No doubt, it was a rescue operation for Turkish Cypriots at the time. The years went by and it became very apparent that the operation was not so innocent. It had a wider coverage as a tailor-made occupation project, in which almost all possessions of Turkish Cypriots (including people’s hearts and minds) were held hostage.
In the first couple of years, the forcible population transfers took place. The pretext given by the Turkish government was to meet requirements in the lack of a farming workforce, although there wasn’t really such a necessity.
Following their arrival, the land captured from displaced Greek Cypriots was distributed to settlers free of charge. Village names in north Cyprus were immediately replaced with new ones in parallel with the incoming population’s original settlement names in Turkey. The gates of north were wide opened to everybody from “the Mainland”.
