Erhurman visits Greek Cypriot school in Rizokarpaso

Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman visited the Greek Cypriot middle school in Rizokarpaso on Wednesday, meeting pupils and teachers from both that school and the town’s Greek Cypriot primary school.

His office said on Thursday that he had met the primary school’s headteacher Katerina Ktisti and the middle school’s headteacher Elias Evripidou, and that both had thanked him for his visit, while the middle school had presented him with his gift.

Later in the day, he also visited the town’s Turkish Cypriot Recep Tayyip Erdogan middle school, named after the incumbent Turkish president.

Last month, Erhurman had said that “the right to education for our children in Karpasia is extremely important to me” when asked about criticism levelled at the Turkish Cypriot authorities regarding the provision of education at the north’s Greek Cypriot schools.

“Whatever needs to be done will be done,” he said, before going on to stress that ensuring the right to education of Greek Cypriot children in Karpasia will not depend on the Greek Cypriot side “reciprocating”, though he did use the opportunity to call on the Republic of Cyprus to allow for the opening of a Turkish language school in Limassol.

“The right to education for Turkish Cypriot children living in Limassol is just as important as that of our children in Karpasia. They are also our children, and I will continue to be assertive on this matter,” he said.

He added that “protecting the rights to education of children in both Karpasia and Limassol is one of the most important humanitarian dimensions of the solution process”.

A report compiled by the European Parliamentary research service had earlier decried “the violation of the human rights” of Greek Cypriot schoolchildren in Rizokarpaso, and argued that “fundamental individual, educational, and religious freedoms continue to be restricted” by the Turkish Cypriot authorities.

It referred to the Third Vienna agreement, signed by Turkish Cypriot leader of the day Rauf Denktash and interim president Glafcos Clerides in August 1975, which set out the terms for population exchanges between the island’s two sides and the continued residence of Greek Cypriots who wished to remain in the north after 1974.

This agreement, the report said, “provided for the assurance of dignified living conditions” for Greek Cypriots who remain in the north, “including uninterrupted education, access to medical and pharmaceutical care, and the free exercise of their religious rights”.

However, according to the report, these rights “are not being respected”.