In March 2024, Bülent Dizdarlı, a respected Turkish Cypriot doctor and former head of the medical association, speculated on his Facebook page that the population of the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) had reached two million. Two months after that, Resmiye Canaltay, a parliamentary representative from the governing National Unity Party (UBP), asserted that the figure must be at least 800,000. These wildly disparate figures were part of a wave of population speculation that had begun several months earlier, in October 2023, when the Prime Minister, Ünal Üstel, had responded to questions in parliament regarding a proposed five-year development plan.

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