The Republic of Cyprus, whose population is approximately 1.2 million, is struggling with a significant mass migration crisis that is gradually leading to the demographic replacement of the island’s native population. Since at least 2016, illegal Muslim migrants have flooded Cyprus via the north, which has been occupied illegally by the Turkish military since 1974.
Cyprus now hosts the most refugees per capita within the European Union. The Republic receives the highest number of asylum seekers relative to its population anywhere in the EU.
Some 50,000 people reside illegally in the country, according to a January news report. The migrant camps in Cyprus are already over capacity.
Geadis Geadi, spokesman for the opposition Elam Party (National People’s Front), said that “after years of mudslinging against us, everyone now understands the scope of the problem and that Cyprus is in danger.”
The impact of mass Muslim migration, with its demographic and crime-related consequences, is now observable throughout public life.
Nearly 50% of the pupils in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, have a migrant background, according to the statistics of the Schools Board of Nicosia.
A ‘migrant background’ is defined by the board to mean that both parents are foreign-born and they are neither from Greece nor the Cypriot diaspora, as the Cyprus Mail reported:
The board, an elected body with no connection to the education ministry, collected the data at the behest of Cypriot Parliament. The 49.5 per cent figure includes all pupils from kindergartens to high schools in Nicosia.
The foreign children come from all over. “We have schools with 38 different nationalities,” said Nicos Megalemos, president of the Schools Board. “At Ayioi Omologites [primary school] there are Syrians, Georgians, Senegalese, Bangladeshis, and so on.”
A notice board at Palouriotissa middle school (which has around 60 per cent migrants) proudly displays the flags of 18 countries, not counting Cyprus and Greece—but most of the migrant kids are Arab speakers, especially Syrians, according to deputy headmistress Eleni Fylaktou.
The situation at Nicosia’s state primary schools is even more alarming. “In 22 state primary schools in Nicosia, Cypriot pupils are in the minority,” the Cyprus Mail reported in May of 2023.
At three schools in Nicosia there are no Cypriot children while at 17 other schools Cypriots comprise under 10% of pupils.
Nicosia, which is 35% occupied by Turkey, is also Europe’s last divided capital.
Cyprus is “flooded with migrants,” said Costas Constantinou, Cypriot Interior Ministry director general, in 2022. “Our country’s capacity to host migrants has long been surpassed. We are overflowing.” Many migrants arriving in Cyprus, he added, “end up taking part in illegal activities run by organized crime.”
One such offense occurred this past August. An 18-year-old member of the National Guard, the military force of the Republic of Cyprus, was kidnapped by Syrians with knives while he was walking in Chloraka village, which has struggled with an influx of illegal Muslim migrants during the past few years.
The soldier was stripped half-naked, beaten, and filmed on camera. After video footage of the kidnapped soldier was shared by the perpetrators on social media, many Cypriots took to the streets in protest of the soldier’s abduction. The video was later deleted from social media. A Syrian who kidnapped and abused the soldier was arrested only to be released by Cypriot police after police said they were “unable to compile evidence against him.”
Meanwhile, the testimony of an organized crime member while appearing on a Cypriot TV channel this month has reportedly shocked Cyprus. The interviewee claims that in a few years, the Syrian mafia will take over Cyprus. The Cypriot news website, Sigmalive, reported on February 1:
[The organized crime member] said that the underworld has dedicated itself to drug trafficking, which includes trafficking through prisons using easily obtained mobile phones and cards …
The night of Nicosia is slowly passing into the hands of the Syrian mafia. Syrians have already acquired a huge power. Great power. Where they are not … they are not ashamed to stop there, but in a few years if the night does not catch up today, it will not catch up to them. The leaders of Cyprus don’t care because they have their jobs. I reckon in 2-3 years everyone will account to the mafia from Syria. They will control everyone.
What makes the Syrian mafia strong in the night is the fact that they have experienced war situations; it is easy for them to find executioners.
In 2022, the chairman of the House ad hoc committee on demographics, opposition Elam MP Linos Papayiannis, addressed the issue of migrants involved in drug dealing. “Most of them arrive in Cyprus from Turkey via the north, where they stock up on drugs to sell them in the Republic [of Cyprus],” he said.
The increased crime rates due to illegal migration have also been discussed by other leaders of the country. “Immigration is becoming a major national issue,” said Averof Neophytou, the President of DISY (Democratic Rally), in 2021. He added:
Unfortunately, our concerns are confirmed that, in addition to the financial burden that irregular migrants place on the Cypriot economy, they increase crime and endanger public safety with a visible risk of demographic deterioration.
