Ortakioi is a large, mainly Turkish community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 4 kilometres north-west of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 130 metres, on the road from Lefkosia towards Kioneli and Keryneia. On its land stands a medieval bridge, which is an Ancient Monument. In the 1960 census it had 1,248 inhabitants, of whom 50 were Greeks and 997 Turks.

Name

In the 1931 census the village is also recorded under the name Mintzeli. Under the same name, Mintzeli, the official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) marks an ancient monument on the village’s land.¹

Archaeological sites

The Register of Ancient Monuments of the Department of Antiquities lists a medieval bridge on the land of Ortakioi, in Schedule A.

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Ortakioi is recorded as a Muslim village with seven property-owning households. The owners had fields, a grain field and a cotton field, running water, 100 young olive trees and a few fig trees, and more than 300 sheep and goats.²

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals and fodder crops were grown on the village’s land, while a large part in the north was barren. In 1973 the inhabitants kept 1,032 sheep and 1,005 goats.³

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 92 inhabitants in 1881, 66 in 1891, 100 in 1901, 135 in 1911 and 176 in 1921.⁴ In 1931 Ortakioi had 227 inhabitants, 34 Christians and 193 Muslims, and in 1946 488, of whom 55 were Orthodox, 422 Muslims and 11 others (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded religion only). In 1960 it had 1,248 inhabitants: 50 Greeks, 997 Turks, 63 Armenians, 117 British and 21 others. According to the same encyclopaedia, the Greek inhabitants were forced to leave the village because of the events of the Turkish insurrection of 1963–64 and settled in the Greek part of Lefkosia. The 1973 census gives no figures for Ortakioi, because, according to the same encyclopaedia, its inhabitants could not be counted.⁵

The Turkish invasion of 1974

The Greek inhabitants of Ortakioi had been forced to leave the village because of the events of the Turkish insurrection of 1963–64. During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Ortakioi was included in the part of Cyprus occupied by the Turkish army, and since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the Greek inhabitants.

A UN report of 5 August 1974, cited by the European Commission of Human Rights, states that most of the men of the Greek villages in the areas then controlled by the Turkish forces were taken prisoner and escorted by Turkish troops into the area of Kioneli and Ortakioi.⁶