I bet that if you have bought property in Cyprus then you will want to know how your ownership will be affected if there is a settlement. For example, if you bought from a Turkish Cypriot who said that the land they were selling you was given to them when they swapped it for land they had to abandon in the south. Perhaps you are wondering if you could safeguard your purchase by offering the original Greek Cypriot owner these deeds as compensation for their lost property, even if the land is now under a motorway?
If you are in London on the 24th January then perhaps you should attend this talk and find out what Esat Mustafa believes would happen. The focus is on the impact on Turkish Cypriots so if you are an expat you might not have your situation referred to. Of course, that is if you believe there will be a settlement.
‘Two Turkish Cypriot associations are organising a talk in Turkish in North London next Sunday, 24 Jan., about the thorny issue of Cyprus property – one of the final matters the two Cypriot leaders will tackle in the current Peace Talks.
Human rights group Embargoed! and the Vroisha (Yağmuralan) Association are holding the event in the main hall of the TCCA (Turkish Cypriot Community Association), where keynote speaker Esat Mustafa will share details of what a comprehensive settlement could mean for the resolution of the property issue and its likely impact on Cypriot refugees and current property holders, with a specific focus on British Turkish Cypriots.
Mustafa’s talk will start with the importance and role of property in the current peace talks. He will review how history and international law have shaped the property policies and regimes on both sides of the island, and explain the implications of the proposed principle of “Individual Applications” agreed by the two Cypriot leaders at the negotiators. He will also offer alternative resolutions to the Cyprus property issue that could make for a fairer and more certain outcome for all concerned.’
A large amount of land and property was known as TMD Title deed.
This is the title for land given to Turkish Cypriots for military or government service, or to Turkish settlers to encourage economic growth in certain parts of the North. Obviously this was given to people that had no property to swap in the South and is therefore the most worrying land title. The other title Esdeger, would be where the original pre-1974 owner of the land or property would have been Greek Cypriot, who abandoned his land or property after 1974 and fled South.Even Pre 74 Turkish title deeds comes with concerns because although this title deed was never under GC ownership, you can’t but ask why so many buyers never got PTP and were prevented from taking legal ownership? Those with little confidence in TRNC leadership and are aware that political decisions are often based on cronyism and nepotism could easily conclude that this is a way of holding onto property they legally own in the event of any settlement and provide homes for their “own” might they be needed?
Although all property (to promote sales) now comes under TRNC Title deeds, I think the “history” of the property and deeds will have a bearing on any settlement. I hope that with any settlement foreigners who purchased in the TRNC are safeguarded but hand in heart I am not convinced this will happen. Britain will put the benefits of a united Cyprus before an handful of Brits and use their warning on the British High Commission Website as a you were warned and did this knowingly. I also think the Orams case will have a bearing on how the property problem is dealt with. Without any doubt the ECHR made it clear who legally owned the property and we clearly saw what happened to the Orams who when push came to shove got no support from the TRNC. There will be winners and losers but in a society where corruption is rife and business is on a friends handshake rather than any legally binding contract or law, I suspect that any solution will favour the Cypriots rather than foreign buyers. That would also include those who have double dipped or sold the property they were given.
If both sides had lost similar amounts of property to each other in the Turkish land grab of 1974 the problem would be relatively easy to solve but the Greek Cypriots lost three times as much property as the Turkish Cypriots. The TCs gained so much surplus land that they, or rather Turkey, gave it away to mainland settlers and flogged some off cheap to gullible carpetbaggers.
Therein lies the real problem which is not of the making of the Greek Cypriots. They will not be inclined to accept a solution that legalises what Turkey achieved by armed force. Territorial and property adjustments should be based on the legitimate land ownership and populations of 1974, compensation should be paid by Turkey to the suckers who fell into the “exchange” trap and have to leave the island.
I take it that compensation would be paid to TC’s who had entire villages bulldozed by the GC’s in the 50s & 60s ?
Jerry as you well know (but will not acknowledge)problems in Cyprus did not start in 1974 did it ?
No AM, problems started in the 1950s when Britain dragged Turkey back into its colonial mess and that country empowered and encouraged the island’s 18% minority to demand more of Cyprus than they deserved or entitled to, in fact Turkey wanted Cyprus returned to its control if and when the British left. https://web.archive.org/web/20130113105528/http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/zorlu_in_london.html
With this in mind why are you surprised that the Greek Cypriots were in conflict with the minority.
