North police board bus headed for protest, prevent it from going

The Turkish Cypriot police on Wednesday boarded a bus which was due to take schoolchildren to a protest outside the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel’s office and prevented it from travelling.

The bus was set to take children from Karpasia to the protest, which was being staged against the ruling coalition’s alleged negligence on the matter of school transport in light of the overturning of a school bus in the Karpas peninsula village of Yialousa, which saw 28 children and the bus’ driver hospitalised.

Newspaper Yeniduzen even reported that some of the children on board the bus were taken to a police station.

The police’s stated reasoning for stopping the bus was that the bus is licenced to carry tourists, and “did not have a permit to carry schoolchildren”.

However, others were less than convinced, with Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ trade union (Ktoeos) secretary-general Tahir Gokcebel furious at the move.

“The regime has resorted to banning and obstructing protests, just like in Turkey,” he told Yeniduzen.

Former Turkish Cypriot chief negotiator Kudret Ozersay also condemned the move in a social media post.

“Who, with what right, is obstructing the constitutional right to protest and freedom of travel? Who takes our children, whose mental state has been disrupted in an accident due to weaknesses in our transportation system … to the police station, and why? What are you trying to do?” he wrote.

It was reported that once the bus was stopped in its tracks, the parents of many children took matters into their own hands and, where possible, drove children to Nicosia to take part in the protest.

A total of 29 people were hospitalised when the bus crashed last week, with family members having gathered outside northern Nicosia’s Dr Burhan Nalbantoglu hospital in the accident’s aftermath.

Blame for the accident was laid squarely at the feet of the ruling coalition by children and parents, with ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli having said in the accident’s aftermath that the bus had overturned due to a brake failure.

In response, many were quick to point out the age and poor level of upkeep of buses across the north, with buses built in the 1950s, some with leaking roofs and mechanical malfunctions still being used to take children to and from school.

They spoke to television channel Kanal Sim, with one mother claiming that while the bus only had a capacity of 20 people, 40 people were on board.

A number of children had reportedly decided not to get on board as they “knew that the brakes of that bus were broken”.

Erhan Arikli pointed his finger at ‘education minister’ Nazim Cavusoglu and his ‘ministry’.

He said that at present, school buses in the north are being run as a “profit source” and the system is “open to serious abuse”, with transport providers signing contracts directly with the ‘education ministry’.

“The inspection stations do not have sufficient equipment. Vehicle inspections are done manually. Even the worst vehicles can pass the inspection,” he said, before going on to say that “the vehicles are very old”, and that he would present the matter to the north’s cabinet.