Turkish mass daily Hurriyet this week took offense with high-profile statements by the Republic of Cyprus’ foreign minister, Nikos Christodoulides, as the latter directly decried the looting and alteration of the Christian cultural legacy in areas of Cyprus still occupied by the Turkish military.
An editorial in the newspaper claimed that Christodoulides’s statements were incorrect, while also saying that Cyprus was not exclusively a Christian island.
In a bid to deflect widespread and international criticism over the fact that Christian churches and chapels in the occupied areas have been converted to mosques, the Hurriyet article states that “… only in certain villages where the population is predominately Turkish have churches been converted to mosques… In reality, only 70 out of the more than 600 churches have been converted to mosques … the rest will be returned to the Greek Cypriots with a resolution to the Cyprus problem.”