Under pressure by Turkey and hundreds of lawsuits filed by Greek Cypriots, the Turkish Cypriot administration of Mehmet Talat is now considering a number of options, mostly suggested by Turkey to break the property deadlock issue.
A week ago, the well connected Hurriet reported that the Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul had asked Talat to change the constitution of the so-called TRNC breakaway state, recognising that the property rights of land now controlled by Turkish occupation army did in fact belong to their rightful owners, the Greek Cypriots.
Talat is reported to have formed a committee to look into ways as to how the current deadlock on the property issue, probably the biggest stumbling block in finding a solution to the Cyprus problem can be found.
The source main focus however is to find a way to bypass the negative publicity that Turkey and the breakaway state are now being subjected in the light of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling in April stating that a property compensation commission set up under the previous Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash could not be accepted as a valid channel of recourse for Greek Cypriots seeking compensation or retribution for properties they were forced to abandon during and after the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Another focus of discussion was a law introduced soon after the declaration in 1983 of the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)’ that claimed ownership by the ‘state’ of all Greek Cypriot properties in the north. The commission will now look at ways of carrying out expropriation in an internationally-recognised legal way.
The implementation of internationally acceptable criteria for the expropriation of property would mean a law introduced in the north in 1994 allowing the distribution of Turkish Cypriot title deeds for Greek Cypriot properties – a move that saw thousands of Turkish mainlanders, and Turkish Cypriots who were not refugees from the south, gaining ‘title deeds’ for the Greek Cypriot properties they were occupying – would need also need to be repealed.
A possible way around this problem could be the establishment of a “guardian of Greek Cypriot properties” similar to the guardian of Turkish Cypriot properties in the Republic. This way those using the property would be asked to pay rent that would be held in a fund payable to the owner as and when a solution to the Cyprus problem is found.
