‘We should be building hospitals, not palaces’

‘Cart before the horse’ or ‘potential fulfilled’? North palace complex nears completion

Three and a half years since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood inside the former Dianellos cigarette factory which has functioned as the Turkish Cypriot legislature since 1974 and promised a new ‘presidential’ palace and ‘parliament’ building, the gargantuan project in Ayios Dhometios is nearing completion.

Set across a total of 657,000 square metres and consisting of a ‘presidential’ palace, a ‘parliament’, a mosque, a park, and potentially a courthouse too, the new ‘governmental’ complex is one of the largest-scale and most ambitious construction projects to have been undertaken in Cyprus’ history, but it has not come without criticism.

The land on which the complex is being built, right by Ayios Dhometios’ busy crossing point, had been a Turkish military zone which has since been decommissioned.

Protests overshadowed the project’s breaking of ground in 2022, and were backed by high-profile voices inside Turkish Cypriot society, including Serdar Denktash the son of the current ‘presidential’ palace’s longest-serving inhabitant, late Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash.

Denktash, whose own political career saw him rise as high as the rank of the north’s ‘deputy prime minister’, was unequivocal when speaking to the Cyprus Mail, expressing his belief that the near 5 billion TL (€138 million) spent on the project could have been better spent elsewhere.

“We need schools and hospitals. We need infrastructure which can support the population,” he said.

He added that in prioritising the construction of the complex, the north has “put the cart before the horse, and we are now trying to move forward”.

“This project is neither beneficial to the Turkish Cypriot people, nor is this the message we should be giving to the world,” he said.

Denktash’s public opposition to the project dates back to 2022, when he warned the north’s ‘public works minister’ Erhan Arikli against accusing protestors of attempting to “unroot the TRNC”.

“What would you say about me? … I am one of those who find the construction unnecessary and argue that the way for the TRNC to have a strong image is not through ostentatious state buildings, but with a people with a high level of welfare,” he said at the time.

“Ostentatious” is one word to describe a complex of this size. While only five or six storeys high, the palace and the ‘parliament’ building are both enormous in terms of the area they cover. The north’s ‘parliament’s’ website says the area taken up by the two buildings, including their large internal courtyards and external areas, is around 187,000 square metres, or a little over 26 full size football pitches.

This figure is only a little shy of the total area of the United Kingdom’s National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, though the actual building size is somewhat smaller.

However, Arikli insists that opposition to the construction is not something to be overly concerned about.

“We did not take the objections to the project seriously, because the people opposing it are the people who are fundamentally opposed to developments which will allow the TRNC to put down roots,” he told the Cyprus Mail.

“We will all see together how these people will use both the presidential palace and the parliament building with pleasure and pride when the day comes.”

He was keen to stress how proud he was that it was his ‘ministry’ which had “administered this project from source to sea”.

He also insisted that the time had come on to move on from the old buildings, describing them both as “impractical and primitive”.

“This is an old colonial building [the ‘presidential’ palace] and a repurposed cigarette factory [the parliament], unbecoming of the TRNC,” he said.

Meanwhile, Oguzhan Hasipoglu, secretary-general of the largest of the coalition’s three parties the UBP, told the Cyprus Mail the new complex will help the north to realise its potential.

He said the north “has not been able to realise the potential it wanted in terms of renewing and reorganising its institutions and infrastructure” since it unilaterally declared independence in 1983, and that the new complex marks a turning point in that regard.

“With its modernised structure, the new parliament will provide our MPs and their teams with new motivation to work and allow for a new and more effective legislative process.”

His fellow ruling coalition party the DP’s secretary-general Serhat Akpinar pointed to the sports and cultural facilities which are to be built opposite the palace and the ‘parliament’, pointing out that these facilities, which are set to include an amphitheatre, a cycle path, and football and basketball facilities will be open to the public. These facilities, he said, will be “exemplary”.

