Kato Dikomo is a large Greek community of the occupied district of Keryneia. It stands at an altitude of 240 metres on the southern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, 8 kilometres south of Keryneia, on the road that links Nicosia with Keryneia. A little to the north lies Pano Dikomo, which is a separate community. In the 1960 census Kato Dikomo had 1,900 inhabitants, all of them Greeks. It was here that the EOKA hero Kyriakos Matsis fell in 1958.

Frankish and Venetian rule

Dikomo is already mentioned during Frankish rule. The 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas writes that in the Genoese war of 1373–74 the Genoese, who held the young king Peter II in their hands, set out to besiege Keryneia and camped at Dikomo. For eight days they tried from there to force the narrow mountain pass, but its guards drove them back with heavy losses. In the end a Greek priest, who believed he was helping the king, led them by another path, and the Genoese took the guards by surprise.

Turkish rule

In 1765 Khalil, the commander of Keryneia castle, rose against the government in Nicosia. The 18th-century Cypriot historian Archimandrite Kyprianos writes that Khalil advanced as far as Dikomo with cannons and a large force and threatened to destroy Nicosia. According to the Italian traveller Giovanni Mariti, who wrote about Cyprus in 1769, Dikomo was the seat of the Turkish agha who governed the area. In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Kato Dikomo is recorded as a village of mixed population with 55 property-holding households.

British rule

In 1887 the Greek Orthodox church of Agios Georgios was built in the centre of the village. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in 1918, noted that it probably took the place of an older chapel. In 1932 the chapel of Panagia ton Pervolion was built. The ruined chapel of Agios Georgios stands at Ornisa, on the village’s land, and the Greek Orthodox cemetery lies about half a kilometre south-west of the centre.¹ The New Dikomo Cooperative Credit Society was founded in 1940 and the Kato Dikomo Cooperative Grocery Store in 1947. In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite, 791 inhabitants of the village signed.

In Kato Dikomo, in a hideout in the house of Kyriakos Diakos, the EOKA sector leader of Keryneia Kyriakos Matsis, of Palaichori, was killed by the British forces on 19 November 1958. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the site of the hideout became a place of pilgrimage, and his bust was set up there.

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 41 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle: 8 under the heading “Kato Dikomo” and 33 under “Dikomo”. Kyriakos Diakos is among them.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 Dikomo had two Greek primary schools, A and B, with 370 pupils and 13 teachers. According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, the village had no gymnasium, and its pupils attended the gymnasia of Nicosia.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 415 inhabitants in 1881, 465 in 1891, 630 in 1901, 737 in 1911 and 848 in 1921.² The village’s population more than doubled in 42 years, from 961 inhabitants in 1931 to 2,178 in 1973. In 1931 it had 955 Christians and 6 Muslims, and in 1960 all its inhabitants were Greeks. According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, many inhabitants worked in Nicosia and returned to the village every day, so Dikomo did not lose its people to the towns.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Dikomo, on the Nicosia–Keryneia road, was on the front line and was taken by the Turkish army. Its Greek population was ethnically cleansed, and the inhabitants became refugees. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent them from returning.

Thirty-one people from Kato Dikomo, 22 of them civilians, were recorded as missing. The remains of 7 have been located and identified, while 24 are still missing. The other 9 were soldiers. Of all of them, 22 disappeared in Kato Dikomo itself and 9 elsewhere, in Pano Dikomo, in Keryneia, in the area of Kazafani and the road to Pella-Pais, at Agios Ilarion and at Sygkhari. One soldier of Dikomo was killed elsewhere, in the area of the village of Troulloi. On the land of the village 5 people were killed or fatally wounded on 20–23 July, one soldier and 4 civilians. Two of them died of their wounds in Nicosia General Hospital.

The church of Agios Georgios has been desecrated, looted and seriously damaged. The occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of Agios Georgios into a mosque. The chapel of Panagia ton Pervolion has been desecrated and looted, and the chapels of Agios Dimitrios and Agios Konstantinos have been demolished. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the Turkish forces also destroyed the bust of Kyriakos Matsis.