Turkish Cypriot daily Havadis newspaper (07.07.15) reports that the “Property Compensation Commission” established by Turkey in the occupied area of Cyprus decided to give compensation to a Greek Cypriot refugee for his occupied property, but when it failed to do so the Greek Cypriot refugee registered the decision in the “courts’ register” through his lawyer and launched a procedure for confiscating vehicles used by “ministers” of the breakaway regime.
Sequestrators were sent yesterday for vehicles used by the “ministries” of finance and agriculture and a vehicle of the “ministry” of finance was taken to a field near the Ledra Palace traffic lights. Procedure was launched for sequestering all vehicles with numbers between 004 and 014 and if the problem is not solved today more vehicles will be sequestered.
The “Commission” had decided to pay the sum of two million and 150 thousand sterling pounds as compensation to the above-mentioned Greek Cypriot for a property of 60 donums [Translator’s note: A land measure of about 1,000 square meters] by the sea at occupied Vasileia village. Three thirds of this property is located in a military zone and the rest is used by a natural person. The Greek Cypriot had reportedly applied to the “Commission” trying to transfer his property.
Murat Metin Hakki, the lawyer of the Greek Cypriot, told Havadis that the “Commission” gave priority to the money “in an unfair manner” and noted that “Turkey said that the Turkish Cypriot who takes the property should pay”. He pointed out that the problems in the “Commission” started when Turkey stopped conveying money. Hakki said that the “Commission” paid 200 million sterling pounds until today and the entire sum was paid by Turkey.
According to the paper, there is an unpaid sum of 94 million sterling pounds, which the “Commission” decided that should be given as compensation. There are decisions that remain unpaid for 1.5 years and therefore the cases cannot be completed. A decrease in the number of applications by Greek Cypriots was observed in the last couple of years. The number of Greek Cypriot applicants was 2,500 in 2011 and fell to 150 in 2015.
Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (07.07.15) reports that the chairman of the “Commission”, Gungor Gunkan has argued that the ownership of all properties for which compensation is paid passes to the “TRNC”, but they have to compare the value of the properties left by the Turkish Cypriots in the government-controlled area of the island with the value of the properties which they were given in the occupied area as equivalent and find out who has taken such property as equivalent for his property in the government-controlled area.
He noted: “I have been saying this for years. When these properties pass to us, many Turkish Cypriots are living on these properties and there are properties which they abandoned in the south and came here. We have to evaluate these and bring them to a conclusion. For example, Mrs Ayse said that ‘I have left a property of 50 thousand Turkish liras in Limassol and was given a certain amount of points. In return of these, she was given something in the north. Is the value of these two properties the same or not? We must re-evaluate these the soonest and bring them to a conclusion”.