Turkey has been up to its rotten neck in the Cyprus tragedy but ignorant fools like yourself are too obsessed placing the sole blame on Greek Cypriots because of your bigotry and irrational support for those you perceive as the underdog. I have never claimed that the problems started in 1974, you simply make that assumption because it supports your point of view. I have pointed you to these links before but you either fail to read them or are to stupid to understand them, try again and then stop spouting your poisonous bile.
Quote :- “Their political purpose was to demonstrate unequivocally the seriousness of the Turkish claims over Cyprus.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20130113022203/http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/istanbul_riots.html
And who started the inter-communal strife and ethnic cleansing :-
https://web.archive.org/web/20150706220625/http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/communal_strife%20-%20%2758.html
Jerry, you and your one-eyed hatred are a classic, grade A, blue ribbon example of why there can never be a settlement.
Every non-Cypriot observer I’ve spoken to over a decade has said the same thing: all the TCs want is a peaceful existence. All the GCs want is to maintain their hatred.
Is that the best you can do Edwards? You are incapable of refuting the facts I have posted above so you go off at a tangent about MY feelings.
I’ll tell you what I hate, I hate what Turkey did to Cyprus in 1974, I hate the fanatics on BOTH sides who murdered innocent Cypriots, I hate the likes of Denktash and Grivas (I’m ashamed to say a relative of mine) and I hate thieving smug opportunists like yourself who profit from the misfortune of the thousands of Cypriots who were forced from their homes at gunpoint. You turn up on the island and are conned into believing only one side of the story and overnight become “experts” on the Cyprus Problem – no doubt a disciple of “The Genocide Files” drivel. You have surely read about the problems the likes of Polly had with the property crooks and banks (Yes, I know they exist in the ROC too) but you believe in their dealings with Greek Cypriots the TCs can never do wrong.
There will be a solution when Turkey loosens its grip on Cyprus and when the Turkish Cypriots act like other minority communities instead of insisting on this equal community nonsense. Therein lies the root of the problem, emboldened by Turkey the Turkish Cypriots want, in every sense of the word, more of Cyprus than their numbers demand.
Jerry wrote ‘There will [not] be a solution…[until]…Turkish Cypriots act like other minority communities instead of insisting on this equal community nonsense.’
That’s why there will never be a solution, for some odd reason TCs do not want to be a minority in a country which last year stated about taking in refugees that Cyprus Wants Christian Refugees.
I’m not denying GCs right to put conditions on the type of people they allow in their country, I’m just upholding TC’s right not to be a minority in a country whose majority would prefer not to have them.
Not very good at maths are we DF. 78% Greek Cypriots, 18% Turkish Cypriots, go figure who is a minority.
Your reference concerned REFUGEES, not the legitimate inhabitants of Cyprus.
A sad attempt at twisting facts!
Jerry, a sad attempt to ignore evidence of Greek Cypriot prejudice at government level. I guess you’d be happy to call GCs refugees if they left the north in 1974 but not give the same status to TCs fleeing north, leaving property behind. You can’t see that a call for Cypriots to return to homes they left behind in the north would apply to REFUGEE TCs too. Now let’s see you play twist the truth to fit your bias and show us why there can never be a solution to the Cyprus Problem.
OK DF I’ll “twist” the truth for you, four times as many GCs moved south as TCs who moved north. The TCs had the pick of the best empty houses in the north – why on earth would most of them want to go back south? The rest were flogged off cheap to carpetbaggers or given to illegal settlers from Turkey. They gained three times more land than they left behind. The GCs lived in tents in fields until enough refugee housing could be built. The TCs had a word for what they gained, they called it “Greek Loot”. Several thousand TCs already live in the south – how many GCs live in the north?
As for twisting matters you know very well that the refugees referred to last year were not Turkish Cypriots but the poor sods that Turkey is allowing to be shoved into the Med to drown.
Jerry as you are so keen to copy and paste from the internet let me do the same.
Have a chew on this….
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmfaff/113/113we45.htm
An awful lot of facts, occurrences, dates and references there, AM, but I think you’ll find that if Jerry bothers to respond, it will be the usual spin he excels at in calling it all propaganda nonsense (references and all) and totally biassed towards the TC point of view.
