A concrete skeleton on the road into the resort town of Kyrenia is all that has become of a plan to build Northern Cyprus’s first shopping mall. The empty frame is a testament to a property bubble that has popped – with severe consequences for this tiny economy.

Before 2007, the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – recognised only by Ankara – was a developers’ paradise, as Britons especially poured in to buy holiday homes at comparatively low prices.