Ftericha is a small Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 9 kilometres west of Keryneia, 240 metres above sea level, on the northern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, above neighbouring Elia. Its land stretched south up the slopes of the mountain and included part of the forest of Karmi. In the 1960 census it had 121 inhabitants, all Greeks.¹

Name

The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes the name «Φτέριχα, ή», while on official maps and lists the spelling «Φτέρυχα» also occurs. The inhabitants called the village in the plural, «τα Φτέριχα», and so does a place name on its land, the «Δοξαμένη των Φτερίχων», that is, the reservoir of Ftericha. In the British censuses and in the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, the name is transliterated “Phterykha”.²

Founding and first records

It is not known when Ftericha was founded. The Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia notes that it is not mentioned in medieval sources,³ and indeed it does not appear in the lists of villages of Frankish and Venetian rule preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron and the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie. The first written record of it found is in the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property. There Ftericha is recorded together with neighbouring Elia in a single entry, as one Christian village “Elia and Ftericha”, with seven property-holding households for the two villages together.⁴

British rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1884 Ftericha, together with Motides, Palaiosofos and Elia, applied jointly with Karavas to become a rural municipality, and from then on it was included within the municipal boundaries of Karavas. In 1933 the four small villages were detached from Karavas and became separate communities.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village is dedicated to the Apostles Peter and Paul and dates from the 18th or 19th century. Its feast was on 29 June, and pilgrims came from the surrounding villages too. According to an inhabitant of the village who wrote about Ftericha on the website of the Municipality of Karavas, for many years and up to the invasion the same priest served in turn here, at Agios Nikolaos in Elia and at Agia Paraskevi in Palaiosofos, one Sunday in three in each village. The great feasts too, Christmas, Epiphany and Easter, were celebrated in turn, and the inhabitants of all three villages then gathered in the church.⁶

Near the village stood a small monastery of Agios Georgios. Jeffery found it already in ruins in 1918, with a very small chapel in the middle of the enclosure. The 2009 list of churches in the occupied areas of the Church of Cyprus dates the chapel to the 15th century and notes that it has since been demolished.⁷

The Greek Orthodox cemetery lies on the road that comes from Elia, at the northern entrance of the village, about 400 metres from its centre.⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, arable land was scarce: the inhabitants grew almond trees, olives and a little cereal, while most of the land was covered with pines, cypresses, thorny broom and wild olives. Stock-raising was very limited; in 1973 the village had only 22 goats and 100 poultry.⁹

The inhabitant of the village who wrote on the website of the Municipality of Karavas remembers that Ftericha was at its best in January, when its many almond trees blossomed and visitors came from Keryneia and Lefkosia. The gardens were watered by cement channels, and the village had long had a telephone, electricity and asphalted roads, and shortly before 1974 running water in the houses. Many of these works were done by the inhabitants themselves through voluntary labour. Because there was no regular transport, those who worked in Karavas or elsewhere went and came back on foot.¹⁰ Two place names on the village’s land, the “Doxameni ton Fterichon” (reservoir of Ftericha) and the “Kleistra tou Nerou” (water sluice), recall the water that irrigated the gardens.¹¹

Education

According to the same inhabitant, the Greek elementary school of the village had one classroom and was built next to the church, with the teacher’s house nearby. He also remembers the teachers who taught there: Kypros Proestos, Kostas Tsirtsipis, Georgios Georgiadis, Kostas Papadimitriou, Grigorios Orfanidis, Lakis Tsangaridis, Nikos Dramiotis, Ioannis Menelaou and Stelios Panagidis. The children of Elia also attended it, coming on foot, a kilometre and a half, with their food in a little basket. A few years before the invasion the pupils became very few and the school closed; from then on the children went by taxi to the school in Karavas.¹² The schools register of the year 1973–74 records no school in Ftericha.

Population

Ftericha was always a small village. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 71 inhabitants in 1881, 96 in 1891, 105 in 1901, 114 in 1911 and 133 in 1921.¹³ In 1931 it had 157 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 125, all of them Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 121 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 53. According to the inhabitant who wrote on the website of the Municipality of Karavas, young people, when they married, often settled in other communities, for their work or to educate their children more easily, and the lack of regular transport was the village’s most serious problem; in the summer of 1974 about twenty families lived there, mostly elderly people.¹⁴

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 75 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 2 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Ftericha was occupied by the Turkish army. According to the inhabitant who wrote on the website of the Municipality of Karavas, Turkish soldiers then gathered all the inhabitants, and any foreigners who had taken refuge in the village, in the house of an Englishwoman.¹⁵ In a written statement quoted by the European Commission of Human Rights in its 1976 report, Greek inhabitants of Ftericha are mentioned among about 400 inhabitants of Keryneia and the surrounding villages whom Turkish soldiers brought to the Dome Hotel in Keryneia, where they were held in confinement.¹⁶ The Greek population of the village was subjected to ethnic cleansing, and since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of its inhabitants.

Six inhabitants of Ftericha, all civilians, were recorded as missing. Two were later identified, while the other four are still missing. Two vanished in Ftericha; the other four in the area of the 5th mile of the Keryneia–Lefkosia road, in the area of Elia, in the area of Exi Mili of Karavas and at Agios Georgios (Keryneia). One more civilian inhabitant was killed at Agios Georgios (Keryneia). In the area of the village three dead of 1974 are recorded, all civilians.

The 2009 list records the church of Agioi Petros kai Pavlos as desecrated and looted, and in use as a club. According to local information recorded in 2018 by the Cyprus Religious Heritage survey, the occupation authorities later illegally converted it into a mosque.¹⁷