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Kantou is a village situated in the Limassol district, four kilometers north of Episkopi/Yalova and on the road to Pakhna. The origin of the name is obscure. Turkish Cypriots adopted the alternative name Çanakkale in 1958, meaning “Gallipoli.” 

 

 

As can be seen in the above chart, Kantou/Çanakkale was a Turkish Cypriot village from the Ottoman period. Although some Greek Cypriots lived there until 1946, they all left the village in the 1950s. The population of the village increased significantly throughout the British period, rising from 164 persons in 1891 to 513 in 1960.

Displacement:

No one was displaced from this village during the 1950s emergency years, nor were there any displacements during the intercommunal fighting of 1963-64. However, the village served as a reception center for displaced Turkish Cypriots who fled the nearby villages of Kilani(266), Silikou/Silifke(280), Gerovasa/Yerovası(264), Kivides/Alsandık(267) and Malia/Bağlarbaşı(270) in 1964. Richard Patrick recorded 107 displaced Turkish Cypriots still living in the village in 1971. The first conflict-related displacement from Avdimou/Düzkaya took place in 1974, when the village’s Turkish Cypriot population fled to the Akroteri British Base Area in July. Although some fled clandestinely to the north, most remained in the Base Area until January 1975, when they requested to be transferred via Turkey to the northern part of the island. They were subsequently resettled in Kato(047) and Pano Zodeia(083)/Aşağı and Yukarı Bostancı villages in the Morphou/Güzelyurt area of the Nicosia district. The total number of displaced Turkish Cypriots from Kantou/Çanakkale can be estimated to be 600-650 (513 in the 1960 census).

Current Inhabitants:

Currently the village is mainly inhabited by displaced Greek Cypriots from the north. Most of these had initially taken refuge in the Kolossi Refugee tent camp after fleeing the north, subsequently moving to Kantou in December 1975 after the RoC government repaired the village’s empty Turkish Cypriot houses. The last Cypriot census of 2001 put the total population at 397.  

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• Standing Cypriot Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names (2007), “Οδηγος Τυποποιησης Ονοματων (Guide to Standardized Names),” Nicosia: Ministry of Education and Culture.
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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)