British Cypriots

A number of famous British people are of Cypriot ancestry, including musicians George Michael, Cat Stevens and B Young, footballer Leon Osman, comedians Jamie Demetriou and Natasia Demetriou, visual artist Tracey Emin, and politician Lord Adonis.

[1] Only a handful of marriages involving Cypriots are recorded at London's Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in the years before 1918.

[3] Home Office figures show that roughly 10,000 Cypriots fled to the UK, the majority of them refugees, but many of them subsequently returned to the island.

[2] The increase in post-war rents in central London had forced many Cypriot immigrants to move north within the city.

[3] In oral history interviews conducted by academic Nergis Canefe in the late 1990s, Turkish Cypriots in London tended to define themselves as Anglo-Cypriot, particularly if they were born in the UK.

[14] Cyprus appeared amongst the top ten non-British countries of birth for the first time in the 1961 Census, which recorded 42,000 Cypriot-born people living in England and Wales.

[25] A similar figure was given by then Minister for Europe Caroline Flint, who, giving a speech at the London School of Economics in February 2009, stated that more than 300,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots were living in the UK.

[26] This figure was repeated by the then Minister for Europe, Leo Docherty, at the Celebration of Cyprus Gala Dinner in January 2023, organised by the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK.

[28] The Turkish consulate in London has said that 130,000 TRNC nationals were living in the UK;[29] this was reiterated in a 2009 report by the Department for Communities and Local Government which said that this is not a "true indication" of the population because it "excludes British born and dual heritage children".

[37] More recently, in 2019, Arthur Scott-Geddes of The National said that "as many as 400,000 Turkish Cypriots" were "concentrated in the areas of north and north-east London including Hackney, Enfield and Haringey".

Small numbers of Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs and those of other religions were recorded, totaling 0.6 per cent of the Cypriot-born resident population.

[17] Analysis of the census shows that Cypriot-born people were found in large numbers in the London boroughs of Enfield, Haringey, Barnet and Hackney.

Mustafa Djamgoz is Professor of Cancer Biology at Imperial College London and Chairman of the College of Medicine’s Science Council;[50] Tracey Emin, CBE, (Turkish Cypriot father) is an artist and a Royal Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts;[51][52] Touker Suleyman is a fashion retail entrepreneur and a "dragon" on Dragon's Den;[53] Hussein Chalayan, MBE, is the winner of the British Designer of the Year in 1999 and 2000;[54] Selin Kiazim is a celebrity chef and winner of the Great British Menu;[55] Ramadan Güney was the founder of the first Turkish mosque in the UK (Shacklewell Lane Mosque) and former owner of the UK's largest cemetery Brookwood Cemetery;[56][57] Richard Hickmet was the first British-Turkish Cypriot politician who was a Conservative MP in 1983–87;[58] Meral Hussein-Ece, OBE, is the first Turkish Cypriot member of the House of Lords;[53] Alp Mehmet, MVO, was the first of two foreign-born politicians to be appointed ambassador by the UK, having served in Iceland in 2004;[53] and Emma Edhem is a lawyer and councilwoman of the City of London Corporation.

[53] In music, notable performers include Erol Alkan;[59] Işın Karaca (Turkish Cypriot mother)[60] Ziynet Sali[61] and B Young.