Political reasons behind allocating land to Turkish Galatasaray football club in the occupied area of Cyprus
Turkish Cypriot daily Yeni Duzen newspaper (21.02.14) reports that the president of Turkish Galatasaray football club, Unal Aysal and the self-styled prime minister of the breakaway regime, Ozkan Yorgancioglu have agreed that the reasons behind the allotment of land to the club in the occupied area of Cyprus were political.
Aysal visited the occupied area of the island yesterday and met with Yorgancioglu, the Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu, and the self-styled minister of interior, Teberruken Ulucay.
In statements during his meeting with Yorgancioglu, Aysal said that the period for making investments by Galatasaray has come, that they have an investment program for the occupied area of Cyprus and that they have prepared their projects. He noted that they visited Yorgancioglu in order to see how he could help them and take his support.
On his part, Yorgancioglu said that the allotment of land to Galatasaray by the former self-styled government has been annulled by the current “government” and added that it was anyway not possible to invest on that land which is agricultural land. He noted that the land had been leased to the club for one year, but Galatasay did not meet the conditions of the agreement and therefore the “council of ministers” annulled the allotment. He said that they have given land to Besiktas football club as well and they have launched investigations to annul this allotment as well.
Yorgancioglu pointed out that a lot of clubs exist and the regime could not give land to all of them, because its lands are limited. He said that they could invite tenders for this kind of land and argued that the way of evaluating their scarce land is important.
Aysal interfered at this point and said: “Given that there was no building permit and investment possibility on this land allotted to us, it was granted for political reasons”. “I am sorry, but this is what happened”, replied Yorgancioglu.
Aysal noted that by making investments, they want to give something to the occupied area of Cyprus and not only take from it. Yorgancioglu said that they need such investments, but reiterated that this kind of allotments will be made through invitation of tender