For those who follow the news, ‘North Cyprus is to Turkey as Hong Kong is to China’ might make some sense. In the independent territory of Hong Kong, millions have protested against the right of the Chinese government to extradite criminals from the independent territory to China. They argue that the word ‘independent’ means that criminals will be tried in Hong Kong under the prevailing law there and not under Chinese law. China disagreed and the demonstrations to have the Extradition Bill cancelled continue.
The moving of sovereignty from one area to another has been the basis of many revolutions in the past but I doubt very much that the same would happen in North Cyprus. According to North Cyprus Afrika newspaper (16.07.2019) the Turkish Ambassador to North Cyprus, Ali Murat Basceri, is seeking exactly the same extradition process as China, in other words to extradite North Cyprus citizens to Turkey in order to be tried on terrorism charges. He says that this is because North Cyprus apparently has no anti-terrorism laws.
Rather than help the North create such laws, Basceri argues that such things should be left to Turkey. The need for special Turkey specific laws is because of FETÖ:
“It has become clear that Turkey has dealt the organisation a serious blow with its efforts. One of the first places the organisation members abandoned was the TRNC. We know for a fact that the organisation carried out serious operations in the TRNC at one time. We are faced with a very sinister organisation. There are secret members of these terrorist organisations in Turkey as well.”
He was talking about Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü but don’t get me started about this organisation, just read the Wikipedia link. My reading of this is that if North Cyprus follows the rest of the world then being associated with this organisation might not be considered illegal. For example, the EU will not consider that movement to be a terrorist one until Turkey supplies concrete evidence. Therefore, an argument would go, North Cyprus as part of the EU wouldn’t either so in order to prosecute them they’d have to be sent to Turkey for special prosecution.
My guess is that North Cyprus’s new government will do just that.
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