Our Ministry has been informed through the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) that the planned collective visit of our citizens, on the occasion of Eid-al Fitr, to the Hala Sultan Tekke in Larnaca, has been denied by the Greek Cypriot administration.
Initially, our request for a visit on 21 March 2026, which corresponds to the second day of Eid, submitted via UNFICYP, was rejected by the Greek Cypriot administration who requested an alternative date to be proposed. Subsequently, the final day of Eid, 22 March was suggested; however, as this date was also deemed unsuitable by the Greek Cypriot administration, a further request was made for the visit to take place on 28 March 2026.
It should be noted that while such visits in previous years were conducted with the participation of approximately 300 to 500 people (6–10 buses), this aforementioned visit was planned with 105 participants (2 buses) upon the insistence of the Greek Cypriot administration, citing security concerns, the number of participants was further reduced by half (1 bus). Nevertheless, despite all initiatives undertaken by our Ministry through UNFICYP, the request for the visit to Hala Sultan Tekke was once again rejected at the very last minute by the Greek Cypriot administration.
TRNC attaches utmost importance to the protection and promotion of religious freedoms and respects followers of different faiths. In this vein, TRNC does its utmost to accommodate the requests of the Greek Cypriot people living in the Greek Cypriot administration who already have the opportunity to conduct religious services in numerous churches. In this context, more than 100 religious services are facilitated yearly in 80 different churches in the TRNC.
Despite the goodwill and tolerance demonstrated by our State, which refrains from making any kind of discrimination among participants arriving for worship—whether Greek Cypriot, Greek, or others— some Greek Cypriot politicians and priests exploit the religious services held in our country to deliver racist and political messages, to undertake unauthorized structural alterations to churches and to incite Greek Cypriots and Maronites residing in the TRNC against Turkish Cypriot People and the Republic of Türkiye. Moreover, despite all of our goodwill and facilitating religious services, the Greek Cypriot administration persists in intensifying its campaign of disinformation and unjust propaganda against our country in international platforms, including the European Union and the United Nations, falsely alleging that the TRNC restricts the religious freedoms of Greek Cypriot citizens.
As a result of the recurring obstacles imposed by the Greek Cypriot administration, collective religious visits to Hala Sultan Tekke are limited to a maximum of three times per year. In this regard, we strongly protest the arbitrary decision of the Greek Cypriot administration to deny permission for the collective worship to be held by our citizens at Hala Sultan Tekke on 28 March 2026, on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr. This obstructive stance of the Greek Cypriot leadership on religious freedoms and its prevention of the right to worship clearly constitutes yet another example of the violation of the fundamental human rights of the Turkish Cypriot People.