NICOSIA, Cyprus-There will be less cheer in some Turk­ish Cypri­ot house­holds this hol­i­day sea­son as the grinch ap­peared in an un­like­ly guise-toy-snatch­ing cus­toms agents on the eth­ni­cal­ly split is­land en­forc­ing a clam­p­down on shop­ping from the Greek Cypri­ot south. Of­fi­cials on the Turk­ish Cypri­ot side say they had to step in be­cause it was hurt­ing the break­away north's tiny econ­o­my. It was an­oth­er strange twist to the Mediter­ranean is­land's on­go­ing di­vi­sion that un­fold­ed in 1974 when Turkey in­vad­ed af­ter a coup by Greek Cypri­ot sup­port­ers of union with Greece. The in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized south pros­pered and now en­joys the ben­e­fits of the is­land's Eu­ro­pean Union mem­ber­ship.

But the Turk­ish Cypri­ot state in the north-recog­nised on­ly by Turkey-has lan­guished in iso­la­tion and re­mains un­able to trade di­rect­ly with the world. New shop­ping op­por­tu­ni­ties opened for Turk­ish Cypri­ots when cross­ing re­stric­tions were eased in 2003. Many flocked to glob­al brands like Swe­den's fur­ni­ture chain Ikea, while Jum­bo toy stores quick­ly be­came a fa­vorite. A &eu­ro;135 ($176) dai­ly cap on goods each Turk­ish Cypri­ot shop­per was al­lowed to bring across the check­points was of­ten flout­ed. Al­though Mus­lim, Turk­ish Cypri­ots fol­low sec­u­lar hol­i­day tra­di­tions like dec­o­rat­ing Christ­mas trees and ex­chang­ing gifts on New Year's Eve.

With the hol­i­day sea­son gear­ing up, Turk­ish Cypri­ots be­gan stock­ing up. Then last week, Turk­ish Cypri­ot cus­toms agents got tough, seiz­ing items from re­turn­ing shop­pers-in­clud­ing toys-to the dis­may of fam­i­lies. The crack­down worked-Turk­ish Cypri­ot shop­ping at Jum­bo is down more than 50 per cent, a se­nior Jum­bo ex­ec­u­tive who did not wish to be named dis­cussing com­pa­ny turnover said Fri­day. Ac­tion to halt the mon­ey flight south­wards had to be tak­en be­cause it hurt Turk­ish Cypri­ot busi­ness­es, Turk­ish Cypri­ot Cham­ber of Com­merce Deputy Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ke­mal Baykalli said. "The rules were not im­ple­ment­ed cor­rect­ly in the past and this gave the il­lu­sion that this was OK," Baykalli said. "We are in fa­vor of free trade, as long as it's based on fair com­pe­ti­tion."

Ac­cord­ing to cred­it card trans­ac­tion proces­sor JCC, Turk­ish Cypri­ots - with a pop­u­la­tion of 250,000-spent &eu­ro;16.47 mil­lion ($21.52 mil­lion) in south­ern stores in the first 10 months of this year-2.5 times more than Greek Cypri­ots - num­ber­ing 800,000-spent on pur­chas­es from the north. (AP)