Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north and the construction of buildings on it without the original owners’ consent is “a legal weapon which can be used”, Green party leader Stavros Papadouris said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a party press conference on the matter of property, he said the matter can be used as such if “substantive negotiations” on the Cyprus problem begin “in the coming months”.
“If, as we are led to believe, there are substantive negotiations in the coming months, it would be good to focus on the substantive issues, and the property issue is one of those,” he said.
He was also asked to comment on Tuesday’s European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling regarding Greek Cypriot-owned land in Varosha, and said that “for any owner of property in the occupied territories, what to do with it is their personal decision”.
“The [Immovable Property Commission (IPC)] exists and, for better or worse, is recognised by the ECtHR. These are the real facts … Our pursuits for a solution to the Cyprus problem concern what we consider to be legitimate remedies based on the solutions sought during the negotiations,” he said.
He also commented on the recent arrests made by the Republic of Cyprus of people accused of selling Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north, saying, “it must be fully understood that anyone involved in any stage of illegal advertising and buying and buying and selling … is committing a serious criminal offence”.
He added that he will inform fellow European Green parties of the matter at the forthcoming meeting in Brussels on Friday.
Kyriacos Tsimillis, a member of the party’s political committee, also spoke at the press conference, saying that “the ongoing occupation of half of Cyprus and its consequences constitute our country’s most important ecological problem”.
“The usurpation of Greek Cypriot property, colonisation and demographic change, further militarisation and Islamisation of the occupied territories tend to lead to an irreversible alteration of the island and constitute war crimes,” he said.
He criticised a “monkey law” passed in 1995 by the north’s ruling coalition of the day, made up of the DP and the CTP, which first allowed for ‘TRNC’ title deeds to be given to people who paid for the use of abandoned Greek Cypriot property, before turning his attention to the IPC.
“Following lawsuits filed at the ECtHR by forcibly displaced Greek Cypriots, the court created a structure within the occupation regime called the IPC to reduce the caseload. This decision poured gasoline on the fire, turning the land grab into a huge fire. The IPC has become a tool of seizure in the hands of the occupation regime,” he said.
He then claimed that the IPC “gives the rightful owners less than 10 per cent of the value” of their properties, before passing comment on Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s new official residence in the northern part of Ayios Dhometios.
At least part of the land on which it was built was owned by Turkish Cypriots, one of whom also attempted to sue the Turkish Cypriot authorities for building on her land without her consent, though it has been alleged in recent weeks that another part of it was originally owned by Armenian Cypriots.
On this matter, Tsimillis criticised United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin’s decision to visit Tatar at the new palace, saying she had “visited this palace built on stolen land”.
He also called on the government to intervene in the matter and contact UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to make sure that “such visits are not made” in the future.
Union of Cypriots chairman Oz Karahan also spoke, saying that the Republic of Cyprus’ arrests came “late, but not too late”.
“The process of filing complaints, conducting investigations, and collecting evidence cannot burden the Greek Cypriots who were forcibly displaced 50 years ago,” he said, before calling on displaced Greek Cypriots to file complaints, and on the Republic of Cyprus to “fulfil its duty and investigate them”.
He said that the arrest of Israeli property developer Simon Mistriel Aykut, who stands accused of developing and selling €43 million worth of property on Greek Cypriot land in the north, has “brought the issue of usurpation back into the news”, but lamented that “no new cases are being opened, and procedures are going at a snail’s pace”.
“Meanwhile, some local and foreign circles are proposing a freezing of prosecutions for the sake of a good climate. We support exactly the opposite. A positive climate can only exist if confiscation of land and other actions in favour of any partition-based solution are stopped. Otherwise, the new realities will reinforce a two-state solution,” he said.
He went on to say that “those involved in usurpation are afraid – they are afraid to pass, and they should be afraid”, but claimed that ordinary Turkish Cypriots see the arrests as a “positive step”.
“Turkish Cypriots are tired of the imposition of Islamism and colonialism through the settlers. Only 10 per cent of the population in the occupied areas is Turkish Cypriot, and they are under social, economic, and cultural pressure from Turkey, which uses the settlers as a tool for this,” he said.
“The Turkish Cypriots do not want the settlers because their daily lives, their future, and their economic situation are affected. The more buildings which are built in the occupied areas, the more settlers will come, and so the Turkish Cypriots are looking for their future elsewhere.”
Not everyone has shared Karahan’s analysis of the mood within the Turkish Cypriot community, however.
Turkish Cypriot opposition political party the CTP’s foreign relations secretary Fikri Toros told the Cyprus Mail that Turkish Cypriots have been rendered “anxious, intimidated, and threatened” by the arrests.
“These feelings are reviving previous traumas experienced between 1963 and 1974,” he told the Cyprus Mail, adding that Turkish Cypriots “were left with no choice other than having the use of the properties abandoned by Greek Cypriots in one way or another”.
He went on to say that the ongoing arrests and court cases have “toxified the political climate on our common homeland”.
Last week, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis had insisted that the arrests are not political in their nature, telling journalists that “the Republic of Cyprus is acting within the framework of the rule of law, and the arrests for the usurpation of property concern the protection of basic human rights”.
Then asked whether it would be better for there to be a moratorium on such prosecutions so that they do not “come at the expense of talks on the Cyprus issue”, he said that “impunity for violations of property or human rights cannot be a condition, inside or outside of quotation marks, for talks or for an alleged indication of goodwill”.
President Nikos Christodoulides had earlier insisted that the arrests “will certainly not stop, no matter what Tatar says”, adding that “illegality cannot be justified in any way”, but also somewhat distanced himself from the arrests, insisting that “we do not interfere in the judiciary”.
Two Hungarian nationals were handed prison sentences over the matter last month, with the pair having admitted to promoting and advertising the sale of houses near Kyrenia on the internet.
Meanwhile, the case regarding Simon Aykut is ongoing, as is the case of a German national who reportedly spoke about selling property in the north to Elam MEP Geadis Geadi during a flight to Larnaca.