Mick Hartley

This is a welcome side-effect of Erdogan's Islamisation drive. The secularist-minded Turkish Cypriots are not at all impressed with the huge mosques being imposed on them, or by Erdogan's increasing authoritarianism. As a result they're inclined to feel less Turkish, more Cypriot – a good sign for the current peace talks. From the Times (£):

On the dusty outskirts of northern Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital, a huge and controversial Turkish-funded mosque is nearing completion. The Hala Sultan mosque, the biggest in northern Cyprus, will accommodate 3,000 worshippers.

Similar new mosques elsewhere in the Turkish-held north of the island attract only a handful of Turkish Cypriots and the mosques are rarely filled.

Turkey bankrolls the tiny breakaway Cypriot territory and provides its security but many islanders are concerned by its growing influence. Experts say, however, that this may help to accelerate moves towards reunification.

Few Turkish Cypriots are enticed by President Erdogan’s brand of political Islam and are unnerved by his growing authoritarianism at home. “These new mosques upset both Greek Cypriots and secular Turkish Cypriots,” Alper Riza, a QC in Britain whose parents were Turkish and Greek, said. “The former see it as a ‘Turkification process’ of north Cyprus; the latter as the undemocratic Islamisation of the very secular north of Cyprus by the AK Party [AKP] of mainland Turkey.”

Apart from the big new mosques in the cities, at least 39 more have been built in northern Cyprus over the past 15 years. The modern style, with towering, slender minarets, bears little resemblance to traditional Cypriot versions.

James Ker-Lindsay, senior research fellow at the London School of Economics, said: “A lot of Turkish Cypriots fear the north is being moulded in the image of the AKP and I think it worries a lot of them. But it also gives them more incentive to do a deal on Cyprus. They see the way Turkey is going and are very worried about it.”

Mustafa Akinci, who leads the Turkish Cypriot community, and Nicos Anastasiades, the Greek Cypriot president, are in talks to reunify the island as a two-zone federation with single sovereignty. After 17 months of negotiations they now hope to clinch a deal by the end of the year. It would then be put to separate referendums.

Success would mark the beginning of the end for British troops who have served in a UN peacekeeping force on the island since 1964. Cypriots, jaded by decades of failed peace efforts, refuse to raise their hopes but there are good reasons to believe that this is the best chance yet to re-unite the former British colony.

“We’re so secular we’re off the scale,” a Turkish Cypriot café owner in Nicosia said. One of his regulars added: “We like to drink, gamble and chase women. Religion is a private matter for us.”…