Pileri is a small Turkish community in the occupied part of the Keryneia district. It lies 11 kilometres south-west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 320 metres, on the southern slopes of the Pentadaktylos range. On its land, north-east of the village, stand the Greek Orthodox chapel and the tower of the Prophet Elijah (Profitis Ilias).¹ In the 1960 census it had 104 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Founding and first records

On the land of the village the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) marks the settlement of Plechia.² The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, describes in 1918 Pileri and, immediately after it, “Plaesia” as two small Muslim hamlets.³ In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Pileri is not recorded under its own name; the survey does, however, record the settlement of “Plechia”, a mixed village, with 6 property-holding households, wheat fields and cotton fields, mulberry, olive and carob trees, beehives, more than 200 sheep and goats and a few cattle.⁴

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites the British researcher Rupert Gunnis, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the 1930s, the village preserved a large, well-built cistern and above it a ruined hall, which the people of the area called the “houses of the Rigaina”, that is, of the queen, and about which they told various stories.⁵

Archaeological sites

At a site on the land of Pileri lies a pre-Greek settlement. In 1995–1996 the occupation regime carried out there, without authority, a surface survey which collected more than 10,000 sherds, almost 2,000 chipped-stone tools, more than a hundred axes and four figurine fragments, and dated the settlement to an earlier phase of the pre-Greek period than had been thought until then.⁶

Churches and monasteries

North-east of the village stands the Greek Orthodox chapel of the Prophet Elijah, which the 2009 list of churches in the occupied areas of the Church of Cyprus records as a ruined monument. At the same place the Gazetteer marks the tower of the Prophet Elijah,⁷ which the Register of Ancient Monuments of the Department of Antiquities records as a ruined Ancient Monument.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals and fodder crops were grown on the village land, much of it lay uncultivated, and to the north part of the Karmi forest fell within the village boundaries. A single road linked it with Krini and from there with the Lefkosia–Keryneia road.⁸

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 9 inhabitants in 1881, 62 in 1891, 82 in 1901, 84 in 1911 and 92 in 1921.⁹ In 1931 Pileri had 87 inhabitants, all of them Muslims, and in 1946 83, also all Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 104 inhabitants, all of them Turks, and in 1973 around 170 (estimate).

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Pileri was occupied by the Turkish army. Three soldiers were killed in the area of the village.