UBP mayoral candidate Koral Bozkurt vows to seek closure of UN camp in Famagusta

Famagusta, Cyprus. Koral Bozkurt, the candidate of the Turkish Cypriot ruling party UBP in the town’s upcoming mayoral election, said on Friday evening that he would try to shut down the United Nations peacekeepers’ camp in Famagusta if elected.

Pledge at the rally

Speaking at a rally in the town centre, Bozkurt declared: “The United Nations camp no longer has a place in Famagusta.” He said he would show the determination required, drawing on the support of voters, and would work together with them to get the camp moved out.

Related: Elam urges Real Madrid to cancel youth football camp in the occupied north

RelatedElam urges Real Madrid to cancel youth football camp in the occupied north

The camp and its history

The site is called Camp General Stefanik. It serves as the headquarters of “sector 4” of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus (Unficyp), which is staffed by 240 Slovak peacekeepers in total.

The camp has existed for 110 years. The British first set it up in 1916 as the Karaolos prisoner-of-war camp, where they held Ottoman soldiers captured during the Arab Revolt, the Gallipoli Campaign, and the Sinai and Palestine campaigns of the First World War.

It later accommodated members of the White Army who escaped Russia after the communists defeated them in the civil war. Its best-known use came after the Second World War, when it served as a place of detention for Jewish people who had intended to settle in Palestine.

Earlier calls for closure

The idea of closing the camp has been put forward before. In 2018 Kudret Ozersay raised it with the UN while serving as ‘foreign minister’, at a time when the current Turkish Cypriot leader, Tufan Erhurman, was ‘prime minister’.

In October of that year, Ozersay told the Turkish Cypriot news agency Tak that “the area can be transformed into a park with trees, where Famagusta can breathe, and be made available for public use”. He added that the Turkish Cypriot side now wanted the UN to leave the area.

According to Ozersay, the Turkish Cypriot authorities had offered to help Unficyp identify other sites for its military camps. He stressed that a military facility and its activities in the middle of the town were, in his view, neither suitable nor consistent with public safety.

Eight years later, the camp has not been moved.

The candidate

Bozkurt is well known in Famagusta as the chairman of Magusa Turk Gucu, the town’s most successful Turkish Cypriot football club. Besides the backing of the UBP, he has received the endorsement of the DP, the junior partner in the ruling coalition.