Today’s preplanned rally organised by the trade union platform, political parties and other organised groups of Northern Cyprus was much larger than the one that took place on the 28th January with more than 60000 people taking part. The rally was attended even by unions of opposing political parties.

The main slogan was the demand for self-governance/sovereignty and less control from Turkey and were directed to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Banners with slogans such as “Erdogan take your hands off us”, “We’re the Turkish Cypriots, who are you?” ,”Keep your money. We don’t want them”, were carried by thousands of people. The demonstrators attempted to post flags of Cyprus but were immediately confiscated by the “police”. Arrests were made in some cases when some people refused to hand in their banners. Reports say that there were also Turkish flags placed by the government before the rally started.