel on Tuesday evening expressed fury at Erhurman for intervening in the crisis, with Ustel’s ruling coalition having earlier in the day bypassed the Turkish Cypriot legislature and halted payments of the cost-of-living allowance without allowing elected representatives to vote on the matter.

Erhurman had warned that the decree to bypass the legislature “shatters the very thing we need most in terms of constitutional order, relations within the state structure, and most importantly in crisis management, trust”, with Ustel lambasting him for publicising his reservations on social media.

“I have followed with regret the unfortunate statements made by President Tufan Erhurman on Facebook, a social media platform, regarding the decree enacted by our government,” he said, adding that Erhurman’s statements were “incompatible with the seriousness of the state and constitutional norms”.

To this end, he said that “Erhurman’s preference for Facebook over official state channels unfortunately demonstrates that he has not yet overcome the political reflexes of a party leader and has not fully internalised the weight of the neutral and inclusive office of the presidency”.

The decree stipulates that Turkish Cypriot public sector workers will not be paid the cost-of-living allowance until next year at the earliest after this month, and was issued on Tuesday morning, hours after the coalition had failed to pass a bill to do the same through the Turkish Cypriot legislature.