About Us
The Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network (CIReN) is an independent non-profit investigative media platform committed to the highest professional and ethical standards of quality journalism in the public interest.
CIReN provides support to professional journalists across Cyprus seeking an independent platform to pursue and publish work that exposes social, financial, environmental, political and institutional wrongdoing. Their stories appear here in English, Greek and Turkish, and where possible are translated in all three languages to reach the widest possible audience in Cyprus.
Supported by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) and the Institute for Mass Media (IMME), CIReN emerged from a training project developed in 2022, under which journalists from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities connected over public interest stories impacting the island. The project made clear that corruption and poor governance affect both sides of the UN buffer zone, often feeding on the decades-long political division.
CIReN’s mission is to support not-for-profit reporting in the public interest, rooted in rigorous research and fact-checking, strict editorial processes, and transparency. We aim to work with independent media and journalists, local universities, relevant NGOs, and other organizations to foster this brand of meaningful journalism.
For inquiries and pitches: editor@ciren.cy
Managing Editors
Esra Aygin is an award-winning journalist, who specializes in Cyprus. She is also the Cyprus correspondent of Reporters Without Borders.
She has been working as a reporter since the year 2000 both as a freelancer and for various local and international media such as the world’s biggest news agency, the Associated Press (AP) and the American financial news and media company Bloomberg L.P. She had a number of first-page stories on Cyprus published in leading newspapers such as the International Herald Tribune and Washington Post.
Esra played a central role in the first corporate partnership between a Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot newspaper. She also co-authored a glossary of offensive phrases used by the media in Cyprus titled “Words that Matter” to encourage sensitive reporting as part of a project by OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
Esra most recently worked as the north Cyprus editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) – a global network of investigative journalists with staff on six continents. She also wrote regular columns in the Cyprus Mail, the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus.
Kyriakos Pieridis is a journalist specializing in Cyprus and EU affairs. He was recently the Cyprus correspondent for the Greek newspaper “Efsyn” and a weekly columnist for the Cypriot newspaper “Politis.”
Kyriakos has worked as a reporter, newscaster, documentary producer, and editor-in-chief in various mainstream Cypriot media since 1990, including the public TV and radio CyBC for more than 20 years.
Kyriakos has specialized on EU affairs, and was a member of Cyprus’s official Negotiating Team led by the former President of the Republic, George Vassiliou. As a CyBC correspondent, he covered critical European Council summits from 1993 to 2004, and negotiations for the resolution of the Cyprus issue until today.
Actively engaged in civil society, Kyriakos was a founding member of the NGO OPEK, and since 2004 has expanded his expertise into areas concerning rule of law, anti-corruption, the promotion of pluralism and media freedom, and sustainable development. He is co-president of the bicommunal group of journalists from Cyprus jointly represented in the Association of European Journalists (AEJ).
Board of Advisors
Meral Birinci-Sonan is an advocate and barrister-at-law, with 20 years of experience practicing law in Cyprus.
Meral runs the Birinci-Sonan law firm in Nicosia, where her work involves negotiation and mediation for and with clients, as well as litigation. She is an active member of civil society, and is currently serving on the steering board of the Cyprus Women Bi-Communal Coalition (CWBC) aimed at championing the involvement of women in the Cyprus peace process; and the supervisory board of the Alzheimer’s Association. She previously served as a member of the Technical Committee on Humanitarian Matters between 2015-2020, during the tenure of the former Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci.
Achilleas Demetriades is a practising advocate in Cyprus since 1988 and is the senior partner at Lellos P Demetriades Law Office LLC in Nicosia. His practice includes human rights and he has over 35 years of experience representing applicants before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). He has conducted cases relating to torture, property rights, fair trial, private life, freedom of speech and discrimination against Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and the UK. He also has experience before the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in the execution of ECtHR judgments.
Achilleas served as the Chairperson of the Human Rights Committee of the Cyprus Bar Association (2015-2021) and is a member of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) Permanent Delegation (PD) to Strasbourg since 2018, over which he currently presides. He is also a founding member of TRUTH NOW, an NGO advocating for a “Truth Commission for the Missing” in Cyprus. He was called to the Bar of England & Wales in 1985 holds an LLM from Georgetown University in Washington DC and is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Mete Hatay is a political analyst, and a Senior Research Consultant at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo’s (PRIO) Cyprus Centre since 2003. He has published academic articles, including in the American Ethnologist, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is also the author of numerous reports and policy briefs, particularly on subjects of demography, property, and cultural heritage.
He co-published Sovereignty Suspended: Building the So-Called State in 2019, and authored three books in Turkish: Eşikteki Meseleler (Söylem Yayınları, 2019); Kıbrıs’ın En Uzun Yüzyılı (Kalkedon/Khora, 2021); and Kıbrıs: Bitmeyen Yaz (Kalkedon/Khora 2023). Mete has also co-produced two documentaries: Başgan, a full-length film about north Cyprus politics, and the short film Art Beyond the Divide, about the ways that art can be used to overcome long-term divisions.
Nicholas Karides is the director of the Institute for Mass Media (ΙΜΜΕ), a non-profit research organisation at the Universitas Foundation. He was born in London, went to school in Cyprus and studied at Pennsylvania State University, Middlesex Polytechnic and the London School of Journalism. After a spell as a reporter in London he worked for the Delegation of the European Commission in Nicosia.
Following Cyprus’ accession to the EU he set up Ampersand Public Affairs and was later among the founders and contributing editors of the news outlet Offsite (2007-2010). He is the author of Knowing One’s Place (2017) a collection of essays on journalism, history and football. He’s a member of the team drafting the annual report on Cyprus for the EUI’s Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom.
Niels Kadritzke is a German journalist, political scientist and author. He is particularly interested in the Middle East and Southern Europe, including Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.
Kadritzke was head of the foreign department at the Wochenpost and a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. He is one of the editors of the German edition of Le Mond Diplomatique. He lives in Berlin, Warsaw and half of the year in Greece.
Since his reports on the causes and social consequences of the debt crisis he is running a blog covering Greek affairs in depth.
Supported by
