Resistance in the Shadow of the Külliye : Civil Contestation and Political Repercussions in Northern Cyprus

In May 2025, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in north Cyprus to inaugurate a controversial presidential palace and parliamentary complex known popularly in Turkish as a külliye because of the central place within it of an enormous mosque. That same day, Erdoğan visited Teknofest, a military-themed technology festival organized by his son-in-law and held at the old Timbu/Ercan airport. This daylong combination of religious, political, and military symbolism marked the climax of a long campaign on the part of Turkey’s AKP government to impose its ideological stamp in Cyprus’s north. It also happened to immediately follow a controversy over headscarves in public schools that had catalyzed widespread civic backlash among Turkish Cypriots. That backlash was itself long in coming, with the headscarf seen as the last straw in the Turkish government’s attempts to impose a religious identity on north Cyprus.