"‘Turkish Cypriots have not been leaving since 1974’
By Simon Bahceli
JUST WEEKS before a census takes place in the north, new research suggests that many more Turkish Cypriots than previously thought are still living in the breakaway state.
“The perceived wisdom is that between 150,000 and 200,000 live in the UK, and that many of them left the island after 1974, but figures from the UK and other host countries suggest something quite different,” the author of the research, Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) researcher Mete Hatay, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Hatay says the UK’s 2001 census figures show that only around 78,000 Cypriot-born Cypriots live in Britain, of which around 20,000 are Turkish speaking.
“And if you add their children to these figures, we can estimate that between 40,000 and 45,000 people of Turkish Cypriot origin live in the UK. This is far fewer than what the Cypriot government claims,” he adds.
Similarly low figures exist for Australia, Hatay claims. "
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