A Greek Cypriot municipal council has decided to rename a street honoring Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Türkiye, in the historic Turkish Cypriot quarter of the coastal city of Paphos (Baf).
The Paphos municipal council approved by a majority vote a proposal to rename Kemal Atatürk Street in the Moutallos neighborhood as “Memory and Hope Street,” according to local reports.
Deputy Mayor Angelos Onisiforou also supported the change.
Moutallos was predominantly inhabited by Turkish Cypriots before 1974, and several streets in the neighborhood bear the names of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot historical figures.
The decision follows earlier efforts to change street names in the neighborhood. In May, local officials backed a proposal to rename Kemal Atatürk Street after Nikos Kapetanidis.
Kapetanidis, after whom the street was set to be named, was a journalist who published a newspaper in Trabzon and was sentenced to death by an Independence Tribunal in 1921 amid efforts to counter Pontic Greek armed groups and their supporters in the Black Sea region during the Turkish War of Independence.
DISY municipal council member Nina Gkaraklidou said at the time that the proposal had been approved, while indicating that efforts to rename other streets in the area would continue because some existing names were considered “offensive.”
The initiative previously drew criticism from Turkish Cypriot authorities.
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) Prime Minister Ünal Üstel described attempts to remove Atatürk’s name from streets as a “hostile attitude,” accusing the Greek Cypriot side of contradicting its calls for peace and goodwill.
Üstel said Turkish Cypriots had consistently respected the religious values, symbols and traditions of the Greek Cypriot community and expected the same respect in return.
