Tavrou is a Greek community of the occupied district of Ammochostos, in the Karpasia. It lies 34 kilometres north of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 40 metres. Part of the Pyrogia forest lies within its land.¹ In the 1960 census it had 312 inhabitants, of whom 311 were Greeks.

Name

The inhabitants explained the name of the village with a tradition of their own. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, citing the Cypriot linguist Simos Menardos, they said that two bulls, one from the Karpasia and one from the Mesaoria, met where the village now stands and fought for so long that they turned to stone. The villagers pointed to two large monoliths in the village as the “petrified bulls”.² In the censuses of British rule the village is written “Tavros”.

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village is dedicated to Saints Sergios and Bakchos. As early as 1918 the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus, found it “newly rebuilt”.³ The present building, of the 20th century, was consecrated in 1957.⁴ In the southern part of the village stands the chapel of Agia Paraskevi.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals, fodder crops, olives, carobs and tobacco, and kept mainly sheep. Much of the land was uncultivated, covered with mastic, wild olive and other shrubs.⁵ The Tavrou Co-operative Credit Society was founded in 1945 and the village Co-operative Store in 1957.

Population

The population of Tavrou grew almost without interruption. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 139 inhabitants in 1881, 138 in 1891, 167 in 1901, 231 in 1911 and 253 in 1921.⁶ In 1931 it had 258 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 363, all Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 312 inhabitants, 311 Greeks and one Turk, and in 1973 323 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school had 39 pupils and two teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for Union with Greece 207 inhabitants signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The EOKA Fighters’ Register records 89 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Tavrou was occupied by the Turkish army. Most of the inhabitants left before the advancing Turkish army, but a number stayed in the village, enclaved. According to the UN reports cited by the European Commission of Human Rights, the enclaved Greeks lived in difficult conditions, with restrictions on their movement outside the bounds of their villages.⁷ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in October 1975 there were still 47 of them, and by August 1976 all had been expelled.⁸ The Greek population of Tavrou was thus ethnically cleansed, and since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

One person killed in 1974, a civilian, is recorded in the village itself.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Saints Sergios and Bakchos into a mosque. They removed the crosses and the bells and blocked the south entrance to build a mihrab, that is, the prayer niche of a mosque. When a new mosque was built in the village, the church was abandoned, and its interior is deteriorating. In 2022 the cemetery was in ruins, with fragments of the grave crosses scattered about.⁹