‘We should open our doors to the world’

THE TRNC should “open its doors to the world” the Cyprus Turkish Hoteliers Association (KITOB) has urged.

In a statement issued this week, KITOB pointed out that countries whose economy is dependent on tourism have started to reopen their tourism sectors.

“With [Covid-19] vaccinations reaching a certain level in the TRNC, it seems that the time has come for us to begin the ‘normalisation process’ and open our doors to the world,” the statement said.

KITOB said that it supported comments by Tourism and Environment Minister Fikri Ataoğlu who said “in July, people who have been vaccinated should be able to enter the country without a PCR test and those who have not been should be able to enter the country with a [negative] PCR test result”.

They also called for the “same EU criteria used by South Cyprus to also be applied in our country”.

Addressing the TRNC’s Communicable Diseases High Committee and the Health Ministry, the KITOB statement added: “As we are competing with the world, we advise that we should start to get back to normal before it’s too late.”

On Wednesday Mr Ataoğlu said that the government plans to relax Covid-19 restrictions on the number of flights to the TRNC from July 1 onwards.

According to measures announced on June 15, a maximum of six scheduled flights per day with a maximum of 200 people on each flight are allowed into the TRNC, while a maximum of 11 charter flights per week are allowed only for “indoor hotel tourism”.