TURKISH Cypriots living in the UK have complained about being unable to reach the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’s (TRNC) London Representative Office, while officials express they are struggling to meet the intense demand of the citizens.
Citizens who have been trying to make an appointment from the TRNC London Representation are able to do as their phone calls have been unanswered. Our readers who reached out to us stated that they called the representative office “hundreds of times” to get an appointment, but could not reach them. Upon these complaints, we, as Londra Gazete, contacted the TRNC London Representative Office for a response
In September of last year, a social media post by the Representative office stated that “telephone lines are extremely busy on a daily basis” and the quickest form of contact would be emailing to book appointments.
Erol Memiş
Speaking to Londra Gazete Erol Memiş said “I want to certify a document, I am old, I have health problems, and I do not know how to use social media or send mail. I have been calling the representative for a long time every day to set up an appointment, but no one answers. It is not easy for me to go out and go there, I thought of taking this risk and going to the representative office…”
While Ali Hasan said to as he was unable to book an appointment: “I couldn’t complete my power of attorney process and eventually I chose to go to Cyprus. Why can’t we reach our representative by calling? Why is it so difficult? It will take one day for us to go to central London in a busy work schedule. However, we cannot reach anyone to set up an appointment…”
Londra Gazete also called the TRNC Representative office over a 2 week period, on different days and times thought the day but was unable to speak to anyone.
In an interview with the TRNC London Representative Çimen Keskin and the TRNC London Consul Namık Cafer on this subject, the officials express that some 300,000 or more Turkish Cypriot live in the UK, according to unofficial figures, and stated that the representative office has difficulties in keeping up with the intense demand with its current staff.
Cafer stated that the representative office was working overtime to complete the documentation and provide services even on weekends when necessary. “Sometimes we get a hundred phone calls an hour, we can’t keep up with that,” he stated.
TRNC London Representative Çimen Keskin and London Consul Namık Cafer
Keskin said to Londra Gazete express their top priority is ensuring that citizens are able to reach the services they need but due to a backlog of requests following the pandemic: “This increase continues at a high rate today, ‘normalization’ has not yet been fully reached. In this context, there has been a significant increase in the number of our citizens trying to reach our Representation Office via telephone in order to obtain information. This situation causes a backlog in our telephone exchange and makes it difficult to reach our Representative Office via telephone.”
Going on to say that for this reason, they recommend anyone trying to book an appointment to email their contact details and the details of which services they require. “…Our citizens are kindly requested to send their information and appointment requests to the london@mfa.gov.ct.tr e-mail address instead of contacting our Representative Office by phone.”