The north’s population is 590,000, excluding foreign students and Turkish soldiers, ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Tuesday night.

Speaking to Diyalog TV, he said the ruling coalition is working to create an “address-based census system” to record the north’s population, with that system said to be “80 per cent complete”.

Additionally, he said, “the number of foreign students registered with the migration department is clear”, while the number of non-Turkish Cypriots registered with the north’s authorities as being employed in the north is also said to be “clear”.

When the project is completed, we will announce the entire population to the people,” he said.

Unal Ustel

The question of how many people live in the north was a hot topic last year, with many, including ruling coalition part DP ‘MP’ Serhat Akpinar and Turkish Cypriot mukhtars’ association chairman Akay Darbaz, suggesting that as many as a million people now live in the north.

Akpinar later  told the Cyprus Mail that the north “must limit and stop” its handing out of ‘citizenships’ to stem its rapid population growth.

Others produced different estimates, however, with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar having said in November 2023 that the north’s official population at the time was 410,000.

The north’s statistics institute, meanwhile, announced in January last year that there were just 399,727 people living in the north.

Typically, the larger estimates include large numbers of foreign students at the north’s universities, with over 20 universities currently operational in the north.

Tatar had said last year that there are students from 144 different countries studying at the north’s numerous universities, while local officials had complained that the rapid growth in population numbers had left local authorities with inadequate funds to provide services to residents.

File photo: Mehmet Harmanci
File photo: Mehmet Harmanci

Turkish Cypriot Nicosia mayor Mehmet Harmanci, for example, had said that half of the official population of the capital’s northern sector are now university students.

Within the borders of the Nicosia Turkish Municipality [LTB], there are 40,000 university students, which is half of the official population of our municipality and a third of our unofficial population,” he said in November 2023.

Turkish Cypriot Kyrenia mayor Murat Senkul, meanwhile, said his town’s population may be as high as 150,000, and called on the ruling coalition to be “serious” about population growth.

He said the Turkish Cypriot Kyrenia municipality receives contributions from the ruling coalition based on a population of 47,000 people, and that this lack of funding causes financial problems.

“The situation is not so obvious in Nicosia, for example. There, if the projection is incorrect, they receive funds based on a population of 80,000 rather than 100,000. Our discrepancy is very large,” he added.

Meanwhile, multiple reports in recent years have suggested that the number of Turkish soldiers stationed in the north is in the region of 40,000.