Etkin demands review of visa decision

By Jean Christou

TANER Etkin, ‘Foreign Minister’ in the north, is demanding that Britain review its decision to impose visa restrictions on Turkish Cypriots.

Etkin described the decision as “discriminatory” and “an injustice against the Turkish Cypriot people”.

Britain said on Thursday it was withdrawing the right of people from the occupied areas to enter the UK without a visa, after processing almost 1, 000 unfounded asylum claims over the past two years.

Etkin said it seemed the whole of Europe and the world were trying to crush the Turkish Cypriots under severe embargoes, and expressed the hope Britain would change its mind.

Turkish Cypriot press reports yesterday said British Deputy High Commissioner John Buck had appeared on a Turkish TV news programme “and tried to justify his government’s decision” by explaining that it had been taken to put an end to political asylum applications.

Buck was reported as saying that in particular over the past two years, there had been over 900 such applications for political asylum from the ‘TRNC’.

When reports of the increase in such applications began to surface early last year, the Denktash regime expressed outrage that Turkish Cypriots should seek political asylum from a ‘democracy’ such as the ‘TRNC’.

It was also reported at the time that an increasing number of Turkish settlers were obtaining Turkish Cypriot ‘citizenship’ with the sole intention of using such documents to get into Britain.

Yesterday’s press quoted Etkin as saying that asylum seeking “could be dealt with by other measures”.

There are also an increasing number of Turkish Cypriots applying for Cyprus passports, a practice condemned by the regime in the north.

Press reports there suggest Turkish Cypriots unsure of what the future holds are opting for the security of having a passport from a country pegged to join the EU.