Makrasyka is a Greek community in the occupied part of the Famagusta (Ammochostos) district. It lies 17 kilometres west of Famagusta, at an altitude of 50 metres, in the Kokkinochoria area. At the 1960 census it had 747 inhabitants, all Greeks.

Founding and first records

Makrasyka appears in a written source at the end of the 15th century, as “Casal Macrassicha”, in a Venetian list of the royal villages published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie (see Venetian rule).¹

Venetian rule

Under Venetian rule Makrasyka was a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. In the Venetian list it is recorded in the bailiwick of Lysi, the administrative district to which it belonged, together with Lysi and Agios Theodoros.² According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1570, at the beginning of the Ottoman invasion, there was a clash in the area of Makrasyka: Astorre Baglione, commander of the Venetian forces at Famagusta, rode out of the town with two hundred horsemen and attacked a body of the Ottoman army, of which about sixty men were killed.³

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Makrasyka belonged to the district of the Mesaoria and is recorded as a mixed village, with Christian and Muslim owners. It had 29 households with property, with fields, cotton fields, ten gardens, a few olive and fig trees and beehives. The animals were more than 500 sheep and goats, oxen, cows and horses.⁴ The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, describes Makrasyka in 1918 as a large village with traces of old churches.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the Virgin (Panagia), in the northern part of the old village, dates from the 16th to the 18th century; the old cemetery lay around it. The church of Agios Efstathios, on the northern edge of the village, dates from the 16th to the 19th century, and weddings and baptisms usually took place there.⁶

Two kilometres north-west of the village, near the road to Kouklia, stands the church of the Monastery of Agia Thekla, which now stands alone among the fields.⁷

Two kilometres south-west, in the fields, stands the chapel of Agios Georgios, of the 16th century with later alterations, which is an Ancient Monument. There are also the chapels of Agios Loukas and of Agios Ionas, which is in ruins.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Makrasyka lies over the aquifer of the Kokkinochoria, and before 1974 boreholes irrigated a fair amount of land. The villagers grew citrus fruit, vegetables, cereals and fodder crops, and stock-breeding was fairly well developed.⁸ In 1955 the Makrasyka Cooperative Grocery was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Makrasyka had 140 inhabitants in 1881, 181 in 1891, 187 in 1901, 252 in 1911 and 305 in 1921.⁹ In 1931 it had 376 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 566, all Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 747 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 920. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 159 pupils and five teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece (Enosis), 320 inhabitants of Makrasyka signed.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Makrasyka was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. The inhabitants fled before the advancing army.¹⁰ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent them from returning.

Two inhabitants of Makrasyka, both soldiers, were recorded as missing. Neither went missing in the village itself: one went missing in the area of Palaikythro, on the Nicosia–Famagusta road, and the other at Agios Pavlos in Nicosia. The remains of both have been located and identified. Four more inhabitants of the village, two civilians and two soldiers, were killed elsewhere: at Egkomi, in the area of Kouklia and at Kontemenos, while one was shot at Achna and died in the Dhekelia hospital.

When Cyprus Religious Heritage surveyed the village in 2022, the occupation authorities appeared to have illegally converted the church of Agios Efstathios into a mosque; its south entrance has been walled up. All the crosses and the bell have been removed from the church of the Virgin, the roof of its portico has collapsed, there has been digging in the sanctuary and there is graffiti on the walls. The church of the Monastery of Agia Thekla is a ruin, without a roof. The chapel of Agios Georgios has been desecrated: it is without roof or doors and is used as a store for water pipes. In the new cemetery the monuments are damaged and the crosses lie scattered.¹¹