You will never, notwithstanding the production of facts and references, get people like Jerry and Yiannis to concede that there is any truth to the idea that the GCs were in any way responsible for the trouble.
Incidentally, Jerry, thank you for getting my name correct.
What’s yours, I wonder?
More bloody rubbish from you Edwards. Show me WHERE i have ever said that only the TCs were to blame.
Just because a biased Turcophile submits a statement to UK Parliament doesn’t make it valid. Denktash may just as well have written it himself. He’s a former British MP who owns/owned a house in the north just like his chum Keith Speed, what else would you expect him to say
Ignorant carpetbaggers trying to justify their stolen goods, go to hell.
Michael Stephen sides staunchly with the Turkish Cypriot community in his account ‘The Cyprus Question’.
He is one of very few either current or ex parliamentarians that fully supported Turkeys position.
AM, being his usual stupid self thinks he has discovered the ….truth. Stupid for every one who shares Stephen’s views I can provide 100 who oppose it. Learn to debate you idiot.
So no truth in it then Jerry ?
Here he comes the intellec of the year !
Milti you still don’t get it do you…. For every silly link you pair put up we can do the same… Clown
And there you have it, right on cue. Never mind all those bothersome little details like facts, figures and references proving what was said and done actually happened, let’s just attack the author of the piece instead of what he says.
Classic argumentum ad hominem. In case you haven’t come across the term before, Jerry, it means a totally fallacious argument.
But what else is ever to be expected from such hate-filled people?
What a hypocrite you are Edwards, you never try to counter facts and references I have quoted you simply ignore them. The difference is that I quote independent sources whereas you expect me to believe the biased views of a Turcophile.
Here’s what I wrote in an earlier post “I hate the fanatics on BOTH sides who murdered innocent Cypriots” and yet you imply in your last sentence that I only hate one side. Have YOU ever bothered to make such a statement, do you only blame one side? I think it’s you who demonstrates hatred.
BTW no need for the Latin crap it doesn’t impress me at all, I suppose it makes you feel a tiny bit intellectual instead of a cheapskate opportunist.
So Jerry what you are saying (i think) if we don’t agree with you or you brain dead mate then you will just trash what we say and rubbish what we copy and paste ?
I have said on many occasions that there will NOT be a negotiated settlement and from what we read from you pair of clowns there is nothing to convince me otherwise?.
AM did you have a problem understanding this, “The difference is that I quote independent sources whereas you expect me to believe the biased views of a Turcophile”.
Hollands book “may” be independent however he has highlighted on numerous occasions that all Britain did was fail to harness the GC fanaticism with enosis.
And there lies the crux of the matter.
I would argue that British self interest and the subsequent dirty tricks it played had more to do with “the crux of the matter” as detailed here by Robert Holland than the GC fanaticism with enosis.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130113022000/http://www.cyprus-conflict.net/london_conference.html
“The volatility of Greek-Cypriot politics during the early 1950s had been echoed on the Turkish side where a new, essentially opportunist grouping, the Federation of Turkish Associations, sought to monopolize minority politics, just as the Enosists strove to dominate majority politics. What the Federation wanted, however, was not merely guarantees against any future Greek domination, but distinct privileges within the existing orderCprivileges which, it was calculated, the hard-pressed Cyprus Government might be badgered into giving them. Furthermore, in trying to extract such advantagesCincluding Federation control over the Evkaf, with its money and patronage, over a revived Muftiship, as well as special rights in educationCTurkish-Cypriot politicians set out to secure the sponsorship of Ankara. That it was the Turkish-Cypriots who in the first instance embroiled a reluctant ‘Motherland’ on their own behalf, not the other way round, is noteworthy, since it was a fact later obscured by the degree to which the Cypriot Muslims became purely and simply the pawns of Ankara’s diplomacy, in stark contrast to the more complex and fractious relations always subsisting between Greek-Cypriots and Athens.”
There, I’m quoting YOUR source.
Jerry, clearly you are unable to distinguish between facts and figures that are referenced, as in AM’s previous source, and biassed views, as in your last post by Holland.
A bit too subtle for you, isn’t it Edwards.
Jerry, you’re just making a fool of yourself, and you don’t even realise it.
Jerry, you remind me of a hungry warthog digging around trying to find something meaningful, the only thing you will find underground will ultimately bite you on your snout. 🙂