Cyprus News | Changing North Village Names to Pre-1974 Versions

Cyprus News | Changing North Village Names to Pre-1974 Versions

An article in Afrika newspaper, “green light to the old names return”, reports a new democratization package announced by the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan includes the return to the old names of the villages and the lifting of the rule of reading the Turkish oath at the primary schools every morning. There is a suggestion that this would apply to north Cyprus too.

I have to say that I was a little confused at why the north would need to change the names of the villages, although there are some advantages in not having to pronounce the village name Karaoglanoglu, named after one of the first Turkish soldiers to die there in 1974. It’ll be renamed Ayyorgi if the changes go through.

Some villages, for example Malatya, have been named after towns in Turkey and I suppose there could be confusion if the north becomes part of Turkey and there were two Malatyas in the expanded Turkey. The pre-1974 name was Paleosofos and if the village name changed then that would be the third address change in less than a decade.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.