However, the problem remains severe and unresolved. Asylum applications in Cyprus reportedly peaked at around 21,565 in 2022, the highest since records began in 2002. Cyprus saw 1,043 Syrians arrive by boat in October 2023, a three-fold increase on the previous year. In November, it recorded 795 arrivals, almost triple that of November 2022.
Illegal migrants arrive either in boats or through the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus. Cypriot authorities say that the problem is largely orchestrated by Turkey’s government.
In 1974, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus, and to this day, it continues to illegally occupy 36% of the island country. Turkey has ethnically cleansed indigenous Greeks from the northern part of Cyprus. Around 170,000 Greek Cypriots were forced to leave the occupied area during and following the military invasion.
Many migrants, the Cypriot authorities say, arrive by land from the occupied north. They reportedly first fly from Istanbul or Ankara to the Turkish-occupied north of the island. They are then smuggled through the UN-controlled buffer zone, also called the ‘Green Line,’ to apply for asylum in the free, southern area of Cyprus under EU law. The influx of illegal migrants in the free part of Cyprus has in turn led the country’s asylum system to virtually collapse.
In 2021, Cyprus notified the EU that it could not accept any more irregular migrants. Then Interior Minister of Cyprus Nicos Nouris said that with migrant reception centers already overcrowded, Cyprus was now in a “state of emergency.”
In the same year, the government of Cyprus said that this illegal immigrant crisis was creating “significant demographic change,” “ghettoisation in urban areas,” and “acute socio-economic effects.”
According to a 2022 report by the European Social Policy Network (ESPN), “mass irregular migration across the UN buffer zone is described by the Cypriot government as a matter of national security.”
In 2022, the EU recognized the instrumentalization or ‘weaponization’ of illegal migration by Turkey through the ‘Green Line’ that divides the free and occupied parts of the Republic of Cyprus.
The falling birth rates of Cypriot citizens make the problem of demographic replacement even more pressing. According to a 2022 report in the Cypriot media,
The government is understandably concerned about Cyprus’ birth rate, which has been falling every year since the 1983 peak of 2.41 per woman. According to UN data on World Population Prospects, this year it will stand at 1.3, a projected fall of 0.61 per cent on the previous year. At a discussion at the legislature last year, deputies expressed serious concern about 1.32 births per woman for 2019, but it is now even lower.
These figures are well below the population replacement rate and are a bad sign for the country’s future.
The then director general of the interior ministry, Costas Constantinou, noted that Cyprus received over 13,000 asylum applications in 2021, whereas only 10,700 new births were registered.
“This year [in 2022], the situation is the same. We had 4,250 births so far, as opposed to 12,000 migrant arrivals. This is not happening anywhere else in the European Union,” Constantinou said.
The decline in birth rates of native Cypriots is getting more alarming. The fertility rate for Cyprus in 2023 was 1.297 births per woman, a 0.61% decline from 2022.
According to a 2023 EU Action Plan for the Eastern Mediterranean route, “Recently, there has been a decrease in arrivals through the Green Line, but a steep increase in boat arrivals to Cyprus from Syria and Lebanon.
In 2023 … irregular arrivals by sea to Greece more than tripled, and boat landings to the government-controlled areas of Cyprus more than doubled. On this route Syrians, Palestinians and Afghans were the top reported nationalities. Turkey remains an important transit country for irregular arrivals into the EU via the Western Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean routes.
Cyprus is an essential part of Western history and civilization. For over 3,000 years, it has been a demographically and culturally Greek island and Christian since the first century.
The occupied northern part of Cyprus, however, has been a victim of Turkey’s policies aiming to erase its Greek and Christian identity since 1974. These policies include the influx of illegal settlers from Turkey, the illegal deployment of around 40,000 Turkish soldiers, the systematic annihilation of the Greek cultural and religious heritage, the unlawful seizures of lands and properties from their rightful owners, and the illegal alteration of the original Greek names of geographical locations (such as towns and villages) into Turkish, among others.
The ongoing Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus makes the island country even more vulnerable in the face of the ongoing mass migration crisis.
The native Greek population of the Republic of Cyprus is currently facing demographic replacement by Muslim migrants. The statistics regarding students at schools, the declining birth rates of the natives, the unending influx of illegal migrants, the increased crime rates, as well as the skyrocketing asylum applications are proof that the future of this Greek island is at serious risk. The Republic of Cyprus needs concrete support from the West to preserve its indigenous demography and millennia-long Greek civilization.
