Cyprus-Forum.com

[golifa]

This is a summary I wrote using some various sources hope to enlighten some people;

With the Ottoman conquest in 1570, the ethnic and cultural composition of Cyprus changed. Although the island had been ruled by Venetians, its population was of Greek origin. Turkish rule brought an influx of settlers speaking a different language and entertaining other cultural traditions and beliefs. In accordance with the decree of Sultan Selim II, some 5,720 households left/were supposed to leave Turkey from the Karaman, Içel, Konya, Alanya, Antalya, and Aydın regions of Anatolia and migrated/migrate to Cyprus. The Turkish migrants that did migrate were largely farmers, but some earned their livelihoods as shoemakers, tailors, weavers, cooks, masons, tanners, jewellers, miners, and workers in other trades.
Ultimately, colonization of the island through the forced transfer of Anatolian Muslims was an unmitigated failure. Resistance to being transferred seems to have been strong, with most of the targeted families managing to avoid removal to Cyprus. The number of Muslims on the island did, however, increase over the period, largely throughout voluntary conversions.
According to Ottoman historian Professor Ronald Jennings, a considerable amount of Muslims in Cyprus listed in court records in the early sixteenth century were converts to the religion from Christianity. Jennings as well as other historians notes that a majority of Muslim later to become Turkish Cypriot villages were formerly either the estates of Latins or Maronites, suggesting that conversion to Islam was from Catholicism and not Greek Orthodoxy in the initial period of Ottoman rule. This persecution caused a considerable number of Christians, including a good number of Maronites, to adopt Islam as a survival mechanism (Cirilli 1898: 11, 21; Palmieri 1905: col. 2468) [8 ]. Conversions took place in Tellyria, Kambyli, Ayia Marina Skillouras, Platani and Kornokepos" (Jennings 1993: 367)

Among these, according to the court registers, were a number of Christian women, who appear to have converted to Islam to escape unhappy marriages. Their husbands were given an opportunity convert as well, but if they refused (as many did), the marriages were nullified, and the women were free to go their own way. Also, among the new converts were former members of Latin Christian elite, who had dominated Cyprus since the crusaders. Here the chief incentive was property, since those who converted were also allowed to retain their estates. As for the ottoman troops that settled in Cyprus, nearly half of the janissary infantry and Sipahi cavalry were converts, although not necessarily native to Cyprus. The findings here remind us again that the terms “Ottoman” and “Turk” are not the easy synonyms many present-day politicians from the Ottoman successor states makes of them. In addition to these conversions During the Ottoman rule, black African slaves (usually transferred over Egypt) were brought to Cyprus and sold to Muslim families. Many of their descendants rose to prominent positions and assimilated into the Turkish Cypriot community, creating a sizeable multiracial population today.
Furthermore, when the island came under British administration in 1878, many of the “Turkish” Cypriots that did indeed have ancestral root leading to Turkey, sold their property and migrated to mainland Turkey. Besides this after the start of WW1 “Turks” who did not want to go into war against Ottoman empire were given the option to sell their property and leave for Anatolia as well.

“ According to Turkish Cypriot newspapers, over one third of Turkish Cypriots emigrated from the occupied area between 1974-1995 because of economic and social deprivation, mainly a result of the ongoing international embargo on the TRNC. Contrary to this, some Turkish settlers from Anatolia moved to the island in recent years, whose number reached around 115,000 (2001 figures). Figures published in 2007 by the Turkish Ministry of Labor and Social Security raise this number to 146,122[10]. Almost 1/3 of the Turkish settlers in northern Cyprus have been given "Turkish Cypriot" citizenship[11]. This is in violation of the Geneva Conventions Protocol of 1977, since the Turkish occupation has been declared illegal by the UN. As a result of Turkish Cypriots leaving the island and naturalization of mainland Turks, the Turkish Cypriots who remain in Northern Cyprus are today outnumbered by the Turkish settlers and security forces”

-based on the works of Jennings, Ronald C.

and some statistical data; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0179474