Hasipoglu was more intently interested in the political messaging of the complex, and said it complements the Turkish Cypriot authorities’ work towards promoting a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem and expressed his gratitude to Erdogan for helping this cause on its way.

However, while Turkey is paying for the complex’s construction, the bill for its operation and maintenance will be footed by the Turkish Cypriot taxpayer.

The issue of the building’s cost came up in recent days as the north’s ‘parliamentary’ finance committee deliberated a much-enlarged budget for the office of the Turkish Cypriot leader, with much of that increase coming from the cost of maintaining the new ‘presidential’ palace once it opens its doors.

Firstly, the cost of insuring the current ‘presidential’ palace, the building opened in 1930 after being designed by British architect Robert MacCartney, and which has housed the highest-ranking Turkish Cypriot politician in various capacities since 1960, stood at 292,000TL (€8,077) in 2024. Next year, however, the new building will cost 10.5m TL (€290,430) to insure, and the expenses do not stop there.

The current palace’s yearly cleaning budget was 2.9m TL (€80,241) for this year, but this has been forecast to rise to 9.9m TL (€273,834), and while the old building’s yearly electricity bill stood at 7.7m TL (€212,892) this year, that has been forecast to rise to a whopping 141.8m TL (€3.9m) at the new palace next year.

These figures were disclosed by committee member and opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Sami Ozuslu, but aside from the numbers and an offhand comment from him that “placing such a terrible burden on the public budget is nothing but the height of waste and irresponsibility”, the CTP has been largely silent on the issue in recent months

This appears to be a political calculation and falls under what has been dubbed in other countries as the “Ming vase strategy”, wherein opposition parties tread lightly and carefully to avoid dropping the “Ming vase”, and thus refrain from forthright interventions on some issues.

If polling is correct, the CTP is 11 months out from having its candidate elected as Turkish Cypriot leader for only the second time in its 54-year-history and, when the next ‘parliamentary’ elections are called at some point between now and February 2027, they will be the largest party for the first time since the 2013 elections.

As such, they do not want to upset the apple cart and definitely do not want to find themselves in positions where they are directly opposing Recep Tayyip Erdogan and ergo directly opposing Turkey itself. After all, it was Erdogan who announced the project back in 2021 after describing the Quirini bastion mansion as a “slum”.

In a Turkish Cypriot political landscape which is now coming to terms with the preference Erdogan showed for Ersin Tatar at the 2020 Turkish Cypriot leadership elections after his predecessor Mustafa Akinci’s outspoken criticism of Turkish foreign policy, silence on matters such as the new palace is the path to victory the CTP has chosen.

Ozuslu and every other leading member of the CTP was offered the chance to comment on the complex, but the party has collectively battened down the hatches and waited for the storm to pass, in the hope that within ten months of its opening, it will be their candidate Tufan Erhurman who is living in the new palace.

As for what will be left behind on the Quirini bastion and at the Greek Cypriot owned former Dianellos cigarette factory, both will be converted into museums.

The DP’s Akpinar told the Cyprus Mail the Quirini bastion mansion will be a “symbol of the international and Turkish Cypriot community’s struggle”. The former cigarette factory, he said, will be partially converted into a museum, as it was in that building that the ‘TRNC’ declared its independence in 1983.

“We aim to keep it open to international visits as it is where a large part of the Turkish Cypriots’ social memory is located, in the sense of a symbol of their struggle,” he said.

Turkish Cypriot Nicosia mayor Mehmet Harmanci offered a slightly different idea, with the Turkish Cypriot Nicosia city council having passed a resolution for the former factory to become a museum of Nicosia as a city, among other things.

“Imagine creating a place just outside the city walls where buses can easily enter and exit, with areas such as a youth centre and a library. We can also create an entrepreneurship centre for young people,” he told Kibris Postasi TV.

“The city needs archives, a memory, and studies. We will fulfil our political duty to ensure that the historical value of these two buildings is passed on to future generations.”

Hasipoglu added that the mansion atop the Quirini bastion and the former factory have “more than fulfilled their historical mission”.