THE TURKISH Cypriot authorities have declared ‘war’ on popular retail outlet IKEA, reportedly banning the products from being taken to the north from the government-controlled areas, it was reported yesterday.
According to local paper Politis, the Turkish Cypriot head of ‘customs’ in the north, Turkur Voural said IKEA products will be confiscated if found at the crossings. “The products in the catalogues are forbidden,” he was quoted saying.
The Turkish Cypriot official said that in general, furniture from the free areas was forbidden from entering the north. He added a warning to Turkish Cypriot shoppers that those products found to violate the rules will be confiscated.
A spokesman for IKEA told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the Nicosia branch of the Swedish chain store was not aware that its products would be banned from the north.
“We only found out when reading it in the papers. We don’t even know when or whether it will be implemented. We will wait and see,” said the spokesman.
The IKEA representative said Turkish Cypriots accounted for a “significant number” of shoppers at the home furnishings store. He added that statistics for the last week showed no change in the numbers who cross the dividing line to shop at the popular outlet.
“As far as we know there is a limit on the value of the products you can carry over, not on furniture,” he said.
The Turkish Cypriot authorities have voiced concern about the popularity of the retail giant on a number of previous occasions.
In 2008, the BBC reported that the Turkish Cypriot authorities had enforced a rule, requiring an import licence for carrying any household furniture into the north.
Earlier this month, the Cyprus Mail quoted a spokesman from the north’s ‘finance ministry’ saying that the authorities were looking into whether to allow IKEA to promote its products in the north. Following demand from customers, the retail store had arranged for 24,000 brochures to be distributed in the north. It argued that doing so was within the framework of the Green Line regulation, a mechanism set up by the EU in 2004 allowing limited trade between the two sides.
The Turkish Cypriot spokesman said his ‘ministry’ had repeatedly called on Turkish Cypriots to “buy local”, noting that such calls were economically, rather than ethnically motivated. He clarified that the authorities were trying to protect local producers during an economic crisis, not stop people from shopping in the free areas. He added that as long as competition was “fair”, the Turkish Cypriot authorities would not seek to stop it.
The comments were made after 580 IKEA brochures destined for distribution in the north were found by a Turkish Cypriot yachtsman dumped in the sea near Kyrenia.
According to the IKEA spokesman, the 580 brochures had been removed from the Kyrenia seabed. An investigation into the incident revealed that two people hired to help distribute the 24,000 brochures had chosen to enlighten Mediterranean marine life on the popular Swedish products rather than take them door-to-door.
