By Martin Hellicar
THE WELFARE Department yesterday promised to do all it could to help four impoverished Turkish Cypriot families who “defected” from the north and turned up in Limassol on Sunday.
The government is to look into naturalising the 21 Turkish Cypriots — among whom are 12 children ranging in age from a few months to 15 years — but is also concerned that “suspicious characters” may be crossing over from the occupied areas.
The Limassol welfare office said it would cater for the families’ immediate needs until it could make “more permanent arrangements”.
“We will not leave them destitute, especially as there are children among them,” the head of the Limassol Welfare office, Vladimiros Aristodemou, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Justice Minister Nicos Koshis said the Turkish Cypriots had the right to stay. “We cannot send them away, and we will not send them away,” he said.
“Whether they get naturalisation papers from the Cyprus Republic is something that will come out of a study of this serious issue by the relevant ministries and the submission of a report to the Council of Ministers,” Koshis said.
But the minister also said the number of people coming over from the north had increased recently and the government was concerned there might be “suspicious characters” among them.
The government was to investigate the issue, he said.
The 21 Turkish Cypriots apparently say they are Famagusta residents and crossed into the government-controlled areas near occupied Makrosyka, where the Dhekelia base borders the Turkish-held areas. The four families knocked on the door of a Turkish Cypriot resident of Limassol’s Turkish quarter at about 4am on Sunday morning.
Newspaper reports yesterday suggested the Turkish Cypriots had been driven to the south by the “desperate” living conditions in the north, Turkish settlers having been given all the jobs by the occupation regime. The “defectors” were quoted as saying they had been living in “shacks without power or water” and had been forced to scavenge among rubbish bins for food.
Koshis also spoke of impossible living conditions in the north yesterday. The Minister said he believed Turkish Cypriots were being driven to the south to escape “hunger and misery.”
Koshis said he believed Turkish Cypriots arriving from the occupied areas should be given “a roof over their heads, food and work” by the welfare department.
