Ok, so here goes. My first source of information was from palo.com.cy.

This website is billed as "Palo is an independent, alternative, centralized way of presenting all Greek-speaking news".

Palo said the following:

What happened at Tyllira in August 1964

• According to the UN secretary-general’s report to the Security Council in September 1964, just before the battle of Tylliria, the Turkish Cypriot bridgehead around Kokkina and Mansoura was considered dangerous by the Cypriot government.

• Turkish Cypriots were occupying the villages of Kokkina, Mansoura, Alavga, Selain t’Api and Ayios Theodoros as well as having defensive positions in the surrounding hills.

• It claimed “with some justification” that the Turkish Cypriots had been smuggling arms and men into the bridgehead in order to strengthen their positions.

• The government build-up began in the last days of July and continued until August 7. On August 3, some 900 national guardsmen were deployed around Kato Pyrgos.

This is one of the many water features. I think there were six or seven in total, which, given the small population, is an awful lot. This one has been modded, though I can't think why. I can't imagine drinking out of the metal container would be any easier than drinking out of the trough.

So to summarise Palo (or the original Cyprus Mail article it got the story from), intercommunal tensions were mounting in the 60s, and the GC suspected that arms were being shipped from Turkey to these villages.

So what happened next?

Somebody clearly doesn't like water features, this one is on the top of a small hill, next to the house shown in the picture with the caption "Red Rocks". For some reason it has been turned upside down, which was no mean feat.

Anyway, we investigated a bit further, and found that the Battle of Tillyria also had its own Wikipedia page.

From Wikipedia:

The Battle of Tillyria or Battle of Kokkina[1] also known as Erenköy Resistance (Turkish: Erenköy Direnişi)[2] was a battle between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot forces at Kokkina area, in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In November 1963, President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios III, proposed 13 constitutional amendments to the Constitution of the country's Government. These amendments were primarily aimed by the Makarios Administration at reorganising and regulating the distribution of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot manpower and voting power in the Government, civil services, military and police forces. These proposed amendments would also have affected the distribution of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot persons serving the judicial, executive and municipal service arms of the Government, in favour of a 70% to 30% split, weighted to the Greek Cypriot population majority (77%) over the Turkish Cypriot minority (18%).

While the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sides of the Government were already largely polarised in favour of the interests of their respective "mother-states" (i.e. Greece and Turkey), the Turkish Cypriot representatives within the Government rejected Makarios' 13 proposed constitutional amendments, on the basis that it deprived the Turkish Cypriots of equal representation. The Greek Cypriots, likewise, refused to modify the amendments.

This resulted in the escalation of the Cypriot intercommunal violence in the events named the "Bloody Christmas", and the end of the Turkish Cypriot representation in the government of the Republic of Cyprus.

I won't reproduce the entire article, but this bit was also very relevent:

In mid-1964, the Greek Cypriot Government became aware that the Turkish Cypriots, who by now had almost universally receded into enclaves nationwide, were becoming increasingly well equipped with small arms, squad automatic weapons and mortars that would not have otherwise been made available to them through legal ports of entry. The Turkish Cypriot-held deep-water dock at Kokkina, in Tillyria region, was immediately suspected as the focus of a Turkish shipping point for the supply of arms to the Turkish Cypriots from mainland Turkey. This belief was further reinforced by published intelligence estimates of the Turkish Cypriot force present at Kokkina, which was thought to be of approximately battalion-strength, with heavy weapons

I have highlighted one phrase in bold, because it explains why these abandoned villages never had electricity. We often get asked this question and it was because the enclaves prevented the Electricity Board from modernising the villages along with the rest of the villages who were updated, in the mid sixties. They have the water features because, by and large, these were rolled out in the 50s, before the intercommunal fighting of the 60s began.