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Armenochori is a village situated in the Limassol district, ten kilometers northeast of the city of Limassol. Armenochori means “Armenian village” in Greek. In 1958, the Turkish Cypriots adopted the alternative name Esenköy, literally meaning “windy village.” 

 

 

As can be seen in the above chart, Armenochori/Esenköy was a Turkish Cypriot village from the Ottoman period. Although some Greek Cypriot families lived there between 1891 and 1931, almost all of them left the village in the 1940s. Over the course of the British period, the population of the village doubled, rising from 89 persons in 1891 to 162 in 1960.

Displacement:

The five remaining Greek Cypriots (per the 1946 census) left the village sometime before 1960. Whether or not this movement was related to the conflict needs to be scrutinized. No one else was displaced from this village during the 1950s emergency years, nor during the intercommunal fighting of 1963-64. However, the village served as a reception center for displaced Turkish Cypriots who fled the nearby village of Mathikoloni in 1964. Richard Patrick recorded only one displaced Turkish Cypriot still living in the village in 1971. The first conflict-related displacement from Armenochori/Esenköy took place in 1974, when the village’s Turkish Cypriot population was transferred to the northern part of the island. The total number of displaced Turkish Cypriots from Armenochori/Esenköy can be estimated to be 225 (224 in the 1973 census). They were mainly resettled in Dikomo(217) village.

Current Inhabitants:

Currently the village is mainly inhabited by displaced Greek Cypriot families from the island’s north. The last Cypriot census of 2001 put the total population at 167.  

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Websites:

• http://www.cyprus-village.com/ (for the villages)
• http://news.karpasha.com/
• http://human-rights-archaeology.blogspot.com/
• http://kypros.org/Occupied_Cyprus/ (for the villages in the north)