Karpaz Gate Marina management transferred out of Israeli hands

Management of the Karpaz Gate Marina near the village of Ayia Triada in the Karpas peninsula has been transferred out of Israeli hands and put under the operation of Turkish Cypriot company the Arkin group.

New investments into the marina will now be made exclusively by the Arkin group, and it will be directly managed by Arkin group director Erbil Arkin.

The Karpaz Gate Marina first opened in 2011, and cost around €120m to build, and as such constituted the largest Israeli investment in the north – a fact which had caused concern in Turkey and among some Turkish Cypriots, though has thus far seen very little traffic.

According to the north’s ‘tourism ministry’, just 113 people arrived at the Karpaz Gate Marina from abroad in the first seven months of the year, of whom seven were Turkish Cypriots, 39 were Turkish citizens and 67 were from other countries.

This figure is a reduction on last year’s statistics, when 433 people arrived from abroad, with 303 people having arrived from abroad in 2022.

According to Rauf Denktash’s former advisor Sabahattin Ismail, Denktash had initially rented the land to Turkish Cypriot magnate Asil Nadir in the 1980s, with Nadir reportedly planning to build the marina himself.

However, Nadir then transferred the land to British-Israeli David Lewis in return for $10 million (€9m).

Ismail said Lewis had demanded that the marina be given ‘official port of entry status’ by the north’s ‘government’, and also extended the lease from 49 to 99 years, while giving the marina “free zone” status.

The marina then found itself in further controversy after Turkish Cypriot businessman and current ‘MP’ Serhat Akpinar in 2015 said he had been asked by the north’s customs department to provide entry and exit documents when sailing into Kyrenia from the marina.

“Is there now a separate republic in Karpasia?” he asked, adding, “I said that Karpasia was declared a separate republic so we probably need to go through a different process,” he said.

It also briefly made headlines in the Republic when, in 2017, Sea Alliance, the marina’s management company, bid alongside the Mace group to manage the Larnaca port and marina.

Sea Alliance eventually pulled out of the bidding, and the tender was awarded to Kition Ocean Holdings.