Agios Andronikos Trikomou is a Turkish community in the occupied part of the Ammochostos district. It lies 25 kilometres north of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 180 metres, in the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos. Its land rises to the ridge and includes part of the state forests of Kantara.¹ In the 1960 census it had 297 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the people of the area called it Ain Antronikoudin, and the qualifier “Trikomou” distinguishes it from Agios Andronikos in the Karpasia.²

On the village land the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) records place-names such as Agia Marina, Agios Savas, a stream and a locality, Plouchia, Gyallovounos, Mavrovikla, Sterni, Spilios, Mazeria, Chalastos and Foradomandra.³

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Agios Andronikos belonged to the district of Karpasia and is a Muslim village, with six households owning property. Their land was almost all fallow, with a few cotton fields, grain fields and fodder fields, and 22 olive trees. They had 273 sheep and a few cows and oxen.⁴

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, most of the village land was uncultivated, covered with forest and natural vegetation. Before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals together with olives and a few carob trees, and, as already in 1832/33, kept sheep and goats: about 1,800 in the 1973 census.⁵ In 1959 the Second Cooperative Credit Society of Agios Andronikos was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 79 inhabitants in 1881, 130 in 1891, 129 in 1901, 186 in 1911 and 188 in 1921.⁶ In 1931 Agios Andronikos had 202 inhabitants, 200 Muslims and two Christians, and in 1946 286, all Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded religion only). In 1960 it had 297 inhabitants, all Turks, and in 1973 around 300 Turks (estimate).

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Andronikos was occupied by the Turkish army. One soldier was killed in the area of the village.