Moroccan nationals who studied at universities in northern Cyprus have announced their intention to hold a sit-in protest outside the education ministry in Rabat, with the country continuing to refuse to recognise degrees awarded in the island’s northern third.

According to Moroccan news website 24saa, a coordination committee comprising affected students and graduates said that it has “exhausted various dialogue and institutional means”, but that “in light of the absence of fair and practical solutions” to the issue, it will now embark on the sit-in protest.

Historically, the Moroccan authorities had accepted that degrees issued in northern Cyprus were equivalent to those issued in Morocco and elsewhere in the world when returning Moroccans applied for equivalence certificates, as it considered them to have been validated by Turkey’s higher education council.

However, this changed in 2024 with immediate effect, leaving Moroccans who were already in Cyprus, and those who had graduated in 2023 and 2024, unable to get the degrees they were to obtain validated upon their return to their country of origin.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita had said of the decision in April this year that “Morocco’s position based on non-recognition of what is known as north Cyprus directly affects the issue of equivalence of university degrees obtained from its institutions”.

This, he said, “makes it impossible for the Moroccan authorities to verify their validity or give them legal status”.

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Previously, he had fielded a question on the matter from Morocco’s opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD) in January and said that a “series of meetings” with impacted graduates and their parents, as well as with the country’s education ministry, would be held, “with the aim of addressing all aspects of the problem”.

Nonetheless, he remained resolute in his stance against recognising the universities, saying that “any administrative or technical interaction with these institutions could be interpreted as tacit recognition of them, especially in light of the absence of international recognition of them”.

He added that northern Cyprus’ lack of United Nations recognition “requires Morocco to be cautious in dealing with this issue with its diplomatic principles”.

“The process of equivalating degrees may be exploited as an entry point to impose a kind of indirect recognition of this entity. The incentives and facilities offered to Moroccan students who study there fall within this framework,” he said.

As such, he said that finding a solution to the matter “requires developing appropriate technical formulae which simultaneously take into account the national interest and maintain the consistency of the kingdom’s foreign policy, while avoiding any potential diplomatic repercussions”.