Kokkina is a Turkish community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 35 kilometres west of Morfou, at an elevation of 20 metres, on the coast of Tillyria, and its land rises steeply southwards to the border of the Pafos district. In the 1960 census it had 299 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Kokkina is recorded as a Muslim village with 16 property-owning households. Its land was mainly barren fields, with one field, a mulberry garden and threshing floors, and a few trees are recorded, mostly wild olives, an almond tree and a carob tree. The owners had 180 goats, oxen and cows, and four animal pens.¹

British rule

The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early twentieth century, writes in 1918 that Kokkina was one of the villages of Tillyria inhabited mainly by Muslims whose language was Greek. He also notes that Kokkina was said to have been one of the centres of the Linobambaki, that is, of inhabitants who outwardly professed Islam but were in reality Christians.² According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the inhabitants of Kokkina were originally Christians, became crypto-Christians in the years of Turkish rule and were gradually turkified.³

Churches and monasteries

The 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus records at Kokkina the Greek Orthodox church of Agia Eleni, which was once the parish church of the village. It is also marked by the official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer), which records on the village’s land the place-names Agios Georgios and Agios Ioannis as well.⁴

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 mainly cereals and fodder crops were grown on the village’s land, and much of it was uncultivated or covered with low scrub. Stock-breeding was fairly developed, and in 1973 the inhabitants kept 792 goats, just as goats had already been the most numerous animals of the village in the survey of 1832/33.⁵

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 155 inhabitants in 1891, 171 in 1901, 231 in 1911 and 171 in 1921.⁶ In 1931 Kokkina had 155 inhabitants, one Christian and 154 Muslims, and in 1946 212, of whom one was Orthodox and 211 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded religion only). In 1960 it had 299 inhabitants, all Turks, and in 1973 around 400 (estimate).