Fota is a Turkish community in the occupied part of the Keryneia district. It lies 12 kilometres south-west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 250 metres, and its southern boundary was also the boundary between the districts of Keryneia and Lefkosia.¹ In the 1960 census it had 418 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, the name comes from “Fotata”, that is, the estates that once belonged to a certain Fotios. Before place names were standardised the village was written “Fotta”.² It is written “Photta” by the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, and by the 1931 census.³ The official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) writes “Fota”.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Fota is recorded as a Muslim village, with 11 property-holding households. The owners had wheat fields, cotton fields, threshing floors and a little barren land, but no trees at all. They had about 100 sheep and 200 goats, and a few oxen.⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals and carob trees were grown on the village land. In 1973 the inhabitants kept 1,584 sheep, 822 goats and 95 cows.⁶

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 143 inhabitants in 1881, 176 in 1891, 169 in 1901, 246 in 1911 and 299 in 1921.⁷ In 1931 Fota had 297 inhabitants, 15 Christians and 282 Muslims, and in 1946 365, of whom 2 were Orthodox and 363 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 418 inhabitants, all of them Turks, and in 1973 around 700 (estimate).